Director James Isaac Talks Skinwalkers

Q: What attracted you to a werewolf movie?

A: I’ve always been a fan of werewolf movies. No, I take that back. I’ve always been a fan of werewolf mythology. I love the idea of the beast inside all of us and this script really plays with that, that’s what the story’s all about. The story’s about the beast inside of us and the choices we make, whether to embrace that beast. You can call it your dark side, whatever you want to call it, but we all have that primal animal in us. The story is about the choice of whether to embrace it and go with it and be who you believe you are or whether to allow society to have its filters and have to make moral choices about what you should do and shouldn’t do. Most of us have to make those choices every day. We’re hanging that story on the werewolf mythology.

And as a creature I just love the werewolf because they’re so primal. I think in the past other werewolf films haven’t portrayed the werewolf as sort of sexy or interesting, most of the stories are about people who go out into the woods and get bitten by a werewolf or a dog and come back and it’s their personal story about dealing with that. This is about a group of people, a clan, a society, a culture that has been dealing with this for their whole lives, for so long, for centuries. It really is a culture and there are two sides, one that has made the choice to try to make moral decisions and hopefully end the curse, to try to live normal lives; the other side, of course, embraces being a werewolf and loves the power and the passion and the primal energy that comes with that, and they want to preserve that.

Q: Were you attracted to the idea that this is maybe not the traditional gothic, Eastern European werewolf but is set not only in North America but also has shadings of Native American mythology?

A: Absolutely. There are a lot of things I love about the script and one of them is that visually the palette is very diverse. It doesn’t take place only in the night, it doesn’t take place in some dark European city. It’s unlike other genre movies in that so much of it takes place in beautiful settings, it takes place outside Hugenot, our town, during the day. As we get into our journey things become darker and grittier and scarier and becomes more that type of genre film but we love the idea that it felt almost like a western. We’re using a lot of wide lenses and low down Sergio Leone kind of angles, particularly in Hugenot. I love that. And what was most important to me about the script was the story. There’s a real story there. You take away the werewolf part of the story and it’s still a very dynamic story about family, choice, sacrifice, civil war in between family members, and so you’ve got a lot of depth. A lot of different levels to the story, which is really attractive to me.

Q: Do you feel that you’re bringing anything new to the werewolf genre …

A: Not a damn thing. I’m throwing all the same old crap out there. [laughs] I think I am. I hope I am. Again, that’s why I was attracted to the script. Because it’s about the beast within our designs, our creature designs, mirror that. They’re not big dogs. They don’t have big snouts and big old ears. We’re not doing the traditional transformation scene, it’s much more of an emotional transformation. It really has to do again with the choice to embrace it, to let yourself go, to open yourself up to that transformation as opposed to holding out against the transformation and fighting it. It’s much more emotional and less visual, in a way. But the creatures themselves are a true blend of human and beast. They’re very subtle. I wanted them to be very sexy, very powerful, scary when we need them to be … [Jason Behr walks by] Oh, shit … all of them are sexy except for Varek, who’s just a big, fat slob. So, yeah. I believe we’re doing something absolutely brand new. We’ve got a great story and great characters and, visually, the creature will be something that nobody’s ever seen.

Q: Are you sticking to the rules of classic werewolf mythology?

A: The rules are the same. We’re staying very true to the mythology on that level. They use silver bullets, the moon brings them out. We wanted to stay true to the mythology and, not update it but to do what I think it really needs which is to give it some soul.