Shock Till You Drop - Kaj-Erik Eriksen

Wrapping up our slate of Comic-Con interviews about See No Evil 2, I have for you stars Danielle Harris and Kaj-Erik Eriksen. Here, they talk about working with Jen and Sylvia Soska, how the tone compares to the 2006 film and they give you an idea as to who their characters are.

Ryan Turek: Haven’t seen the film this early yet, so you’ll have to give us the lowdown on who you two play…

Kaj-Erik Eriksen: I play, who is just an earnest, nice guy which is a nice change for me because I often play a guy with chips on their shoulder. He has a neat build here because he gets angry, it’s a nice little script. It’s different from most horror movies because they’re investing in the characters and it allows you to feel sorry for these characters. You don’t want these people to die. The Twins said early on they don’t believe in disposable characters and that’s something that stuck with me.

Danielle Harris: I play Amy. Seth and I work in the morgue. The bodies from the first movie come into the morgue and it’s my birthday, I’m ready to leave and then it’s like, holy shit, nine bodies are coming in and the killer is one of them. I stay and we have our hands full and Jacob comes back to finish some things he didn’t get to do. It was cool because we were shooting in this old mental institution which was f**king with me the whole time because – in order to keep the patients in – all of the hallways are different colors on each floor. So, it’s like a maze, the whole thing is a maze and we’re trying to get out of this thing to avoid having this big guy bust through walls to get to us. There were signs during the production that would tell us where to go so we didn’t get lost. And sometimes they would switch the signs around and it was messing with my head. I think the audience will feel like they’re trapped with us when they see the film. 

The other thing is the lighting. We lose power a quarter of the way into the movie and I thought, ‘How the hell are you going to film a movie in the dark?’ But, it’s all practical stuff with lighters and flashlights and the glow of the emergency exit signs. It almost looks pretty in a creepy way. I love the score. It’s so reminiscent of what we grew up with in the ’80s like o.g. Nightmare on Elm Street, there’s definitely that feel too when we got into the tunnels in the movie.

Turek: Where was this hospital?

Eriksen: Up in Vancouver, and it’s used all of the time.

Turek: Ah, so it’s the Linda Vista Hospital of Canada?

Harris: It’s bigger than the Linda Vista. Huge. There are all of these buildings, but it’s basically like that. It’s awful.

Turek: I’m seeing the Soskas grow as filmmakers, what was it like for you two to work with them?

Harris: The Soskas bring something that’s intimate and they have fun plays on sexuality. They don’t take it so seriously where a man might be a little more uncomfortable with that stuff. It’s not by the book. They go balls-to-the-wall and I think the more confident they go on this production the more freedom they had because I think they were just forgetting it was a studio film and they were doing what they wanted. They bring the indie horror element to a studio which is so hard to accomplish, which I really loved. They’re so great with characters. I think they’re going to get better and better as they learn.

Eriksen: I was curious to see how the dynamic would work with two directors, because I’ve never worked with two. Are you going to get pulled in two different directions? It works fantastically because one would come over to talk to you while the other is behind the camera. It doesn’t get overwhelming.

Harris: I knew who I would always go to when I was rewriting my dialogue. I’d come in and be like, ‘Jen, I’m going to change a few things…’ You’d pick and choose who to complain with.

Turek: How would you describe the tone of this film compared to the first?

Eriksen: I would say the kills are more exciting in this one. In the first film, they’re all sort of similar because he’s got this thing that’s his trademark. In this one, he’s making due with what he’s got.

Harris: I think he’s getting overwhelmed. In the first film, Jacob goes in with a mission and in this one all of the shit is still in his head and he can’t escape his own demons so he’s just sort of reacting and he’s not in control.

Eriksen: And this film dives into all of that and why he is the way he is. You don’t want this big lumbering killer, that’s not interesting.

Harris: It seems he doesn’t want to do what he has to do, but he’s the product of a really fucked up thing.

Eriksen: The movie’s got heart. For a horror movie, it’s got a lot of heart to it.

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