We Got This Covered: With all the extra effort going into these practical effects, do you ever just sit there thinking “Man, it’d be so much easier to use CGI?”
Steven C. Miller: [Laughs] Yeah, 100%. When you’re shooting a movie like this, there’s not a lot of money and you’re shooting in like 15 days. You think all the time, “Well I can skip this and get better shots on other things, and do more shooting if I just lend this to CGI.” Practical effects work is half the day. You’re pulling off a monster and he’s ripping things off – it’s not just doing it and moving on. It’s definitely time consuming, you’ve got to shoot it right, and so it’s a lot of timing. But I like the challenge when it comes to these sorts of things, so I just say “If they could do it making Evil Dead, I’m sure I can try to do it now.” It’s just the mentality that I have.
We Got This Covered: Under The Bed is definitely a hard-R movie, but I’m wondering – with the childhood mystery going on, was there ever a discussion to keep this movie PG-13 and make it more “kid friendly?”
Steven C. Miller: At one point we did talk about keeping it in the PG-13 world, obviously taking out the language and heads being ripped off. We talked about it, but ultimately it just became “Well, if we’re going to go for something, we might as well just go balls out and do it the right way.” The tone would still have to change, you’d still have to see the monster, you still would have had to have the monster attacking, but I think you would have lost the impact. The payoff after that long wait wouldn’t have been as enjoyable had it been just stuck to the formula. There are so many movies out there already that just stick to that formula, so we just wanted to try something different with kids, and see how far we could take that.
We Got This Covered: So you worked with two young stars in Jonny Weston and Gattlin Griffith, and I was just wondering what filming with these young talents was like?
Steven C. Miller: They were amazing. Jonny and Gattlin both clicked right away. Every time they were on set, people were literally just standing and watching because they were so, so good together. Like I said, you’re moving so quick, so it was like three or four takes and you had to keep going, but these kids would just nail it and keep moving like pros. Old souls, for real. They would just go to their trailer, come back, do the work, go back – there was never that playing around and not taking it seriously. They were very serious, they loved it, and they were just really great on set. In fact, Gattlin’s dad was our stunt coordinator, so all those stunts with Gattlin getting dragged were all him because his dad was doing the stunts. It was really cool how everyone came together and made the movie really great.
We Got This Covered: While sooting Under The Bed, were you ever transported back to your childhood where you might have been afraid of monsters living under your very own bed? Do you have any good boogeyman stories?
Steven C. Miller: Definitely! I grew up with three brothers and we were all really close in age. The boogeyman, things under the bed or in the closet, these were regular outings for us at night. What we had to do to make sure he didn’t get us involved several tactics. One was building a tent out sheets and pillows, or a fort out of bunk beds of some kind, and that obviously acted as an impenetrable fortress. Yeah, we had all of this stuff, and that sort of helped me shoot this movie and infuse those moments of what I grew up enjoying and how I interacted with my family and my brothers. It’s something I really tried to take into this movie.
We Got This Covered: If we can move away from Under The Bed now, let’s talk about your short Granny. I absolutely loved this elderly killer (READERS: GO WATCH THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T) and I’ve been dying to know – will we ever see Granny be turned into a feature film?
Steven C. Miller: Yeah, 100%. I’ve given them several drafts of a script, and it’s one of those things where they’re just trying to decide whether they want it to be more funny or more serious, or more whatever. It’s going through its phase of back and forth right now, but the plan is to make a feature. I think that character is so interesting and great – I think that’s a movie that if you saw Granny on a poster, you’d see it automatically. It’s just one of those things. There’s definitely plans for it.
We Got This Covered: Is your version of Granny funnier, or more straight horror?
Steven C. Miller: I like the the idea of it being in the vein of Motel Hell, which is not necessarily trying to be funny, but the character and the situations are so outlandish – it’s fun. I see it like that, and I see it being in a very horrific world, but having a sense of fun to it. That’s what I enjoy about Motel Hell and movies like that. It can be in that vibe.
