Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool Influence on Lauren LaVera’s Horror Film ‘Twisted

Summary

• Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Twisted star Lauren LaVera and director Darren Lynn Bousman.

• During a post-screening Q&A with Collider, Bousman and LaVera discussed the film’s evolving structure, practical effects, and why horror fans are so passionate about the genre.

• The pair also reflected on horror fandom, performance endurance, and why word of mouth is essential for smaller, punk-rock genre films like Twisted.

Twisted plays like a genre bait-and-switch in the best way: what starts with the slick, mischievous energy of a heist movie slowly tightens into something nastier, darker, and more psychologically brutal. The film follows two millennials who flip New York apartments they don’t own to buyers who don’t know they’re being scammed — a con that works brilliantly until they run into an apartment owner with a dark secret who flips the game on them. Directed by Saw 2, Saw 3, and Saw 4 filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman and starring Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3’s Lauren LaVera alongside Djimon Hounsou, Twisted uses shifting tone, color, and even aspect ratio to mirror its characters’ spiraling loss of control, and to make the audience feel that tension in real time.

Following a special screening for the film’s first-ever audience, Bousman and LaVera joined Collider’s Steve Weintraub for a Q&A that bounced from music obsessions and fan stories to the very practical realities of low-budget filmmaking, including the challenges of intense prosthetics, shooting on a compressed schedule, and why Bousman prefers practical effects whenever possible (even if it means, as he joked, that he currently has LaVera’s “brain” in his car). They also discussed LaVera’s rapid-fire preparation process, why horror fans are built differently, and why franchises like Saw endure when sequels so often fade.

Get To Know Your ‘Twisted’ Director and Star

Bousman and LaVera answer a variety of questions, so fans can get to know their music taste, what autographs they have, and more.

COLLIDER: Before we get into questions about the movie, I have been doing something recently called Get to Know Your Twisted Director and Get to Know Your Twisted Star, and I have a bunch of questions. Some are aimed at actors, some are aimed at directors, and some are just random. Basically, I need you to pick a number between 1 and 25.

LAUREN LAVERA: Four.

If you could see any musician in concert, who would you see and why?

LAVERA: One that I haven’t seen ever?

No, it could be anybody.

LAVERA: You know what? I am kind of obsessed because Darren gave me some of his musical inspiration for Paloma. And I think her, how do you pronounce her last name? Sofia Isella, kind of obsessed with her now. She seems like such a badass. And her live performances seem really visceral, and she just, like, rips her clothes off, and I’m like, I’m down to see that. So, yeah, that’s probably who I’d want to see.

Do you want to answer that or take another question?

DARREN LYNN BOUSMAN: I don’t care, you choose.

I’ll go with 16. What emotion is surprisingly difficult for you to fake convincingly?

LAVERA: We’re actors. We don’t fake. We tell the truth. I don’t know. That’s a tough question. If I’m faking it, I’m not doing a good job. It has to come from somewhere. I don’t know, watching Alicia Witt play someone recovering from literal brain surgery, I was thinking to myself, like, “I wonder how I would pull that off.” I don’t know if I could. I thought she did a wonderful job. So I think I’m going to defer to that and be like, I think that would have been tough to be like pretending to come out of brain surgery. I’ll say that.

Do you want to pick another number, or do you want to pick a number for him?

LAVERA: Let’s say eight. I didn’t read it. I can’t really read your writing, to be fair.

Yeah. I’m like a doctor’s handwriting. If you could have a song play every time you walked in a room, what would it be?

BOUSMAN: Oh. Okay. I’m going to answer this question. And this is a serious answer, and it attaches to the movie. But anything by Prof. So, for those that don’t know, the actor who played Craz is a rapper, and he never acted before. And I’m a huge fan of his music, and that’s been very cool getting to cast people I’m fans of, and I’m huge into hip hop. And I would make my wife watch Prof videos on a loop way before this movie, before I knew him. I recommend when everyone leaves here tonight to stop what you’re doing, go in the lobby and pull up “Squad Goals” by Prof. You will fall in love with him as hard as I did. So I’m going to say “Squad Goals” by Prof.

Okay. Let’s just pick a number. Let’s see what happens.

BOUSMAN: I want to go with one.

Number one. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?

BOUSMAN: Yeah. A lot.

I think your wife just called you out. My bad, it’s not his wife.

BOUSMAN: I had a really awkward one recently, Kyle McLaughlin. I was at a party, and he was there, and it wasn’t for Twin Peaks or Dune or anything like that. It was for Portlandia, because he plays the mayor and Portlandia, and I fucking love him. And it was awkward because he was like, “Sure,” And then I couldn’t find a pen, and then the pen was dead. And then it just got awkward because then I was looking for pens, and he didn’t know if he should leave or stay, and then he reverse-robotted out of the situation. Yeah. So, yeah, I’ve asked people for autographs.

