CinemaComo Zach Cregger has transformed a personal tragedy into the terrifying ‘The Hour of the Mal’o screenwriter and director talks about the origins of the long -awaited horror movie that generated a fierce dispute between studios and producers for writing

Zach Cregger You have an expression of horror on your face. He just said something he might not have said.

When the screenwriter and director wrote what he would become NightsBrutal – Your 2022 horror movie set in a Airbnb And that turned into a mouth -to -mouth phenomenon – he was leaving years working as an actor hired and a period in the so -called “prison of directors”, after doing what he himself described as “a total and absolute failure” (the comedy Miss March – The Cover Girl2009).

“I really had nothing to lose,” he says CREGGERin a call by Zoom from an apartment in Prague, Rolling Stone. “It was like: ‘I will only have fun.’ And that’s it. NightsBrutalFor me, it was like a child coloring with crayons. Already The Time of Evil… ”

He pauses. “The Time of Evil It was like I was vomiting. ” Another pause. CREGGER feels as if he had confessed a serious sin. My God, why did he tell this to a journalist? Then the filmmaker behind one of the most anticipated releases of summer smiles, and his eyes illuminate. “And who doesn’t want to call a nanny, go to the movies and spend $ 120 to see someone vomit?”

CREGGER It’s kidding – at least about the audience running to theaters to see someone “vomit” metaphorically on the screen. But considering the excitement that the successor script for his cult success generated when he was placed in the market and the increasingly intense expectation around the launch on August 8, the comedian of skits that became a filmmaker understands that now bets are higher.

With a multiple narrative starring Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Amy Madigan and Austin Abrams, The Time of Evil It starts with 17 children who wake up in the middle of the night, run out of the house and mysteriously disappear without traces. The story becomes increasingly disturbed as residents try to find out what happened. It is the kind of ambitious, bold genre movie, which suggests that CREGGER won the title of “Next big promise”From terror.

The new movie was born from a very low moment in the life of CREGGER. “I was working on the post production of NightsBrutal When my best friend suddenly died in a terrible accident, ”he says. CREGGER refers to Trevor Moore. The two met in School of visual artsin New York, after CREGGER transferred from Temple Universitywhere I studied cinema. A common friend presented them, and CREGGER and Moore became co -founders of the skits group The Whitest Kids U’Know. The group’s program spent five seasons on the channels Fuse and IFC; Moorewhich also co-directed Miss March“It was the engine of the program and the group.”

To deal with mourning, CREGGER He started, “A writing marathon for about two weeks… I started that, phrase one: ‘This is a royal story. Half of my hometown, all these children fled.’ And I didn’t know where the children had gone. ‘Okay, come on.

He eventually realized that he was channeling a palpable sense of loss, which allowed him to process everything as far as possible. But in saying that, CREGGER again interrupts. “Look, like the rest of the world, I don’t want to see another horror movie about mourning. This horror business as a metaphor for mourning is already so beaten. I shouldn’t even be talking about it, but I can’t contain myself.

“But I wanted to do something honest,” he continues. “And I realized that the more I wrote and identified with the people I was writing, the more that I became a kind of honest diary of my internal mess. It’s funny, I was talking to the Ari Aster About this, saying, ‘I don’t know about the personal side.’ And he said, ‘The personal side is what makes it work. Don’t be ashamed of it! ‘ Hear him say this… it’s part of the DNA of The Time of Evil. The city is dealing with a loss. And me too. It was the biggest direct blow I’ve ever taken. ”

With about 70 pages written and the main characters outlined – the teacher who had all 17 missing in her class; the only student who did not run away; a father in search of the missing son; A drug -addicted walker who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time – he went to the businessman’s house in the middle of a forest on the east coast. I already knew the end and had diagram the key points of the plot. Now I needed to find out how to tell the story.

“There was still this urgency,” he says CREGGERadmitting that the need for emotional outburst has taken part of the pressure to make a successor to a success. “The only positive point of this terrible year was that I was, again, writing from a pure place. I thought, ‘Okay, the best version of this movie is if I can tell in chapters, keeping my perspective forced,’ he knows-getting hyper-subjective.”

