[eerie music playing]
[eerie screams]
[laughs mischievously]
[screams]
[evil laughter]
[growls]
[screaming]
In my work I've learned not to judge anything by first impressions.
And some years ago while conducting an investigation
of a haunted building in Virginia City, Nevada,
the owner showed my some items that were believed to be cursed.
I was immediately drawn to this miniature coffin.
And it looked like a home-made, old, Halloween prop,
and it seemed harmless enough.
But when I reached to open it, she grabbed my hand to stop me
and said, "No. Do not open the lid," she said.
"This thing is designed to curse anyone who opens it."
And obviously being an investigator I opened it anyway.
Inside I found some old human hair, a human skull
and some rattlesnake rattlers and some writing on it.
Initially, I didn't feel too much from it.
It may have looked a bit spooky,
but it's just a Halloween decoration, right?
Wrong. I brought it into my home.
And a series of events began that convinced me
that I was not the only one in my house.
One night, while I was sleeping, I was pulled out of my bed.
I felt my left leg lift up very slowly
and then my right leg began to lift up.
And then I felt myself being pulled very slowly out of my bed.
At first I began to panic,
but then I realized, "Look, this is not gonna kill me."
But what I was witnessing in that moment
as an investigator was absolutely incredible.
But after that, there was an onslaught
of paranormal activity that was unleashed.
And I literally had to move downstairs into one of my guest rooms.
And I turned it into a religious shrine
to protect me from whatever this entity was.
And I felt as though whatever this spirit was it was possessing me.
I have to admit, part of me kind of enjoyed it.
I began to feel like I was invincible.
I just had no fear of anything.
I felt like somebody that got turned into a vampire.
And look, I've travelled all over the world
looking for proof of the afterlife.
But now,
one of the most incredible paranormal experiences that I've ever had
was happening inside of my own house.
And even though I was attracted
to the feeling of power it gave me,
I knew that this cursed Halloween prop was dangerous.
And to escape it's effects, I had to move out of that house.
It made me wonder, what could have happened
to someone who fell under it's dark influence but was unable to escape?
Where did this object come from
and what was the source of its power?
These questions served as the inspiration
for the film you are about to see.
[children chattering]
What are you supposed to be?
Arr, matey.
[dog barking]
[distorted voice shrieks]
-[distorted voice shrieks] -[yelps]
[panting]
[breath trembling]
[screams]
No, don't, don't please! Wait! Wait! Let me down!
Stop! Stop! Don't do that! [screams]
[footsteps approaching]
[boy] Come on. The lights are still on. Let's go.
[knock on door]
-Trick or treat. -Trick or treat.
[boy] Anyone home?
[chuckles]
-[boy 1] Go, go, go. -[boy 2] Go, go.
[radio playing]
[voice over radio] Good morning! Rise and shine.
The time is 8:00 a.m. November 1st.
58 degrees outside and sunny. It's gonna be a beautiful day.
WKPI coming at you.
We hope you enjoyed last night's spook-tacular Halloween broadcast.
We certainly enjoyed putting it together for you.
But unfortunately there is some difficult news
we've been asked to share with our listeners this morning.
The body of a deceased young man was found last night
in the Twin Pines ravine and foul play is suspected.
Officials are asking anyone who may have seen suspicious activity
last night in the town of Marksville,
to come forward and inform local authorities.
A reward of $2,000 is being offered...
[breathing heavily]
[children chattering]
[breathing heavily]
[gasps] No! No! Please.
No. No.
[panting]
[breathing heavily]
[yelps] No!
No. No. No. [breathing heavily]
[breath trembling]
-[shrieks] -[yelps]
[panting]
[breathing deeply]
[groans]
[yelps]
[panting]
[shouts] No! No! No!
[screaming]
No! No! No! Why? Why? Agh!!!
Fine.
[breathing heavily]
[clangs]
[man screams]
[cellphone beeps]
[line ringing]
-[woman over phone] Hello? -Hi, Tanya, it's Richard.
Look, I'm sorry to call you like this.
Richard, what did we say about using this number?
Uh, yeah, I know. Uh, I'm sorry.
You need to wait for your appointment on Monday.
I don't think I can make it till Monday.
It's... it's happening again.
Have you been drinking?
[Richard] Yeah.
[Tanya sighs] Okay. I can give you 10 minutes.