Have you asked someone for their autograph?

LAVERA: All the time. The first person that was really significant to me was Sally Field. We were at a table read. We were both in the same show, and we weren’t working in any scenes together. And I just love her so much. And I brought her autobiography with me — this probably is really unprofessional — to the table read. And I kind of went up to her, tried to play cool, and I was just like, “Sally, I love you so much.” And, she signed her autobiography for me, and I still have it in my possession right now. But sometimes.

BOUSMAN: Yesterday, Lauren and I were at this event, and I wanted her to sign my poster, and I said, “Hey, Lauren, is this okay, would you sign my poster?” And she… “Sure.” And then she signed the poster and it said, “We made a movie, and I was in it. Lauren.” That was —

LAVERA: He signed my poster back and he said, “Out of all the actors I have ever worked with, you are one of them. Love, Darren.”

We’re almost done. Whose turn is it to pick a number?

LAVERA: Is it?

BOUSMAN: I just said one.

LAVERA: Oh, okay. That’s true. Two.

This is for both of you. What’s the most amount of takes you’ve ever done?

BOUSMAN: I’m sure that I’ve been fired off many a movie from Mark Burg who could probably answer that one. “Darren, you got it. Move on. Alrighty?” I don’t know. I love doing oners, which is Mark Burg’s least favorite thing. And a oner, if anything messes up, you have to do it again, and you could spend an entire day just doing that one shot, you know, 30 times. But I’m not… I’ve never had the money like a David Fincher, where you can do 90 takes. I mean, what’s the most we did on this movie, like, maybe three?

LAVERA: You were quick, to a point where —

BOUSMAN: My wife says the same thing.

LAVERA: Oh, my God. This is a professional setting. There were a few times where we did it in one take, and I literally was like, “Can we do one more for me for safety?”

BOUSMAN: Bella, who’s here, the DP would be like, “Oh, give her another take.” Because like I’d be like, “Yeah, that’s great. Got it.”

LAVERA: Thank you, Bella! Yeah, we didn’t do a lot of takes, which I kind of love, but it’s very scary because you’re like, “Are you sure you got it?” I’d be curious to know how many of these like, for everyone was a first take thing. I don’t know. I’ve certainly done many, many takes, but I don’t know what number. You just get delirious at a certain point and you just pray that it is over.

I know that Ridley Scott will shoot his rehearsal sometimes and not tell the actors.

BOUSMAN: We do that, I do that. Do you know, it’s interesting, like, I guess I never realized when before making movies, but so much of what’s in the movie is after I yell “Cut!” So I’ll say “Cut,” and then they’ll usually deflate for a moment. Or in Lauren’s case, like if she’s crying, there’s that moment where she comes down and tries to center herself. So much of that is in the movie or even before the action. So you get everyone quiet on set and the camera will prior to that. So much of that in the movie as well, where it’s not the actual part where we’re supposed to be filming.

That’s so interesting too, because when people were shooting with film, that would be very difficult to do. But with digital, it’s a completely new world.

BOUSMAN: I was lucky. This is another Mark Berg story who happens to be here. But we shot Saw 2, 3, and 4 on 35 millimeter, which was awesome. Unless you’re the producer, I would get phone calls and I’d be like, “Darren, you shot 75,000ft today. You could shoot 10,000ft a day, not 75,000. Taking it out of your paycheck.” Because when you’re doing film, you’re spending money per foot, and then you’re spending money to develop that, and yeah. I think that the producers that work with me are glad that I’m on digital and not film anymore, because it was expensive.

Let’s do one or two more and then get into the movie. So do you want to pick a number?

BOUSMAN: 25.

What’s something audiences never notice, but you wish they would?

BOUSMAN: I’ll tell you something with this film that I’m proud of and it’s something that every cinematographer that I’ve worked with is different, but, Bella who’s here, and Bella, where are you? Stand up. Bella gets embarrassed. Everyone stare at her! Everyone look at her. A lot of my favorite stuff is really arty and pretentious shit that most people will never notice. In this film, Bella did something that was really exciting. When I read the script, one of the writers — Jonathan, where are you? I know you’re somewhere. What I loved about his script is when you read it, it starts off reading like an Ocean’s movie, like you read it and it’s like this quirky. It’s very quirky and it’s fun and it’s a heist film. And then before you realize it, you don’t realize it. When it happens, it becomes something dark and like, it just happens. So subtly that all of a sudden, the smile that you’re that you have reading, it goes away and you’re like, “This is fucked up.”

