Vancouver, Canada
INTERVIEW DATE: AUGUST 30, 2007

THE UNINVITED revolves around Anna (Emily Browning), who returns home after spending time in the hospital following the tragic death of her mother. Her recovery suffers a setback when she discovers her father (David Strathairn) has become engaged to her mother’s former nurse, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks). That night, Anna is visited by her mother's ghost, who warns her of Rachel's intentions. Together, Anna and her sister (Arielle Kebbel) try to convince their father that his current fiancée is not who she pretends to be, and what should have been a happy family reunion becomes a lethal battle of wills between stepdaughters and stepmother.

BD: How influential is the original movie?

Thomas Guard: That's good question. But we're very influenced by that Asian terror, but we kind of just see it through our end, kind of, our insensibilities. So, we don’t feel that we're kind of moving away from it too much. I mean, it's very implied. And a lot of it is in the faces of the characters and the anticipation of things. And we're really into that. So, we're hoping to, I mean, we hope that there'll be a bridge actually, perhaps between a Western sensibility and an Asian one in this...

Charles Guard: Certainly. I mean, they're our kind of, our appreciation for Asian cinema is sort of, because of the fact that it is much freer and it's sort of narrative constraints than Western cinema, which is much more kind of structured and kind of pointed. So, we've, to a certain extent, we've kind of like, we're harnessing the energy of the story as a way of kind of tuning in to some of the terror.

BD: Would say the terror comes from the characterization or the style?

Thomas Guard: Probably the style, probably the spaces between scenes.

Charles Guard: Mm.

Thomas Guard: I mean, rather than the scenes themselves. And I think that's, the script is a really good fusion of both because it's got very strong kind of Western style story scenes. But then it's got these gaps between, which are the kind of the terror and the horror. And those are the kind of the moments that we really enjoy because they're kind of, they're slightly looser and silent and really about how people see things or what they've seen or things like that.

BD: Can you speak about the fine line because this is gonna be a PG 13 movie, but making it scary enough? Because, yeah, I know kids go to R-rated movies all the time. So, is that hard for you? Would you like to do more? Are you doing a director's cut that might be rated R?

Charles Guard: Not really. I mean, our kind of taste are naturally sort of, we're drawn to the scarier material in a kind of psychological sense. So, we're not, and from the outside, no one’s intention has been to go and make this a kind of the, a slasher-style horror. It's always been a kind of a classier end of the spectrum. It's sort of, it's more, yeah, it's taking different films really.

BD: Did you guys scare each other growing up? I mean, was there something, is this something that binds you two as brothers, this sort of affinity for the scary and the psychological...

Thomas Guard: Well, funny enough, we did a very scary film when were still kids.

Charles Guard: Yeah.

Thomas Guard: But I used one of Charlie's friends. As you know, we've got...

Charles Guard: Yes.

Thomas Guard: ...two other younger brothers. And we used one of our younger brother's friends. He'd come over the play for the day, and we stuck him in a bin and did this kind of scary thing with his hand.

Charles Guard: Where his hand was sticking out...

Thomas Guard: Yeah.

Charles Guard: ...and that's how you knew he was dead.

Thomas Guard: I think we're about 14 at the time on a home movie camera.

Charles Guard: Yeah.

Thomas Guard: So, we did use to make funny little horror films.

BD: We understand you have a long shooting schedule, is that kind of refreshing to for you to have all this time to play with?

Charles Guard: It's been quite an adjustment working from, 'cause we've done shows and we've done commercials, so we sort of, we've gotten used to do a certain way of working and a kind of rhythm and there has been quite adjusting there to have such a long schedule, but...

Charles Guard: Yeah. But it's, you know, the adrenaline kind of keeps you going.

BD: And it's here.

Charles Guard: Yeah. Exactly.

BD: Are you shooting with the intention of putting out an R version on DVD, or, yeah?

Thomas Guard: We're not sure. I think, probably, it's probably, that would probably be decided later down the line.

BD: How do you guys work together? Is somebody better talking with the actors and setting up the scenes, or do you really work totally together always?

Thomas Guard: We just do everything together.

BD: Is there, this is your first picture. Is there a, do you have any fears of things that you may be coming to or scenes or shots that you are coming to that you have a concern about, and do you shoot a lot of coverage and then hope that it's going to work in post or you're more planned and organized than that?

Charles Guard: We tend to plan out a lot of the stuff we do, and it's come, and we've been working on a project for a little over a year, so there's been a certain amount of kind of, yeah, preparation that's gone into it. Even when things change, you know, at the last minute, you kind of, you have the sense of all that preparation even though it's perhaps not exactly necessary at that point. It's still sort of very useful, even a changed scene, kind of, yeah.

BD: And what about apprehension? Do you, are you coming to any points that you know that might be difficult or are you beyond that now?

Thomas Guard: Only logistically.

Charles Guard: Yeah.

BD: But many times, we're just trying to get it all done in the time. I mean, that's inevitably most of the challenge of...

Charles Guard: On time and on budget?

