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| Self-Help Photo: Frightfest |
“You’ve seen almost all my films!” remarked Erik Bloomquist when we met in the run-up to this year’s Frightfest, and we both laughed, because it’s true, and because I didn’t realise for a while that they were all by the same person – something many a director aims for. Trying different things is part of how one learns, and it’s also, as his latest work illustrates, a great way to build up an effective team, with cast and crew from lots of different backgrounds contributing to a good mix of ideas. His new film, screened as part of the aforementioned festival, is called Self-Help, and it follows Olivia (Landry Bender), a young woman trying to reconnect with her mother, who has fallen for yet another online self-improvement scam. This time it’s a cult, and Olivia can’t take effective action without getting uncomfortably close to it herself.
As often, Erik has a role in the film, playing a cult member with complex motives. Along with this, cowriting (with his brother Carson Bloomquist) and directing, he edited and produced the film. I ask him if he ever worries that he’s taking too much on.
“No, I don’t,” he says amicably. “I think that it's in a way that serves the project, especially with the way that we work. There is such a community and such a shorthand between us. They're very thoughtfully mapped out and planned to maximise our resources and our relationships.
“I realise some people don't know my roots are in acting. I was exclusively an actor for a long time, and much of what I do elsewhere within the business has emerged from that. You know, I'll act in things when it serves the movie and I love doing it, and when it feels like I can direct from within by setting a tone and being on the ground and sensing things with the other actors. The acting stuff is almost the exhale, the break, because it has just been so in me since I was a kid.
“There are times in making these movies where I have such a knowledge of the whole picture that I can be the angel and devil on my shoulder at the same time. So if we're running out of time, I know our resources so well that I know what shots I can cut or what ways to pivot without having to sacrifice parts of the movie – whereas in other circumstances, that might end up being a 30 minute conversation with five different people.
“I can do the mental math in my head and be like, ‘Great, we're losing that. We're doing blah, blah, blah.’ So it can actually be an energising thing. Carson is great, and the people that work with really closely with us. Our DP [Mike Magilnick] has been working with us for a while, and the designers. We all have this thing where we can look at each other and give a wink or a nod and know what needs to happen next without exchanging a lot of words, which is really cool.”
His lenthy and varied carer has given him the chance to get to know a lot of talented people and bring them on board with his projects.
“If people look at our filmography, there are familiar faces. [Christopher] Nolan will bring back people every movie. We love to do the same, partially. We love to showcase people that are great and give them things to do that are atypical. And it is having that shorthand – there's something so powerful about that. And then they have other friends that they have that shorthand with, and they've had a good time with us, so we keep that community. But I really love having a repertory company of actors and crew because I think it's to the benefit of the projects creatively and it creates a healthy, happy environment on set, that I think allows us to do better work.”
I recall Clare Foley telling me once that she had a lot of fun making a film (She Came From The Woods) with him. Does he prioritise making it an enjoyable experience?
“You have to,” he says decisively. “What's the point if you're not? I feel most myself when I'm doing this, and I think a lot of the people we work with do, too. A lot of the folks that we work with, the only time we really get to see each other now for an extended period of time is when we're working together. And fortunately, working together is when we all feel most ourselves, because we're firing on all cylinders. Magic happens when I bring in my ideas and you bring in yours. What does that chemical equation look like? You can't really predict it. It's just what explodes out of these two chemicals coming together. It's a joy to be able to do that.”
Despite being a prolific film director and actor, he does theatre as well, and some parts of this film are quite theatrical, in terms of how the cult leader is directing his group of people and getting them to perform and go through rituals. Did theatre experience inform that?
“Yeah, I think it sneaks in.” He grins. “I certainly was a theatre kid. I still do professional theatre as an actor. There are moments where you're kind of tongue in cheek about some exercises – and then there's something, I think, very just inherently dramatic about that taking stage and taking space and what the focal point is and what becomes a stage and where the line is between character and actor within the movie itself, and authenticity. That ends up being hypnotic. People are electing to be part of a show, but they're trying to convince themselves that there's no artifice, that it's real. They are ultimately part of this illusion, this fantasy. So, yeah, there are theatre tactics that help. This cult is an immersive experience.”
There's a lot going on there with power as well. That happens in theatre where people surrendering their power in order to get a certain kind of experience.