I loved that. And then I realized after I finished the movie, it was like three different movies. So Bella and I sat down and we said, “How can we make this look like three different movies?” And so we did this thing where the aspect ratio changes throughout the movie. It starts wide and then it closes in on itself. And then we changed lenses with each act as well. So when it was in the Ocean’s 11 part, which is like the split screens and that funky fun music, that is one lens, that’s one particular lens, that is one aspect ratio. But as it closes in, we change the lenses and it goes into this distorted, wobbly lens and we change the color palette, which all of a sudden it becomes hyper color like pinks and these neon reds. I love that because it’s one of those things that if you’re looking for it, you notice it. But it happens so subtly throughout the movie. It’s not something you realize when we do it. So I love things like that.

This is now something I’ll be thinking about when I’m rewatching. One last one. Do you have a number?

BOUSMAN: It’s your number.

LAVERA: God, this is hard. I don’t know why it’s hard. 19.

Last one. What looks great on film, what looks great on screen, but it’s absolutely miserable to film?

LAVERA: Objects or people?

BOUSMAN: Lauren LaVera.

LAVERA: Me.

Prosthetics, Practical Effects, and the Organ That Now Lives in Bousman’s Car

“I don’t like to use visual effects when you can do it practically.”

BOUSMAN: Well, I’ll tell you, this is a little bit of a different answer to your question. But one of the things that I think is funny about the movie is, I’m huge into practical effects. I don’t like to use visual effects when you can do it practically. So if you can build something prosthetic-wise, I always want to do that. So when we were trying to do the brain thing, the easy way would have been to put a green screen cap on her head and then replace it. I wanted the actual brain. But what you don’t realize is — can I touch your hair? So she’s got a lot of hair, so this has to go somewhere if we’re gonna put a bald cap on. So it goes up here, and then it gets a bald cap put on, and then after that, you have to put a prosthetic piece over the bald cap, and then you have to put a brain, a skull and then skin. So what happens is her head goes to here and —

LAVERA: Looked like Dan Aykroyd.

BOUSMAN: Yeah, she looked like Conehead. Everyone did. And the funny thing is, you’re trying to make this serious film and you’re trying to show producers a serious film, but everything looks like Coneheads up until the very end. So what we did is we kept the prosthetic head, but then we visual effected down nine inches. So when you see the behind the scenes picture, her head is up to here like.

LAVERA: I look like a light bulb.

BOUSMAN: Yeah. It’s hilarious. So the prosthetics are all real and the only thing that’s visual affected is we brought the head down. That’s pretty ridiculous. So shooting it, I was at the video sets and I was just crying. I was like, “I’m sorry,” to all the producers, “I’m sorry. This isn’t going to work.” We had a great visual effects team who fixed it.

I was so curious when I was watching the movie. What were the brains made out of?

BOUSMAN: I don’t know. This guy, Sven and Yasmin, who did the effects, they’re fantastic. I’ve worked with him now four times. He did all of Deadpool 1 and 2. He was Ryan Reynolds’ main guy, and he just came in and killed it. I don’t know, it is pretty gross. I actually have one in my car. I actually have her brain in my car.

That could be the headline of the story.

BOUSMAN: It is. It’s silicon. It’s silicon. And then it’s wetted down with, like, a Vaseline and a blood. And then we will do visual effects on that. So we’ll use it all and then we will pulse it. So it actually moves a little bit and has life to it. But it’s silicon with Vaseline on it.

See, I so applaud what you’re doing because, when you have mostly practical and then you amplify with some VFX, you’re seeing the practical. And so it’s like the VFX just sort of blends in and you don’t really notice it as much as just a green screen. So, jumping into the specifics of the film is the message of the movie whenever you rent an Airbnb, get a floor plan?

BOUSMAN: Yeah. We had a weird Airbnb story that my wife and I were shooting something in Toronto, and we rented an AirBNB. And, you know, when you do it, you have to request it, and then they have to accept you. So we requested it. We got an acceptance immediately, like within a second. And I was like, “Hey, we lucked out.” It was a great place. It was very big and nice. And we get there, and the guy was really kind of weird and awkward, and he was very excited to show us the place. And he’s like standing behind us, and it’s just kind of weird. And I open up a closet door and as I open up the door there’s a life size mannequin of Michael Myers, and then behind Michael Myers, I see Saw shit. And I realized that we rented an AirBNB from a Saw fan, and he was just like, “Call me anytime, day or night if you need anything.” And then he leaves.

So, Laura, I don’t know if you remember this, he he leaves and in that closet with a Michael Myers and the Saw shit that he had was there was a door on the floor, and it had, like, a hatch on it, and I was like, “There’s a fucking hatch here.” And we opened it. And Laura, you remember what was down there? It was the sauna. He had a sauna that had a staircase that went down and it looked like a Turkish bath house. But the entire time I was just weirded out. I mean, he had, like, Saw paraphernalia and shit. That just happened randomly, but I picked the place of a Saw fan.

Yeah, that that’s the kind of situation where I would be debating like, “Fuck this.” I mean, seriously, like —

BOUSMAN: He was very nice.