Thomas Guard: Yeah. And trying to just squeeze it into the package and (WORD?).

BD: What do consider the hallmark of horror? Like, what's the, as far as you're concerned, what’s the most successful psychological thriller ever made? And do you have a different, do you have the same one or different selections among the two of you?

Thomas Guard: Probably Rosemary's Baby.

Charles Guard: Rosemary's Baby and, but Rosemary's Baby, or The Others, The Sixth Sense. I mean, that kind of, they're horror films that are kind of, you know, psychological thrillers as well as horrors. They cross, I mean, that was the thing that attracted us to this project, is that it was certainly sort of a kind of genre-buster. It kind of, it blend boundaries between the genres, which is exciting.

BD: Well, can you address some of the, because the original film is Asian, but I found it to be very gothic as well. Can you talk about if you're going to bring some of that to your movie and if so, what elements of the gothic if it's visual or the story?

Thomas Guard: Well, like the romanticism of the story of the two girls very much in the original. And we like the idea that kind of a horror film that was told through the perspective of this young girl. And we've tried to, I mean, we've tried to, we've definitely been inspired by that. In terms of the gothic, I don't know. I guess, I don't know who, it's probably not. I mean, gothic is quite hard to, hard work to kind place now. It's maybe, it’s got a little kind of...

BD: I guess you think of Anne Rice when you think on gothic now, but, I mean, just the beautiful, the visuals, the shadows, the story is, will you be taking advantage of

Thomas Guard: Yeah, yeah.

Charles Guard: Yeah. We definitely.

Thomas Guard: Absolutely. Yeah.

Charles Guard: We try to kind of remain quite (WORD?) in this, in the kind of visual style and yeah, play with light and darkness a lot, and keep the kind of, keep the terror pure in a way. We’re doing a lot of stuff in camera, which we're not really using too many effects. And...

BD: Where does the story take place?

Thomas Guard: It takes place in Maine.

BD: What role does that play?

Thomas Guard: Well, just as a place that a successful author would live. And it's a kind of imposing. The girl's dad is a kind of a little bit of a loner, and he has this kind of romantic isolation, and Maine seemed to be a very good place for that.

BD: Well, a lot of horror films like Asian horror films have really muted colors and you're talking about the gothic sense. And the producer we were talking to said like they sighted Rear Window as a influence, which has really bright Technicolor’s. What kind of color palette are you using for this film?

Thomas Guard: We don’t, we haven’t really, we just try to create a romantic house, and a feeling that has a lot of warmth and history and tradition in the actual design of the house and the interior. So, we've kind of, in terms of the color palette, we've really been led by that, by the design of the interior. And there are some rooms that's slightly more muted and others are warm and rich.

Charles Guard: We tried to keep a very kind of, I mean, we wanted to keep summer. I mean, the film is set in the summer. So, what we tried to do is kind of invert the horror kind of like, normally, these kind of films take place a lot at night, and your kind of, everything is dark, and your kind of like scary, it's a scary, dark house. And what we've tried to do is keep the exterior, a lot of the scenes outside, incredibly bright and sunny. And so, the feeling inside has become sort of one of a house that is, like a house in the height of summer, big house. It's often the lights are off, the kind of curtains are shut. So, it doesn't get too kind of hot. And so, you have two very distinctive worlds, really, the interior world and the exterior world. They're kind of quite different. So, we, that’s very much the palette that we try to work with. But it's more a tonal palette than a kind of color palette.

BD: You know, a lot of Asian movies, the narrative is very fractured. They jump around a lot, multiple story lines and flashbacks. Was it a little chaotic doing that for you and challenging, like keeping track of where everything was?

Charles Guard: Yeah.

Thomas Guard: Yeah. Yeah. And it has, that has been the big challenge.

Charles Guard: Well, that's the whole thing with Asian cinema, is it really does, it conforms to very few rules. I mean, anything kind of goes. And that's one of the reasons why those films are so scary 'cause you really don't, as an audience, probably, don't know quite what to expect or what, you know, what to expect in terms of what's really gonna be possible. Whereas when you're watching Western film, you sort of know that even in your darkest fear, they're not gonna kind of, the filmmakers aren't gonna quite go there because it's sort of, it would just be too much, whereas Asian cinema seems kind of, like pushing those boundaries a little bit.

BD: Can you talk about working with the cast that you, I mean, why you chose maybe Emily and David Strathairn? And were you nervous at all working with him? He has such a history of doing wonderful roles and wonderful movies?

Thomas Guard: Yeah. No, they've been great. They're fantastic and... We're still learning. We're still only halfway through. No, he's great. And he kind of has a lovely understated stature......about him which was really important for the role and kind of really embodies the idea of a writer and... and a character like that.

BD: And what was it about Emily?

