SLIFF 2014 Interview: Michael Bartlett – Director of TREEHOUSE

TREEHOUSE screens Sunday November 16th at 8:30pm at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar Boulevard) as part of The ST. Louis International Film Festival. Tickets can be purchased HERE

Britsih-born director Michael Bartlett made a name for himself in horror circles with THE ZOMBIE DIARIES, its sequel, THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2. and THE PARANORMAL DIARIES: CLOPHILL. His latest shocker is TREEHOUSE. When a young girl and her little brother are the latest to go missing without a trace, their hometown imposes a curfew, and no one is allowed to go out after dark. But two brothers break the rules, and when they unwittingly stumble across an old treehouse deep in the woods, they find themselves in the middle of an unimaginable nightmare. Inside the treehouse, the brothers discover the missing girl, terrified and hiding, but her brother has vanished. Together, the trio will soon face a fight for survival against an unexpected and bone-chilling evil. Shot in the backwoods of Southern Missouri, TREEHOUSE takes a deliberately retro approach — with pacing reminiscent of such ’80s classics as “The Vanishing” and “Stand by Me” — which is certain to delight fans of old-school suspense.

Michael Bartlett took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about his latest project

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman November 4th, 2014

We Are Movie Geeks: How did a horror movie director from England and up in Branson Missouri?

Michael Bartlett: I met the love of my life and she is from here so I moved here to be with her.

WAMG: How did you become interested in horror films? Did you grow up a horror movie fan?

MB: I grew up with a neighbor named Kevin since I was about seven years old. His parents were yuppies and they would go out a lot and party. They would rent Kevin whatever movie he wanted to watch just to keep them happy. So my mom would let me go over to his house to watch these movies with him what she didn’t know was that we were getting the bloodiest horror movies the evil dead movies in the howling they had a name for these in England they were called the ‘Video Nasties’,they even tried to ban them at one point. So I kind of grew up on horror films. We would go to the local video store and rent every film that they had. Also in England at that time Hammer Horror films were on a lot every weekend they would run a different Hammer Horror.

WAMG: Were you able to see horror films in movie theaters growing up?

MB: No, just on DVD and VHS.

WAMG: What were some of your favorite horror films and hoarder filmmakers?

MB: My favorite horror film is THE EXORCIST though I didn’t actually see it until I was 16 years old and I already had seen so much stuff I had become desensitized. I was absolutely blown away by the exorcist. Another horror film that I love is John Carpenters the thing I just love the sense of paranoia and that especially near the very end of the movie. So those two films made a big impression on me. I also love the evil dead films. I also love the Blair witch Project and paranormal activity the first one, I was blown away by it the first time I saw it I watched it in a dark room on my computer. I also like a movie called THE DIVIDE.

WAMG: I’m not familiar with that film.

MB: It’s about a nuke that goes off New York and it follows a group of people Who are living in an apartment. And they hide out in a bunker and then they all start depleting because of radiation poisoning. It’s like a descent into madness, it’s really pretty terrifying. As far as filmmakers go, I would say that John Carpenter is my favorite because I love so many of his movies, even some that non-horror films like ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13.

WAMG: Let’s talk about your new film TREEHOUSE. How did the script for TREEHOUSE come about?

MB: It was originally a 60-page script that was sent to me by a writer in London, Alex Child. When I got around to optioning the film and developing it, I did a complete rewrite. I’d say everything from the beginning of the second act, when they discover the treehouse, to the end of the film is all mine and the first act I’d say it’s 50-50. I left much of his work in there, the basic structure, but I changed things here and there.

WAMG: I have not seen TREEHOUSE yet but plan on at the St. Louis International Film Festival. What attracted you to this story?

MB: When Alex was pitching it to me, What really made that stick out to me first of all, it was gripping, I was really interested in where it was going to go. And immediately from the pitch I could see the poster in my head and I could see a trailer in my head. When you can see those things, it’s a really good sign. And really because of the originality as well. So many times when you read a script you think you’ve seen some version of that film before. When I saw THE DIVIDE I was struck by how original it was and that’s how I felt about this script for TREEHOUSE, so originality is a big factor but ultimately it has to be something commercial or there’s no point in doing it, you’re just going to lose your investment.

WAMG: What was the budget and the schedule for TREEHOUSE?

MB: The budget started off at $1 million and then we tried to work it down from there, Meeting with investors, seeing how much money they have and then meeting somewhere in the middle. The schedule is interesting; it was a 19-day shoot originally. What I did to make it work, I had seen a movie called THE SIGNAL that came out in 2007 and I was very impressed when I found out that that movie was shot in 13 days. I thought that was amazing and I thought I’d better track down the Director of Photography of that film because he can obviously shoot fast. That’s what I needed and I still wanted to maintain quality. So I found him, his name was Jay Christopher Campbell and he came onboard and agreed that we could shoot it in 19 days. But what ended up happening was we all got a very bad flu bug. We lost our lead actor for three days and I was out for one day. When I was out the crew shot without me but I wasn’t happy with any of that so I reshot that. That was in January and February 2013, We had reshoots to do but we couldn’t do them in the summer so we had to wait until November to do those, so that added a couple of days as well. I shot a flashback scene in Atlanta. I flew down there and shot with an actor named Clint James who plays the father in the flashbacks that build the background of the story. So in the end, filming ended up taking about 30 days and that was because I really wanted to take my time and get everything right. I put two years of my life into this. My previous film was called ZOMBIE DIARIES 2 and it was a complete nightmare. It was a rushed movie. Rushed in preproduction, rushed in postproduction, with filmmakers having no control over anything and everybody who saw the film said to me that it felt like a rush job. I felt like ZOMBIE DIARIES 2 was a black mark on my directing career and I was very keen to make sure that didn’t happen again so I was lucky to have the level of control to be able to pull this thing out.