Sure, but there’s, like, hidden cameras. I watched your movie. I mean…

BOUSMAN: Whatever he was recording us doing was very boring because we have a very boring life. So, he didn’t get… Our sex tapes are very not okay. They’re just boring. I’m joking, we don’t have sex.

A+ Q&A so far.

BOUSMAN: Thank you.

How ‘Twisted’ Came Together

“‘Did you read the script?'”

Honest to God. So for both… Actually, I’ll start with you. How did this project actually happen for you? Like, was this a script that you got? Talk about the genesis.

BOUSMAN: David Tisch, who’s one of the producers here? David Tisch. David, where are you? Yeah. I’ve never been more enraged at a person than David Tisch at any given time. And it is like his superhuman strength that, like, he’ll just, kind of needle you. And he calls me and he’s like, “You got to read the script. You got to read the script.” And then, like, he would just keep. “Did you read the script? Did you read the script?” And usually when he says that the script is very good. So, I read it and it was that thing I was saying. I read it and I thought it was not a horror film. For the first 25 pages, it didn’t feel like a horror film. It was like, “Why are you sending this to me?” Like I’m the wrong guy for this. And then it happened, and I was like, “Yeah, you’re 100% right.”

And to the writer’s credit, very little of this movie changed from the draft that I read. And so much of the time you do a director’s pass, it’s getting rewritten constantly. So much of it is what that original script was, and I loved it because it wasn’t necessarily that Paloma was the antagonist or the protagonist, nor was Kezian the antagonist or the protagonist. They were both shades of gray, and I love that because I went in being like, “Wow, I kind of fucking hate Paloma.” And I was like, “I kind of love Paloma, and I kind of hate Kezian, and I kind of love Kezian.” And I love that about the movie that both characters take turns kind of being the villain or the adversary in the film.

Lauren, I have to ask you, what was your reaction reading the script, and then what was your reaction when you were offered the role, relooking at the script and seeing what you were going to be put through?

LAVERA: I mean, I’m kind of used to this stuff. This was a cakewalk compared to some of the shit I’ve had to do. But, I mean, Darren was the one who reached out to me first saying that he had a role that he was interested in me playing, and I was just really excited to work with Darren to begin with. So I think before I even read the script, I think I was already kind of biased. I was like, “Okay, I feel like this is probably going to happen.” And then I read the script and I fell in love with Paloma. I thought she was just so interesting and funny. Like her humor just came through, just bounced off the page for me. And I was gung-ho about it from day one. I was really excited to do the beginning of the film the most, because I feel like that’s when you get to really explore the characters. The ending was just kind of what I’m used to. I’m in these situations a lot. So I just had some caffeine and was good to go.

I am curious, as an actor, when you are playing a full day of just screaming and just freaking out and the emotions that you have to demonstrate on screen, because your body doesn’t realize, obviously, that this is fake. So what is it like for you at the end of a day like that? How hard is it for you to decompress and chill to get to sleep, to do it again the next day?

LAVERA: I smell like shit at the end of the day.

BOUSMAN: I can vouch for that.

LAVERA: He can attest. I sweat so profusely when I… Because like you said, your brain knows that you’re not really in this situation, but your body is just viscerally reacting. And I’m just profusely sweating, and I just have tears and saliva. I think I spit on Djimon a few times. I think you could even see it in one of the spit takes. At the end of the day, I’m still trying to figure out what my decompression is. It’s kind of an evolution for me. But I might just watch some South Park, call someone I love, and just… That kind of just brings me back down to Earth. Yeah, it’s not the best method, but I’m still figuring it out.

For both of you, you see what’s in front of you in terms of the shooting schedule. What scene are you most excited to film? And which scene were you like? This is going to be a really fucking challenging day.

BOUSMAN: You have a script, and you read it, and you think you… Reading the script originally, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be great. The end is very Saw-esque. It’s brain surgery. It’s all this kind of stuff.” But it actually was meeting Mia, who plays Smith, and seeing how her and Lauren’s chemistry was, that all of a sudden my excitement flipped to be about the beginning. They had such great chemistry, and we just started joking around about… Have you seen Rob Zombie‘s House of a Thousand Corpses? And then it goes into Devil’s Reject, which takes these characters in a completely different direction, different style, different tone. I was literally pitching them the sequel on Day 1 of filming, and I was like, “Guys, fuck this. Yeah, you die, it’s fine. But listen, let’s do a prequel and call it Baltimore, and it’s going to be Thelma and Louise meets Bound five years earlier where you guys meet. I want to make that… I want to make a crime thing, which needs to…

LAVERA: I still want to do this. I still want to do this.

BOUSMAN: So it became the first act for me because it was just fun and quirky and a little off-center. I also got to do my very pretentious art school transitions in the first act, which I always love. So yeah, I loved that.

Which is the thing that you were like the real pain in the ass to film?