Charles Guard: We'd seen Emily in Lemony Snicket. And she was, we were really knocked out by her in that and it kind of, you know, she caught our eye then. And we'd really wanted to work with her for a while. There was another, yeah, we were thinking of another script that we had actually written, we've been thinking of her for one of the parts. And so, we were very excited that she might be...But she's been fantastic. I mean, they've, it's been very helpful. Telling a story, it's kind of like, it's quite a complicated narrative, and to tell it, sort of, simply is a real challenge. And it's been very, I mean, it's been incredibly helpful having such intelligent, brilliant actors because they've really helped us kind of get under the skin of the characters and being able to explore the narrative as fully as we can.

BD: How much of the ambiguity in the original do you guys want to maintain and then sort of, do you want to try to lay everything out and explain it a little more simply?

Thomas Guard: Well, it's always nice to have, leave a few windows open. And we hope that we can do that 'cause I guess that the thing we always, I mean, the idea that's always that you kind of satisfy the audience in terms of joining up all the dots. But then you always leave a few, kind of unresolved or just like, kind of a, hanging there to kind of provoke conversation or kind of to tease, you know, to keep it alive in people's heads. And that would be the idea, is to kind of strike a bit of a balance, to kind of, between...

BD: Are you gonna be shooting multiple endings?

Thomas Guard: No.

BD: It seems that brothers are fast becoming one of the more and sort of popular things to be as far as directing couples. Is, what are the upsides, the unique upsides and the unique downsides of actually being a brother-directing team because, obviously, it seems to be a bit of a new trend?

Thomas Guard: It's always been a trend for, I mean, there've been a lot of brother teams down through the years.

Charles Guard: The Lumiere Brothers.

Thomas Guard: Yeah. Fathers of cinema.

BD: Do you get sick of each other, like, you must be grafted at the hip together all day, like 14 hours a day?

Charles Guard: Have you seen Trading Places, the two brothers in that, Duke and Duke? It's very much like that. We live at different ends of the house [and] kind of meet in the middle.

BD: Being siblings yourself, did that help you form the sisters' aspect of the script? Did you bring anything to it?

Charles Guard: Yeah, it's been fun from that point of view, trying to really, kind of capture the spirit that exists between siblings and the kind of, you know, the little tensions and the sort of, you know, the underlying love and stuff like that. It's been really fun to explore that.

BD: How different is the relationship of the sisters from the original? Is it fundamentally the same or is it, what, how are you approaching that?

Charles Guard: In the original, there's, the sisters, there's a strange relationship between the sisters. And there's a lot of kind of change, crossover, you know, that they switch around a lot in terms of who the narrative is being sort of told through. And ours was kind of purer than that. It's more, kind of, like, it's straighter than that. It's very much Anna's story, and Alex, the older sister, is very much the kind of the strong one in the relationship.

BD: Are there any visuals that you, 'cause you watched the, I mean, the first film probably many times, so are there, is there anything you think about that have really, that recreate this in this film, or is it just totally different?

Thomas Guard: Well, there's definitely, it was, we've, there're a number of, I don't know. I mean, I think it's, I mean, there's nothing that we, we're definitely inspired by it. And we would hope that people who like the original would also like this version of it and see that it's a variation of, I mean, the original was actually the third time or the fourth time there'd been a Korean film made about that folktale. So, it's a kind of a story that has, in Korea, or at least, has kind of been told time and time again and been constantly reinterpreted. And we see this as a kind of another interpretation.

Charles Guard: Mm hmm.

BD: I know you're saying how important the staircase was. Walter was telling us about that.

Thomas Guard: Yeah.

Charles Guard: And the staircases and hallways and doorways, always very important and kind of, like, thresholds and in horror films or in anything kind of... tense.

BD: Did you guys watch a lot of, I mean, there's been a lot of remakes of horror films, and particularly Asian horror films. Did you watch a lot of those and dissect them and discuss what works, what doesn't work, or do you, were you just more concerned with what works for a horror film period, or a thriller period?

Thomas Guard: We definitely got into, when we kind of got into the zone with this, we were watching a lot of things and kind of talking about it. And I mean, not really breaking them down, but just kind of getting a feeling of rhythms and timing and trying to just get into that, into the music of it, which, of course, when you start making it, you know, you get sort of caught up in the day-to-day the, you don't feel it so much, but then, it's all there. It's kind of just, you kind of lay the foundations and the groundwork. And, but we were watching a lot of things, yeah. Sure.

BD: What are you thinking about, score-wise?

Charles Guard: We have lots of ideas in terms of what we'd like. But we kind of, we haven't begun, you know, really making steps towards...

BD: So, since it's PG-13, will we have, like, some pop songs and...

Charles Guard: Maybe a little, maybe a few. But, I mean, really, it's kind of, we'd love to score it as, I mean, the original had an extraordinary, beautiful score.

Thomas Guard: Yeah.

Charles Guard: And we'd love to kind of have a score as kind of all-encompassing as that.

Thomas Guard: Mm hmm. And it was very beautiful and very scary. It’s a great combination of that.

Other Interviews:

Directors Thomas and Charles Guard
Producer Walter F. Parkes
Star Elizabeth Banks
Star David Strathairn
Stars Arielle Kebbel and Emily Browning