But then we have to continue on Monday, okay?
Thank you.
Richard, you've been sober for a year.
Did something specific trigger you to start using alcohol again?
I'm not sure. I... I don't know.
When you experience extreme anxiety,
you feel a deep impulse to become impaired.
You slip into kind of a survival mode.
This is often a response to severe childhood trauma.
All right, Richard, this is what we're gonna do.
I want you to close your eyes and place your hands on your stomach.
Breathe deeply in
and follow your exhale as the breath moves out.
Allow your mind to wander to child Richard.
See him clearly in your mind.
-[Tanya] Where are you? -[Richard] In my bedroom.
[Tanya] Look around you.
See yourself in a safe space.
[exhales deeply]
Keep breathing and let's go a little deeper.
Something happened when you were a child.
Something you need to confront.
What do you see, Richard?
[boy 1] Go, go, go!
-[boy 2] Come on! -[boy 1 laughs]
[inhales, exhales deeply]
[knock on door]
Uh, hi.
Sorry to bother you. I live just around the corner
over on Coldstream Avenue.
Actually, our cat has gone missing.
And my daughter is so upset, she's just beside herself.
So I'm canvassing the neighborhood.
Do you have a minute? Could I show you a photograph?
-[man] Yeah, sure. -Thank you so much.
I really appreciate this.
Um, okay. Here's Charlie.
You can see he's got bright blue eyes, very distinct.
And then, I don't know if you can see well through the screen,
but, um, right under the chin there's this...
[screams]
-[door closes] -[man screaming]
[grunts]
[groans]
Right here.
[groaning]
No!
[floorboard creaking]
[grunts]
[groans]
[groans] My eyes.
What are you doing here?
What's going on?
I don't have any money.
I'm not here for your money.
Help! Police!
-[Peter] Help! -I don't think we want to involve the police, Peter.
[Peter groans]
[Richard] Jimmy Kay,
15-years-old.
Murdered on Halloween night in 1962.
Wesley Davis,
16-years-old.
Murdered on Halloween night, 1963.
If anyone is going to jail it's gonna be you.
Unless you help me.
Who are you?
I need to return something to you.
Something I stole a long time ago.
You thought you could just...
bring it back to me?
[Richard] What is this thing, tell me?
You don't understand.
I can't do this anymore.
[Richard] You are going to help me.
Or I'm turning myself in and I'm taking you with me.
[exhales]
The hutch over there.
[Peter] There's a box inside.
[exhales]
They come to you at Halloween, don't they?
Who are they?
We all grew up in the same neighborhood.
[Peter] I was about 12-years-old at the time.
Our family lived across the street from them.
We thought the family was odd but...
we just never knew how evil they were.
[boy screaming]
The kids were either brainwashed or under some kind of spell.
Nobody really knew.
But every year on Halloween
another person went missing.
Rumors began that the kids were sent out each Halloween
to lure in new victims,
sacrifices.
When the neighborhood found out that
the family was responsible for the death of a baby...
[crying]
...they burned the house to the ground with everyone in it.
When the fire was out
I snuck onto the property...
[exhales]
...and I took that.
It wasn't burned.
It was untouched by the flames.
I don't know why I took it...
but I did.
[creaks]
And the next Halloween...
they appeared.
And then the blackouts.
Yeah. Yes.
[Peter] Underneath the files.
[Peter] That was in the coffin when I took it.
It's an ancient Celtic language.
It translates roughly to,
"The children will feast on the night of Sauin."
Sauin?
All Hallows' Eve.
Halloween.
What about this at the bottom?
It means the pillager will sacrifice the blood for our king.
A pillager?
The coffin is cursed.
So when you stole it and opened it
the curse latched onto you.
[laughs] You can't give it away.
You can't destroy it.
And you certainly can't return it to me.
Only when the coffin is stolen from you
and opened by someone else,
only then will the curse move on.
-Are you sure? -Yes.
If you don't help me get rid of this curse,
you and I are going to jail for a long time.
[children chattering]
[chain clinking]
[breathing deeply]
It's happening.
[Richard] It's happening.
[exhales]
[children chattering]
[groans]
[Richard shouts] Peter!
[screams]
[snaps]
Sick!
[grunts]
I'm taking this.