BOUSMAN: Gina Phillips. I did not like working with Gina.

LAVERA: We love you, Gina.

BOUSMAN: Gina Phillips, everyone. No, I think the schedule is daunting. I heard Guillermo Del Toro say something where he said that no matter what your budget is, you never have enough time or money. And I think that even if I would have had 30 days, I would have wanted 35. It never felt like enough time. And I think that as… We shot a lot in continuity in this movie, which meant that the intense surgery stuff was at the back end. And I spent a lot of time on the opening stuff because I liked that. And then we realized that when we got to the end stuff, I didn’t have a lot of time. So when we got to that surgery stuff, like you have three different actors having prosthetics put on. How long did it take to get the bald cap?

LAVERA: Hours. I don’t even know.

BOUSMAN: Like five or six hours.

LAVERA: Yeah, like something like six.

BOUSMAN: So as a filmmaker, you get 11.5 hours to shoot a day. That’s what you get. And that doesn’t matter how long it takes the actors to get ready. So it might take the actors five hours to get ready. And you have a lunch in there. So I might have a shot list that is an 11.5 hour shot list. And then it comes to the reality that you have five and a half hours. What are you going to cut? So in the opening of the movie, it was them basically as them. But in the back half of the movie, it’s insane prosthetics. It is… And then you don’t think about things like sweating. So if Lauren or Alicia or Mia sweat, they create sweat bubbles. And then you see their hair pop out. You can’t shoot that because it adds visual effects. So the back half of the movie to me made me cry a lot. Just because you want more time for that. And that’s the violence and the kills that people are going to talk about. And that’s what we, I think, did the quickest.

What about for you?

LAVERA: The hardest thing for me was in the very beginning of the movie, you see Paloma swimming up to Smith. Every time I came up from the water, I would choke on chlorine in the pool. And I had lines immediately after. And I literally was like, “I don’t think I can do this. This is just too hard for me.” So that was the hardest thing. I don’t know what we ended up landing on. It worked out in the end. But that was the hardest thing for me to do, just swimming and saying my lines.

Screaming Days, Sweat, and Decompression

“I feel like I’m just torturing you emotionally.”

So something I’m curious about is when you’re screaming and freaking out, it obviously plays with your vocal cords. And so how does that… Like are you asking to do this or… I’m not sure if the schedule allows it. But how much are you thinking about maybe we want to film this stuff on a Friday. So you have the weekend for your voice to recover. And how much is it sort of like, we have 20-something days to film this. It’s just going to be on Tuesday.

BOUSMAN: It is what it is. She doesn’t have that. Even if she asked for it, that’s not the way it works. No, and I think that’s one of the… I was a fan… Why I fell in love with Lauren is that I try to see as many horror movies as I can. And so like everyone else, I went and saw Terrifier 2 in the theaters. And while I love the movie… Yeah, give it a hand. While I love the violence and fuck, who doesn’t love David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown, it was Sienna’s character that anchored that movie for me and made me love it because it gave it an emotional core.

So I knew that I could trust her to… I didn’t have to worry about what she was going to do. I could worry about my other shit. I could worry about the camera angles and everything else. I knew that she had that. But watching what we put her through in such a little amount of time, where she would go from the most intense scene in the world, and we’d be like, okay, quick, you have an hour changeover, get back, looking pretty, and now we’re going to do this scene. And then after that, she’d have to quickly go back and have her head shaved for another scene and be bawling within a day. And it was just like… It was torture. It was literally torturous. At least it looked… I just sat in the video sets and ate chips and shit, but it looked bad for you.

LAVERA: You laughed at me so often, and were like, “I feel like I’m just torturing you emotionally,” and I’m like, “Why are you smiling? Why are you enjoying this?”

BOUSMAN: It made me happy.

LAVERA: I could tell. I could tell.

I am curious though, for you, how are you getting ready for a role like this in the weeks leading up to that first day of filming? Are you specifically doing certain things, watching certain things, or just in your head a lot, just thinking?

LAVERA: Yeah, that’s a great question. I had three weeks to prepare for this role. So Darren offered me the role, I think early October of last year, and we started filming that November. And I immediately reached out to two dialect coaches, and I was like, “All right, we need to get started.” And they were like, “You have three weeks, you should usually have six months to work on these.” I was like, “We’re going to do it.” And two of my acting coaches.

I prepped way more the backstory of Paloma, of Emma, and Molly Bloom, and Fleur, all of her characters. I was really excited to delve into this person that wanted to play all of these characters in the scam. That was what I was most excited for. And I found that the rest, the end, it just kind of, I don’t want to say, I winged it because I didn’t really do that, but I just intuitively understood what was happening, and I didn’t have to really prep that. It was just so easy to work with Darren. He’s such a wonderful director, and he gives the actors the freedom to just play in the scene. And my scene partners were amazing. It was just so easy to play off of them. They made all the scenes incredibly dynamic. So, yeah, that’s my answer.

