*We spoke to actress Peyton Elizabeth Lee and director Justin Harding about their hot new horror-comedy film “Carved,” now streaming on Hulu.
Directed by Harding and based on his original short film, “Carved” follows a group of survivors fighting to escape a vengeful pumpkin on Halloween night. Peyton and Justin spoke to us about bringing this unique story to life and what fans can expect from this thrilling and darkly humorous feature. Check out the trailer below.
“Comedy horror can be very challenging to pull off,” Harding told EUR exclusively. “The key with this film, we tried to ground it in performance so these characters weren’t trying to be funny. They were inherently funny people and then to try to film it in a very cinematic way. We’re handling it with real cinematic flair but essentially it’s a pumpkin so it’s inherently funny and then the secret to that to do horror comedy is to do 80% horror and 20% comedy. I don’t know how we, I don’t know where we landed in that.”
Harding added, “The idea of a killer pumpkin came during a pumpkin carving contest that I was involved in years ago and then it evolved into the short film and that was six years ago we made the short film. Then the idea came up of doing it as a feature and telling a bigger story, I was inspired by the Sturbridge Sleepy Hollow experience, which is a historical village that does a reenactment of Sleepy Hollow that’s an outdoor musical stage play and it’s well done,” he explained.
The filmmaker continued, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s beautiful the way it’s choreographed, the music, the lights, and it’s an amazing production so I wanted to set the story in that environment with a group of people that are performers, actors, and Peyton’s character, a writer-director who’s talented… so the inspiration was a killer pumpkin is the seed, the spark of the idea, but then setting that in a historical village and setting all that in the 90s and then trying to make a film that relies on 90s techniques to give it a timeless feel was sort of like the three-prong approach to the inspiration.”
“Carved” combines supernatural horror with deeply relatable real-life fears, like feeling trapped, powerless, and vulnerable. We asked Peyton if working on the movie brought out any of her own personal fears, and if so, how that impacted her performance.
“Yeah, definitely. I think part of the job as an actor is trying to ground whatever you’re doing, whatever character you’re playing, it could be the most serious thing or the most ridiculous thing,” she said, noting that her character Kira “is a young girl trying to figure out what she’s going to do with her life, trying to follow her dreams,” Peyton added.
“She’s very protective of her family. She’s fallen in love and gotten her heart broken, which are all things that I’ve gone through. So I think trying to make sure those very real, relatable feelings were present throughout this ridiculous, funny, crazy concept was something I was thinking about and trying to do right by. So hopefully, people recognize that.”
Watch our full conversation with Justin and Peyton via the clip above.
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: ‘Zatima’ Stars Cameron Fuller, Guyviaud Joseph, and Remington Hoffman Talk Season 3 Drama | EUR Video Exclusive
The post Director Justin Harding & Peyton Elizabeth Lee Talk New Horror Comedy ‘Carved’ on Hulu | EUR Video Exclusive appeared first on EURweb.