Home Movies

Exclusive Interview With Todd Lincoln On The Apparition

Hitting theatres this week is Warner Bros.' new horror film The Apparition, coming to us from director Todd Lincoln. Taking on the form of a supernatural/paranormal movie, The Apparition hopes to separate itself from the pack by offering up a new take on the "ghost story" formula.

Recommended Videos

We Got This Covered: The film has a PG-13 rating, why didn’t you push for the R?

Todd Lincoln: For the concept of The Apparition, from the start, I planned it as a PG-13 film because it didn’t need to be rated R. It’s that simple. Some of the best horror movies are PG-13 too. The Others, Jaws, The Sixth Sense etc., PG-13 isn’t necessarily a bad thing for horror films. I always try to do what’s correct for the story and subject matter and PG-13 was correct for this film.

I’m a lifelong horror fan and I’ve watched everything in the genre and I think it’s time for fans and filmmakers to get over this and get past this idea of this immediate reaction to certain ratings. Yes, it’s true, a lot of times a PG-13 can be a bad sign for a horror film, especially if you feel like it’s something planned by the studio or if they cut down something that was supposed to be an R.

But this whole idea of horror is only good when it’s R, that’s not right. The Apparition is very dark and serious, there’s not a lot of happy stuff going on. You’ll see when you watch it.

We Got This Covered: This was your first feature film, tell us about some of the challenges you had to overcome.

Todd Lincoln: I came from making short films and commercials and even a few music videos. I’ve been involved in developing various features for a whole bunch of studios though, The Apparition was just the first one to kind of go all the way. It also came together very quickly.

When making a feature though, you face impossible odds. Every step of the way the odds are against you. It’s all about perseverance and resilience and sticking with it. A lot of elements have to fall into place though for the film to go all the way. It was time for me to take this big step though and jump into the deep end.

With The Apparition, it’s important to remind people that this is not a remake, or a sequel or a reboot. It’s not another found footage film either. This is an original, serious, cinematic, horror film, shot on 35mm with late 70’s anamorphic lenses. It was important for me to not set this film in that typical horror movie reality but to set this in the real world and capture the everyday details of life. It’s a very contemporary setting and you’ll see that in the film.

We Got This Covered: What projects do you have coming up?

Todd Lincoln: Likely, my next project will be a film that I have over at RKO Pictures called The Nye Incidents. It’s based on a novel by Whitley Strieber, who’s a friend of mine too. The story is really this very fresh and new take on alien abductions and it’s based on these incidents that Whitley had knowledge of.

With most alien films, it’s always about these motherships over either Los Angeles or New York and the big bright lights and metallic sci-fi instruments. This is a whole new take on the materia thoughl. It’s like everybody got it wrong, there’s no spaceships or bright lights. It all looks and behaves differently.

The other project is over at Mandalay Pictures. It’s called Twittering From The Circus Of The Dead, based on a short story by Joe Hill. I don’t want to give away too much on that one though.

That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Todd very much for talking with us. Be sure to check out The Apparition, in theatres this Friday.