I might butcher his name, and I apologize, but Neal McDonough. So, what’s so special about this role, and you, for putting him in it, is every time I see his face, I know he’s going to be the villain, and he’s not the villain in this. So, what was that inspired choice?

BOUSMAN: I actually said that to him. We found out we had a connection to him, and I said that. I think I just got done watching Yellowstone, which he was in, and I said, “I want to see you play something I have not seen before.” But it’s hard not to think he’s a villain with those eyes and that smug look. But he’s nice…

He’s really good at being the villain.

BOUSMAN: He is, but he is so nice and so cool and down to earth. He’s just this iconic dude. I am glad you’re a fan of his as well. I’m a fan of Neal.

Oh, for sure. You filmed this in Connecticut, and I’m so curious, tax reasons, or what were the reasons for ending up in Connecticut?

BOUSMAN: That’s above my pay grade. I think everything is a combination of issues, whether it’s tax incentives, crew. There’s a multitude of reasons why a choice is done, but I’m positive in this. Tax certainly had a part of it.

I’m fascinated by talking about the editing process, because it’s where it all comes together. So, talk a little bit about… In the editing room, you get your cut together. What did you learn from early friends and family screenings that impacted the finished film?

BOUSMAN: That’s where I become a feral animal and get just enraged about everything. Because it is like having a kid, is that you spend so much time… You spend so much time with this thing. And in the case of a film, it could be three years for a director, two years. And so, by the time you get into editing, it is so… I love everything. And I’m just like, “I don’t want to lose that. This is Lauren’s great scene. You can’t cut that. That’s Lauren’s best scene. That’s Lauren. You cannot cut that.” But the reality is that we live in a world where people don’t have attention spans, and we live on verticals where my son’s attention spans maybe 18 seconds before they flip.

So, my pretentious… We’re not cutting my art. Watching it with other people, it really shows you. Like, that first time you watch it, and you see them shifting uncomfortably, or looking at their watch, or looking at their cell phone and going on Instagram as they’re watching a movie, you’re like, “Oh, maybe I should trim that. Maybe that is redundant. Maybe she already said that six times before.” So, it’s always that thing that you have to come to grips with that you have to sometimes kill your darlings.

I just want to interrupt and ask. I have found more and more people have shorter and shorter attention spans. And are you getting notes from producers or people saying, “You need more cuts here, or you need this to keep people invested”? Or has that not come up yet?

BOUSMAN: I remember when I first did Saw 2, I got kind of chastised for music video style editing, where no shot was longer than three seconds. Now it feels like you need to cut quickly to keep people’s attention span. I think you have to re-engage the audience every so often. You know, this movie did not have an opening kill. So many times you want that opening kill to let the audience know it’s coming. But we didn’t do that. I don’t think it’s until like minute 25, or her neck gets cut, that anything happens. So, we ask a lot of the audience in this to just go with us. You know, normally you would have a kill to start it off, but that wasn’t that style of movie. But I think you can find other ways to keep the audience engaged outside of that.

That’s what we were trying to do, whether it’s through Mark Saferitz‘s score, who I fucking love, where’s Mark? Mark Saferitz? Whether it’s his score that’s doing it, or just fun moments, scenes between me and her, we were looking for those moments to try to keep people engaged, to wait till we get to that minute 25. But yeah, I mean, that’s absolutely something, because we live where we doomscroll all day, and that’s our new normal, to ask an audience to wait is a hard thing.

Horror Fans Are Built Different

“Yeah, we’re all a little fucked up.”

So, I have met many horror fans, and they’re some of the most passionate people I’ve ever met. What is it about the horror genre and the horror community that makes everyone so united in their love of this genre? Because both of you have done it, and I’m just curious, like, your reaction to fans, and what is it about the genre?

LAVERA: Yeah, I was having this conversation multiple times today. Horror fans are some of the most loyal, gung-ho people I have ever met. I think… Yeah, I don’t know what it is. I think I’ve found that a lot of my personal friends that enjoy horror is because they’re anxiety-ridden, I’m kind of the same way. And I think horror is this controlled environment where anxiety-ridden people like myself can experience fear. And I think that it takes a lot of vulnerability, it takes a lot of trust, and I think people who are like that are just such innately good, decent people. So, I don’t think I’ve ever met a horror fan that wasn’t like… That was a terrible person. They were always just, like, coming from a place of, you know, “I love this character because something in my life happened that makes me feel connected,” and I’m just like, “Yeah, we’re all a little fucked up.” And I think that’s what connects us, all that morally gray stuff and also all the trauma we probably all share.