“The whole performing vulnerability thing can happen or the whole, like, ‘You only have value if you have this breakthrough.’ And there's validity to that. You have to shed your exoskeleton sometimes. But then there's ways that that can really be preyed on, where it's like ‘I have to hurt. I have to do whatever, in order to achieve.’ That has definitely crept its way in. If you don't hurt, if you don't have your gestures, if you don't go through these checkpoints, have you really ascended?”
The story itself had multiple sources, he reveals.
“The headlines, the internet, the cult documentaries. It was all in there. And wanting to do something that felt hyper-contemporary in certain ways. As much as a fair amount of the movie takes place at an isolated house in the woods, it is very tied to the Internet and the way people communicate on the Internet and the loneliness that comes from that; and the way that people search for answers, how that can cause fractures and divisions. Ironically, sometimes the central conflict between Olivia and her mother is that her mother is incapable because she keeps getting lost in some new internet thing. Some of the older generation is getting lost, and that's affecting the younger generation. What is the horrific, logical conclusion of that?”
The confounding thing about their relationship is that the mother has spent a decade covering up a dark secret to protect her daughter, and one wonders if her trouble behaviour stems in part from how that has affected her.
“Yeah. And I think that that being a conversation is interesting. There's this scene, this kind of reckoning that they have later in the movie. I think it's just really heartbreaking. I don't think mom even knows the answer to that question. I mean, we've equated her to Jenny in Forrest Gump. She just keeps trying on different identities. How much does it take to do the work to salvage that relationshi,p and how much is it worth doing at some point too? That's a sad, horrific question to ask.”
Lest things get to bleak, we move on to reflect on the comedy in the film, including in its first death sequence.
“We really wanted that sequence to feel dreamy and like a memory,” he says. “The place really, really helped with that – and going in and out of her subjective perspective was really helpful. Yeah, I think we all started to feel like a kids’ show gone wrong.” He laughs. “But you're right. There's a horror end to it. There's a comedic end to it. The line between tragedy and comedy is razor thin sometimes. I think not knowing which way it's going to go sometimes adds tension. We want that. It's the undercurrent of something is in the air, but what way is it going to pay off? And it changes.
“How it changes is also based on your point of view. There's the breakfast scene where mom makes some terrible revelations and Olivia is disgusted and horrified. But you know, audiences have watched it a fair amount, which is great because there's the schadenfreude component and there's the ‘Oh my God, I know what that's like.’ But you know, there’s the idea of one person's horror being another person's comedy, and your vantage point shifting, that this is a conversation about what it means to be yourself and how your identity shifts based on what situation you're in.”
Landry makes a big impression in the film. Many viewers won’t be familiar with her, as she comes from a small screen background.
“I was familiar with her from a TV show that she had done a few years ago,” says Erik. “We had a conversation and she loved the scripts and I really loved her energy and interest in doing work in the way that we do. She was a child actor and did a ton of stuff and was part of the casting process for young Olivia as well and was on set on that day, which was really cool.
“I think her having a knowledge of growing up surrounded by a grown-up industry probably contributed to it – I know she had a good experience. Her parents were really in full about ‘You are a kid. First you're going to do your homework.’ But I'm sure she witnessed things. She probably knows what it is to see people who have to grow up too soon or be exposed to things that they should not be exposed to. And so I think that that understanding and empathy feeds into the core trauma that her character carries with her. Yeah, she was great, and I think really gets to run the gamut with a lot of different situations and emotions and intensity levels in this movie.”
That has to be balanced because we don't see as much of the mother, but we do need to see her as a human being and get a little bit of her perspective.
“Yeah, exactly. Because she's in many ways irredeemable, but there have to be these shreds of, like, ‘I see where you're vulnerable. I see that something made this happen.’ And that's what Olivia sees. That's what keeps bringing her back. That's why she's going to this thing that she would not otherwise go to, because there's that little lingering hope that maybe this time it will be different.”
He’s thrilled that his work has once again been picked up by the UK’s biggest horror festival.
“I am so excited to be back at Frightfest. Carson and I love being there. It's our third year. They are such a great group. It's such a great setting, and it really just honours these movies. I think so much of people's experience in a movie is the way that they watch it and the frame of mind that they're in and the way it's presented. Since our first year, the environment has been great, so it's become a home away from home, and we're very excited to see everybody again.”
He has a couple of projects in the works at present, he reveals, though he can’t say much about them.
“Something's in the works in the genre. It’s something we're really excited about. It's a couple of soufflés that have been cooking for a long time. We're excited to keep doing cool stuff.”