[grunts]
[panting, screams]
[breath trembling]
[police siren wailing]
[blows]
[door closes]
Awesome!
[creaking]
ELI: Hi, I'm Eli Roth.
Welcome to Filmmaker 2 Filmmaker, I'm glad to be back
with my friend, Justin Harding.
Good to see you, Justin.
JUSTIN: Good to see you, Eli.
ELI: Alright, so let's talk about this Halloween prop,
that is a cursed Halloween prop.
It's funny because when you think of a cursed object,
you don't think of something that
was designed to scare people.
It's normally just some kind of random object,
but this was a Halloween Prop,
that Zak said he had to move out of the house
where he had the prop.
Talk about doing the story, setting it on Halloween,
setting it in all the different eras,
because you are a Halloween officianato
JUSTIN: What's fun about this story is that
Halloween for the main character,
he's terrified of Halloween.
Because that curse comes every Halloween,
so every Halloween
he's turned into a serial killer,
or he's used to go out and kill on behalf of this demon.
So, he doesn't decorate his house,
he doesn't have-—he's not participating in
the fun aspects of Halloween, this is the time of year
where he is sent off to kill and bring in sacrifices
and he does it in blackout state as a serial killer.
[creepy music]
[heavy breathing]
[screaming]
JUSTIN: And so, it was really fun to shoot Halloween
from his perspective, where he's terrified of it,
he doesn't want it to come and he's looking out the window,
seeing all the kids and everyone having fun
and everyone coming and going,
and he's just hiding behind, terrified,
looking out for these three ghost kids that
are going to appear amongst the, you know, the trick or treaters.
[various voices in the distance]
ELI: Where do they think this curse came from?
JUSTIN: We don't know the origins of the curse itself.
But we know that this item was dangerous to Zak.
He didn't know exactly where this curse came from,
he got it from a woman in Nevada right?
He found it in a storage locker,
and she said never open it,
because if you open it, you know,
this curse can latch onto you.
It just kind of latched onto my imagination,
like, what could be the source of this?
And to me, what was interesting, is to think about Halloween.
What is Halloween?
ELI: The origin of Halloween is fascinating,
you know, Samhain.
JUSTIN: An ancient sort of Celtic festival,
Samhain, right?
It was celebrated as the end of the year.
ELI: Yeah, well the whole idea of Halloween,
you know, started where that was the-—when the veil
at the end of the harvest on October 31st,
is when the dead can cross over into our world
and the reason that you wore a mask
and a costume was so that when they returned
to the land of the dead, if they knew you were
living they might take you, but if they saw you
in a mask they might think you were one of them
and they would leave you alone.
JUSTIN: I also read that, Halloween came during
the Potato famine, back in those days, when it was
brought over as like a cultural thing, like Irish
people coming in during the Potato famine.
It was really like a-—pranking people.
Trick or Treat was really like, give us candy
or we're going to break your fences down, and masks
were a way to hide your identity and get away with it,
and Halloween-—
ELI: So, it was really about threatening and
extorting your neighbors.
Yeah, extorting your neighbors for candy.
I wish we could go back to that.
Because then in the 80's it turned into devil's
night and throwing eggs and breaking things.
But you're saying it actually started that way.
So, that was the beginning of Halloween,
and to look at those photos of early Halloween masks
and homemade costumes, they carry such
a frightening essence to them.
They are so scary.
Those old pictures of people in like the 1930's
and 40's, they're-—it's nightmare fuel.
Yeah, they're amazing to look at.
So that was a huge inspiration for the story too,
was to look back at those old photos of early Halloween
homemade masks and bring those to life
as some of the spirits that invade this world.
They come to you on Halloween, don't they?
[breathing deeply]
Who are they?
How was it, getting to make some of those masks?
It's great, the research was really fun.
Being able to go through and look, and sort of just
feel which ones really strike fear?
[pulsing sound]
[scream]
ELI: You have a real precision to your directing,
that whenever I watch pieces you've directed,
you're approach to it, and I know your obsessive
and you plan it out.
Um.Do you ever deviate from that plan?
Oh yeah.
ELI: How much of that went into the planning of this
particular episode and incorporating the masks.
Depends on the story.
Typically, I storyboard a lot.
I mean in the past I've done that, but I also love
to deviate from the plan.
...green, but right under the chin there's this strange...