BOUSMAN: There’s someone here, a Saw fan who I met. Eric, where are you? Yeah, so I’ll answer it with this. Spiral was coming out, and I was at Universal Studios, and I was kind of by myself, and I wanted to see, you know, how it played, and I’m standing outside, and I’m socially awkward, I’m really weird, and Eric walks over to me, and he’s like, “Oh my god, I love Spiral, I’ve seen it X amount of times,” and we got a picture, and then I started seeing him at other events, at other events, and other events, and then I see him standing out in line out there, and it’s that thing that you realize that it is a family. It is this very dysfunctional family where it is the most supportive nice, whether that is you’re a filmmaker, a writer, or someone that’s a ticket-going audience.

We’re all kind of trauma bonded in this thing, and I think that for me, we deal with so much bullshit all day, whether that is how we’re going to pay our mortgage or get our kids to school or deal with all of these things, that watching horror to me allows me to deal with emotions and fears and weird perversions in a safe space that it’s not pinned up, you’re dealing with things, and having an avenue to look at them in a way that I think releases some of that tension. There was a study done during the pandemic that said that people that were horror fans were able to deal with the pandemic much easier than people that were not horror fans, because we’ve been getting ready for this our entire lives. I believe that. I feel like I have gone through… All you got to do is watch a Serbian film once and try to fuck with me now. I’m good. It’s prepared us. It has allowed us to go through things, to address things, to deal with our own issues in our head in a safe space, kind of why people ride roller coasters. We know we’re safe on a roller coaster. We know that we are restrained in a roller coaster, but we still do it for that thrill. That’s kind of an answer to that question.

The Factors That Make ‘Saw’ Endure

Give it up to Tobin Bell.

I definitely have an individual for both of you, because we’re almost out of time. You’ve directed a number of the Saw movies. What is it about the Saw franchise that people just really respond to? It’s really hard to make a sequel to anything, but that has made more sequels than possibly any other franchise.

BOUSMAN: I think… There’s a number of ways to answer that question. I’m going to give a lot of it to Tobin Bell. I think that… I think that he, in the same way that I talk about Lauren anchoring the Terrifier franchise, I think Tobin Bell anchored it because he’s so sympathetic, even though he is a horrible person doing horrible things, but you understand why he’s doing it. When I did Saw 2, both of my parents had cancer at the same time. I’m now dealing with a guy who has cancer and he’s trying to basically say, “Hey, all of you motherfuckers out here that still have life are… You’re smoking, you’re doing drugs, you’re doing these terrible things. You’re not appreciating these things.” For me, from having both of my parents go through it, I don’t know, I connected with that. I was like, “I understand it. I get it. Why do my dad or my mom have to suffer going through this and you’re over here fucking doing X, Y, or Z?”

For me, I think that he anchored the movie into something that I could relate to and I think that other people could relate to as well. I think it was well written, the entire Saw franchise, the twists, the characters. It was more than just torture porn, which a lot of people like to label it as. It was just well put together. I think the editing, Kevin Groyder, I think it was just well put together. And it was the biggest answer, though, it became a repertory theater. It was the same group of people making the same movie for years. Same camera operator, same DP, same composer, same editor, same director for a while. And I think that gave it a continuity which a lot of sequels don’t have. It was the same as Mark Berg and Oren Kuhlis and it was the same group of people making that film year after year after year.

Individual question for you. So when you’re covered in blood, which you’ve been in other movies covered in blood, you’re all fucked up in this, you know what I mean? Covered. How much temptation do you have to just go outside and just see what people’s reaction will be? And how much are you sort of like, “This is disgusting and I just want to get out of this immediately”?

LAVERA: I have both of those feelings constantly and they constantly conflict with each other. I love to scare people. It’s my favorite part about Halloween. I love to scare children. I love to pretend. I actually — I don’t think I’ve ever told you this — but I dressed up as Jigsaw on Halloween as a teen and I had like a full jacket and I would just like sit there with the bowl and my mom would be with me. She’s like, “Oh yeah, it’s just a dummy,” and she’d push me and then the kids would come up and I would grab them. It was the best part of Halloween and the parents would always laugh and I made some children cry. It was so great.

And what was the question? Oh yeah, so yes, I love scaring people, but it’s so uncomfortable that I always opt to just throw myself in the shower. I’m like, “Please immediately get this off me. It’s so sticky and gross.” So one of these days I will scare someone.

BOUSMAN: Can I give you a quick answer to that question? Can I? I wanted to ask you to not do it. Okay, thank you. I made a movie called The Devil’s Carnival, and it’s this weird, a couple of fans in there, thank you. And we shot it in Riverside, California and we were shooting in, I found out later, like a meth district. Yeah, there are meth districts in Riverside and in this movie it’s about a carnival set in hell and so the lead actor, Terrence Zdunich, has got this huge prosthetic, he’s got horns and then there are other kind of people, denizens from hell and my assistant who did not speak great English, he was from Barcelona, I just shot a movie in Barcelona. He comes running over to me and it’s the second to last day of filming, second to last day and I financed the entire thing so all my money’s wrapped up in it and I’m not doing things correctly. Like you’re supposed to have your footage every day put on a hard drive, make double copies of the hard drive, send it somewhere else. We didn’t do that. So all of our hard drives were in my trailer.

