In ANTLERS, producer Guillermo del Toro and director Scott Cooper bring a new creature to the big screen. A small-town school teacher (Keri Russell) discovers that one of her students harbors a dark secret that could have fatal consequences.
We spoke with Keri Russell about her experience acting in an intense movie like ANTLERS. She told us, "In a way, the genre allows it to be more a little more heightened because things get amped up so quickly, and you sustain that level of alarm and fear. So, in a way, maybe you get to turn the volume up a little more than you would in another movie."
She also spoke about the visceral experience of playing opposite a monstrous creature. "What you see in the movie is what I actually got to work with. So much of our life now is CGI, and this was not that. This was absolutely practical." She added, "Breathing on me — this enormous, horrible, beautiful thing.”
We also spoke with director Scott Cooper, who helped pen the script and spoke with us about finding the short story the film was based on, "A Quiet Boy." He said, "After reading [the short story], it kind of set me up with three goals when making this film. I wanted the film to be disquieting, I wanted it to be tense, but most importantly, I wanted it to be human at the center."
Check out our full interview with Keri Russell and Scott Cooper of ANTLERS:
ANTLERS is in theatres now!
All images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.