[shhh from spray]
No! No! No!
Agh!
JUSTIN: On this episode and my other episode.
I didn't story board anything.
Really?
Yeah, I don't always storyboard.
I just typically do.
But sometimes-—it depends on the story.
So, no storyboards.
Did you shot list?
Did you frame for it?
Oh yeah, I definitely shot listed.
I like storyboarding when the location is difficult,
if there's a lot of exteriors or if I have a crane.
Depending on the tools and depending on the story,
I mix it up.
[heavy brathing]
[scream]
[panting]
ELI: Talk about shooting a scare, crafting a scare,
and doing it with kids, and sort of the limits
that happen naturally when shooting with children.
JUSTIN: In this story, the children were the ghosts.
They weren't scared of the ghost;
they were the ghost.
So, in that scenario, it's great because less is more.
I can only show them for a few frames
or a few seconds, then they're not scary anymore.
So--
Kids, I feel, love being monsters.
Oh yeah.
Did you have that experience when shooting
-these kids? -Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I did and there was a few moments where one of
the kids has to be eating the face of one of the adults,
and when I first met them, I really quickly
had to assess. Which kid is going to be the face eater?
I had to sort of figure out who is going to be
comfortable with this.
And so, during lunch, I'll go around and talk to each kid,
oh how's it going?
I kind of get to know who they are a little bit,
meet their parents, and just secretly
I'm thinking, okay who's going to be the face-eater here?
And there's one kid who was huge fan of Stranger Things
and was a big horror fan,
he was sketching skulls and I immediately knew
he was the right kid, so I went and talked to him.
And I just started sort of playfully directing him
during lunch saying: "“oh, can you show me what you
look like if you were like chomp-chomp-chomp like
monster, and then you would come up and go down"”.
Try to just really quickly during lunch.
ELI: Did you use food as a tester or-—
JUSTIN: Yeah, because he had his chicken
So, he-—so you're sitting there at lunch,
and you go up to Jacob, and he's got a plate full
of chicken and you're just picturing someone's face,
and you just said: "“Jacob, if that was someone's face,
how would eat it?"”
or did you say "“Eat the face like a piece of chicken"”
I like saying "“show me what that looks like."”.
So like "“hey you have to like chomp down,
you're like eating, like you're an animal,
let's say you're like a little bear cub or something
and you're munching down on some berries,
what would that look like?"”
What did the parents say?
Because you've got to get the parents on board for sure.
Well, I think they're excited when their kid
gets to be involved in a special way.
Especially if they're a fan of the genre and into it.
Yeah, if the parents are horror fans it really helps
Yeah.
And then they're like, "“oh yeah, get him bloody,
kill him, chop him up."”
Yeah.
Yeah, I can talk to them and say-—you know,
I want to put some prosthetic make-up on him.
He's going to have this kind of burned look to him
and I can do special close ups.
I can put some fake blood in his mouth, is that
going to be cool?
And, oh yeah, they're all excited to be involved.
[eerie music]
[chewing and growling]
Yeah, and I love working with kids.
I love having kids on set.
I have a 7-year-old son.
I feel I'm a big kid and I really enjoy creating
an energy that feels safe, and fun, and playful.
But I just treat them like any other adult.
I don't really talk down to kids
Yeah, I found that-—like in Hostile,
when I had the kids, that actually came from
a gypsy commune and that weren't actors,
that-—I said, "“okay you're going to throw bricks,
"you're going to bash his head in"”
and the kids were amazing.
They were so funny, and they brought such energy
and such good ideas.
And then in Green Inferno, when we're in the village
and you have the local kids, that were just
acting in the mood with the decapitated heads
and running around-—they were the funniest,
they had ideas, they caught a snake,
they were like "Hey, we caught a snake,
should we put this in the scene?"
and I mean they bring such energy and such life,
and they just say stuff that adults would never say.
It's incredible.
They have this pure energy and their
enthusiastic, it's nice to discover kids who have
this gift, that might not even know it yet, and then
you can sort of help mold them and-—
it's really exciting for me to find
kids and bring kids to film festivals and to show
them, introduce them to a world that they didn't
even know existed
Thank you, Justin, such a fan of yours.
Another amazing episode, um, and again.
I can't wait to see what you do next.
Anything you direct, I'm there.
Thanks, Eli.