For that, CREGGER He separated the narrative in chapters that gradually reveal the gaps, each from the point of view of a character. (He credits Magnolia – 1999 film from Paul Thomas Anderson – as a model for what I wanted in The Time of Evil.) And began to lose the fear of opening. He says he identifies himself strongly with the character of Gunthe teacher whose classroom is the only link among all missing children, and who is an alcoholic; CREGGER It has also faced alcoholism and has been sober for 10 years. He understands the anguish felt by the character of Brolina father who tries to understand how his son could be there in a moment and inexplicably disappear in the following.

In writing the part narrated by Alexthe only student of the third grade that does not disappear, CREGGER He says he turned directly to his own past. “This part is exactly like… I lived it as a child,” he admits. “Again, I don’t know if people need to know that before watching the movie, but… it’s just what it’s like to have a father who is addicted, and the child needs to turn the caregiver when this strange thing comes in, and…” The look of horror comes back. “I’ll stop here.”

“Yes, he and I talked about it,” confirms Brolinin an interview a few weeks later. “We are both sober; he spoke of his alcoholic father, I spoke of my alcoholic mother. He found these points on me that inspired me even more to want to tell this story. This was one of the things that most marked me in Zach: He has been very open about everything from the beginning. From the first meeting we had, he was willing to talk deeply about a lot in the movie. ”

“But what caught me before that, however, was just the script,” he adds Brolin. “Look, I didn’t know who the ZachNothing about the bidding war ” – more about it in a second -“ or that he had made this other movie that people loved. I had not seen Brutal nights at that time. I didn’t even know this guy existed. So, receive such a well -planned script, so intricately elaborate, so beautiful and intelligently built, and then have this over -sectional meeting with the guy who was going to make the movie… I remember seeing Matrix The week he made his debut, leaving the cinema shaking his head, like, ‘What the fuck was that?’ – And then turn, buy another ticket and watch again immediately. Films of this type do not appear much. And I remember meeting him and thinking, ‘If it works, it can be one of those movies.’

Just as it did with the Brutal nights, CREGGER It began to assemble each part freely and little linear. Without giving any spoiler, let’s just say that what begins as an elliptical mystery is extremely insane at the end. When the final draft was finished, I was ready to sell the script – and that’s when the real madness began.

The news that the guy who made Brutal nights He had an equally insane and twice more ambitious script began to spread. The buzz only grew. Several people made extravagant offers without even reading. When possible buyers could finally see what CREGGER had created, burst a bid war in the best style of Hollywood. When trying to sell Brutal nights, CREGGER He remembers that the film had been rejected by all the studios he presented. This time, producers fought for the chance to enter the “Business Zach Cregger”, With a final price of $ 38 million.

“After the dust came down… it was an incredibly difficult and stressful day, for several reasons why I don’t want to talk,” he says, referring to the 24-hour period between the sending of the script of The Time of Evil and the closure of the agreement. “But in the end it was wonderful, and it took me a few days to really realize it was real. It was amazing and overwhelming.” When asked about the rumors that Jordan Peele would have fired your management team when the Universal failed to buy the script for your producer Monkeypaw, CREGGER Refuses to comment, “Yeah, it’s not my story to tell.” (The representatives of Peele Nor did they comment.)

And although the production of The Time of Evil It was not free of trouble – he lost most of the original cast when the 2023 strike happened; He had to replace the young actor chosen to play the remaining student because the original boy had a huge outbreak of growth – CREGGER He feels that he ended up exactly the movie he wanted to do. The test exhibitions were so positive that the Warner Bros. He said the launch in six months. The reason for CREGGER Being in Zoom from Prague is that he is busy preparing the next movie Resident Evil There, with the idea of bringing the franchise back to its video games. (“If I called my PS5 Now and show how many hours I stayed in Resident Evil 4it would be embarrassing, ”he says.) And he already has another script in progress,“ a big and crazy thing that I will do after this and that, I think, is the most complex script I have ever written. ”

“David Bowie There’s a phrase – I’ll end up spoiling, ”he says CREGGER. “But it is basically the idea that creatively you should always get into deeper and deeper waters, and never be sure if you will be able to swim. I definitely did it with The Time of Evil. I may be doing this with the new one too. But my job is to be honest. And simply keep swimming. ” CREGGER He releases the air and then smiles. Now your expression is just happiness.

+++ Read more: In ‘The Time of Evil’, fear materializes in unexpected and disturbing ways