He comes running over to me and he’s out of breath and I don’t understand his accent already and he’s like, “Darren,” and he’s saying something and I’m like, “What, calm down, what?” And he’s pointing, he’s screaming, “Them!” and I see two dudes just high tail, it was like a Loony Tunes, it was like dust clouds as they’re running away. And then I see my trailer door open and they’ve got everything and then I see a hard drive fall and I realize they have all like ten of our hard drives and they are running and then I scream, “They have our hard drives!” and the entire cast in full Devil’s Carnival regalia, Terrence with his things, everyone starts running and so now you have Lucifer running down the thing, the painted doll, all of these people and we chase them into a house and you know that the cliche like dog barking, like chains in the front where the dog is put, like it was a really sketchy house and all the Devil’s Carnival people are surrounding this house where they ran into and we see them run into it. We watch it and we go knock on the door and this father comes out in a typical white, white, cut off shirt, stains everywhere and he goes, “You all get off my lawn,” and we’re like, “Your kids just stole our hard drives,” “No they did not, our kids have been sleeping all night.”

And so there’s like maybe 15 actors all out there and I was like, I’ve just lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, we had no backups to any of this. Someone calls the cops and we don’t leave, please show up and they go to the door and the guy is like, “Dude my kids have been asleep, I want you guys off my property or I’m going to press charges.” So the cop says, “Did they threaten any of you?” And I’m like, “No.” And the cop goes, “Did they threaten any of you?” And then the camera operator named Ari goes, “Yeah, one of them had a gun.” And the cop says, “Great,” goes inside the house, comes out 20 minutes later and he has this bag of dirt ridden hard drives. They went to the backyard and put it in a hole really quickly and we got our hard drives back and got Devil’s Carnival back. So your thing about running out there dressed in makeup to scare people, Lucifer standing on your porch in this meth thing.

That is an effing crazy story. Wow. Now the real question is, did you learn your lesson and have you now been backing things up?

BOUSMAN: No. There is a producer here, Addison, who produces our podcast. She gave me a hard drive on our first podcast and it had all of her student films on it, all the work she’d done and she gave it to me for some stupid reason and I dropped it and broke it. We recovered it all. I got it through a data recovery service but never trust me with anything. I will break shit.

Will Lauren LaVera Be in ‘Terrifier 4’?

And no, it’s probably not coming out this year.

Okay, I want everyone to remember he just said that. Very important. My last thing I want to ask is, and I could be wrong about this, but is Terrifier 4, are you in it? Is that coming? What can you tease?

LAVERA: I don’t know anything and that’s the God’s honest truth. Damien’s still writing it. I’ve been seeing online people are like, “Terrifier 4, October 2026.” I’m like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” I haven’t heard anything and Damien’s still writing it. He’d like me to be in it, so I guess we’ll see.

I was going to say, how fast did you shoot those films?

LAVERA: You know what? Well, Terrifier 2, I filmed that for like a whole year. It was crazy and it was also during the pandemic and stuff like that. But, Terrifier 3, I will say, we started filming that in March or April of 2024 and it came out that October. So I guess it’s still feasible. It could happen, but I don’t have the answer.

Yeah, that’s what I was going to say is that like, I think they could be a quick turnaround in terms of, you know.

LAVERA: I think you’re being ambitious. I think Damien’s ambitious. I think Darren’s ambitious. I don’t know how any fucking film gets done, but we’re here.

I was going to say, I still don’t know how any film gets made in this day and age. It’s small miracles. I’m going to close with you. I’m a fan of your work. Are you working on anything else or developing anything else you want to tease?

BOUSMAN: I’m very comfortably unemployed. So if anyone’s hiring, Mark Berg? No, not right now. You guys should all check out Darren and Josh Make a Movie, the podcast. Thank you. No, can I make a request though? So anytime you make a movie as quickly and as punk rock as this movie was, it kind of is up to you. And you’re the first audience that’s seen the movie. Literally, this is the first audience that’s ever seen the movie. I encourage you to leave here and talk about it, even if you hated it. Fuck it, I don’t care. Tag me. Say all bad it was. Talk about it. Because a movie like this sinks or swims by your voice. People think they don’t have power in shit like this, but you have so much power, specifically now, which is all run by social media. And, you know, when people talk about a movie, it makes other people be like, “What’s that?” So I encourage you to please tag us, talk about it, tell people what you thought. It would be very helpful for us. And maybe we can make Baltimore, which is what we want to do.

Twisted is available to rent or own digitally.