WAMG: Was TREEHOUSE shot there in southwest Missouri near Branson?

MB: Yes it was shot in Branson and it was shot in Taneyville where WINTER’S BONE was filmed as well, and in Forsyth Missouri.

WAMG: Where did you find these young actors that are in TREEHOUSE?

MB: I worked with a casting director named Heather Laird. She had to cast WINTER’S BONE so that’s where I had heard of her. Normally a casting director would whittle things down for you and give you a short list, but I was keen on doing a lot of that work myself so when actors applied they would give us head shots or videos and I would go through everyone of those. I went through 600 for the role of Crawfors and 600 for Elizabeth and 300 for Killian. I watched every one of them, then I shortlisted them down and we gave the actors scenes from the film to read. Finally I got each of these characters narrowed down to about three potential actors for each part. At that point I got the original writer involved because that was part of our deal; he would always be involved creatively through the process. I would still have the final say but that input was always valued. That was how we found the actors for Killian and Elizabeth. For the role of Crawford, who’s sort of the third lead, the older brother, we hired Daniel Frederick an actor from Kansas City who was originally from Southwest Missouri and just happen to be home for Christmas so we got lucky with that casting.

WAMG: TREEHOUSE doesn’t seem like it’s as gory as your zombie movies. Do you prefer suspense and atmosphere over gore, was this something you were conscious of?

MB: That’s correct, yes. I much prefer atmosphere and suspense. It was fun growing up watching all the gore films, but the things that I used to really enjoy, that would trigger my imagination were things like a television series that my parents used to let me watch called Tales of the Unexpected, which was sort of like a British version of The Twilight Zone. Then in my teenage years I would keep watching the same two movie that would play late at night. They were George Romero’s MARTIN and the original version of THE VANISHING. There was something about those two films that I found fascinating. The pacing of those films felt very immersive, like they were dragging you into a world where so much of the other stuff was so faster cut. So that’s why I’m more of a fan of suspense and TREEHOUSE definitely goes down more as a suspense film.

WAMG: I heard the director of THE VANISHING just died last week

MB: Oh I hadn’t heard that.

WAMG: Georgia Sluzier was his name. Did you ever see his Hollywood remake of THE VANISHING?

MB: I did, I wasn’t really a fan of it.

WAMG: It was ridiculous. He changed the ending. His original had such a perfect ending.

MB: Absolutely!

WAMG: Yeah and at the end of the remake he pops out of the grave and gets into a big fight with the villain. I was embarrassed for him. Do you allow your actors to have much leeway with their roles or are you strict with keeping to the script?

MB: No I’m pretty open. I think part of being a good director is knowing that you don’t always have all of the answers, particularly in this situation where we had a script that was written by three British guys that was set in Missouri. I think Alex and I took our cues from films like STAND BY ME. I had been living in Missouri for a while by then so I was used to the way people would speak, But occasionally things would slip in and people would tell me that there’s no way that anyone from this area would say that. So the actors would come up with ideas and change their lines around. They would always ask me first and I was absolutely fine with that. If it works it works and if it doesn’t, there’s always the script to fall back on.

WAMG: You’ve committed your career so far to horror films. Do you see yourself straying into other genres in the future?

MB: Absolutely. I tried to get a time travel film off the ground. Around 2010 everyone was trying to get me to do ZOMBIE DIARIES 2 but I didn’t really want to do it because I didn’t want to be typecast as someone who just made those found footage movies. I feel on some level those weren’t being taken seriously so I worked very hard and came really close to getting a big budget time travel film made. At one point the producers of THE GRAY were involved. I’ve always been the kind of director that makes movies because I want to tell interesting stories. TIMELESS, the time travel film, was such a special project . It was so original. Unfortunately LOOPER came out, which was kind of similar to it and that killed any opportunity to make that movie. We probably could have gone ahead after LOOPER if I had been willing to compromise, but with an idea like that you’ve only got one shot at it and you have to get it right and that means getting everything right, the story, the cast. I worried it would’ve been ZOMBIE DIARIES 2 all over again. You can’t spend your life making films and that you were not happy with. But any projects that come along, as long as they’re really cool and really interesting, and it’s something I can put my soul into and be happy with the end result, that’s all that matters really. I’d like to make a road trip movie someday. I like those. And maybe more thrillers I really liked PRISONERS and things like that. Any genre really as long as it has an interesting story.

WAMG: What’s next for Michael Bartlett?

MB: I’ve got a few projects in the works right now. I’ve got a group of writers working on different films for me. I’m going to the American Film Market next weekend to pitch a few of those. The Weinstein Company really likes TREEHOUSE but they didn’t feel like they could open it wide theatrically and make money with it. I’d like to make a film that has the success like the new movie OUIJA has.

WAMG: Good luck with TREEHOUSE. I’m looking forward to seeing it when it plays November 16^th at The St. Louis International Film Festival.

MB: Thank you and I look forward to my trip to St. Louis for the screening.