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| Grind Photo: Frightfest |
In their horror anthology Grind, directors Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty and Chelsea Stardust take aim at the gig economy. It’s difficult to imagine a more appropriate title to express the experiences of the characters across its four chapters that takes in the hustle culture of multi-level marketing company Lala Leggings and the attempts of coffee shop chain Neptulia to unionise. Then there’s a delivery driver beleaguered by repetitiveness, and the soul-destroying experience of content moderation.
Barbara Crampton, no stranger to the genre space, plays The Founder of Lala Leggings. The actress collaborated with the late Stuart Gordon on Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak. Her other credits include You’re Next, We Are Still Here and Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich. She also had long-running roles in the American soap operas The Young And The Restless and The Bold And The Beautiful.
Speaking with Eye For Film, Crampton discussed reconnecting with a friend and collaborator, the evolution of the workplace, income inequality, and the realities of working in a creative space.
The following has been edited for clarity.
Paul Risker: What was the hook with Grind that drew your interest?
Barbara Crampton: Well, Brea Grant is a very good friend of mine, who I’ve worked with numerous times. She asked me to be in it, and she said it's about the gig economy and the hustle culture of the workplace world. She also told me that it's an anthology, and a horror film that would be somewhat comedic. I said, "Brea, that suits me fine because I feel I don't get to work in comedy as much as I'd like.”
My heart is forever in horror, and while I've done a few horror comedies like Re-Animator and Chopping Mall, I want to do a little bit more of that. And so, when Brea asked me to be in Grind, I said, "Okay, sign me up.” Then, she told me a little bit about the woman that it was based on.
There was a Netflix documentary called LuLaRich, based on LuLaRoe, who actually had a multi-level marketing company based on selling colourful leggings. I hadn't heard of the documentary, and I immediately watched it and thought "Oh, this is a fantastic character."
Multi-level marketing has been going on for a long time. I don't know if you guys had the Amway Man, the Fuller Brush guy, Avon, and things like that? It's a little bit of a cult with all of those different businesses, and our segment, MLM, is definitely very cult-like. So, it was fun for me.
PR: With these types of businesses, how they present themselves conceals the underlying dysfunction. This, however, is a broader issue present in most institutions and avenues of employment.
BC: It’s about the underbelly of it all, and when you think about the corporate world, who makes the rules? The person with the most money. And there’s the disparity between all the different tiers, where income inequality is so prevalent. These guys wanted to shine a light on it, which I thought was such a brilliant foundation for a horror movie.
We haven't seen anything like this in an anthology. It's usually about Halloween or Christmas or some general horror theme, which are all great, but they really took the anthology one step further and said, we're gonna make it about the hustle culture and talk about the horrors in different lines of work. And I just thought the premises that they came up with were brilliant, like a coffee shop and the delivery guy, because everyone’s delivering food now — that’s a normal job.
When did we ever get food delivered when we were kids? That never happened. Parents went out and bought the food or maybe got takeout. But now people get smoothies delivered, right? And I've done this myself, where I had a bottle of nail polish delivered to me when I needed a bottle from a pharmacy. It's insane the different jobs that we've created, and again, the disparity of where the income is. Who makes the money and who services the big corporations that make all the money?
PR: To pick up on your point about taking the anthology one step further, genre cinema has always had its finger on the pulse of the anxieties of the time. This is what Grant and her co-directors are doing here, by utilising the short form, which cinema, unlike the literary, has struggled to utilise.
BC: […] Anthologies are these mini stories, which Black Mirror did really well, and also the Grimm Fairy Tales, which I feel Grind is an update of.
I actually started rewatching The Twilight Zone the other night, from the very first episode. I'm revisiting that because I love the format of short stories that have some meaning behind them — a morality tale, but that’s also fun and satirical. And that's exactly what Grind is.
PR: The remarkable thing about horror is how it can effortlessly make these broad statements, digging deep into themes and ideas.
BC: Yeah, I think that's true, and one of the reasons is I have a good friend who's a psychologist. He said something to me a long time ago that really resonates with me, especially as it pertains to the horror genre: “People only make changes in their life based on their own pain.” So, it's only when you get to a breaking point or when you feel enough pain.
I translate that to enough horror or tragedy where you say “I gotta do something different” or "This is having an impact on my decisions and on my mind.” And I feel horror does that in a way that no other genre can. By that, I mean illuminating the human condition and forcing us to make changes in our lives.
I feel all of us as actors are mini-psychologists in our own right, because we have to understand why people do the things they do. We have to talk about that and maybe have a point of view as well as offer the audience the opportunity to have their own point of view about it. So, this film was very thoughtful, and for me, it was in my face about all of these poor people that are having to do all these crazy jobs just to make ends meet.
We don't get paid enough anymore in America for anything. I've been acting for 40 years, but honestly, I get paid less now. It’s because there's so much product out there. There are so many movies and so many TV shows and things for audiences to watch that for only the chosen few, the stars, their pay has gone up, but for the rest of us, I feel like everything's gone down. It has unfortunately gotten much worse for all of us.
Grind world premièred in the 2026 SXSW Midnighter strand.
