Indie horror filmmaker Tristan Clay is back, with brand new religious horror Inverted, which has recently finished filming.
We caught up with Tristan to spill the beans about his first feature since 2017’s Red Eye.
Tell us about the inception of Inverted?
We were already brainstorming our next feature before we began shooting our first feature film, “Red Eye.” There wasn’t much of a story fleshed out yet but we knew we wanted to see a film with an assemble of cast consisting of women in the 1970’s who were kidnapped by a satanic cult. Over the process of writing the script, we found that it began to reflect a lot of what we were going through in our personal lives. Like the overbearing feeling of being controlled by a higher power and questioning…do we succumb to the pressure or fight through?
This is your first feature in 5 years, has the pandemic proved quite tricky when planning your projects?
In total honesty, we had larger obstacles playing against us during this project compared to how the pandemic effected production. We were originally scheduled to shoot during the summer of 2018 when just a week before we were to begin rolling, our director of photography backed out of the project. This left us with nonrefundable flights and accommodations for the entire crew that ate into our (already) micro-budget. As a result to this, we had to push production back until summer of 2019 with the remaining funds we had and recast almost our entire film due to scheduling conflicts with our initial cast and crew.
How was the writing process with Destinie Orndoff?
It’s like having two brains inside one skull! Writing with Destinie is an incredibly fun process because we are constantly on the same page of what we want to see happen. I’ll typically go in first with some ideas and then she dives into the script strengthening my dialogue and developing my concepts. It’s the best of both worlds honestly, because we are able to help each other develop and create.
What can you tell us about the casting process?
Casting was one of my favorite processes of the entire production for “Inverted.” As I mentioned a little while ago, we had scheduled to shoot in 2018 originally with an entirely different cast. Over 90% of our cast were recast forcing us to go back to square one with finding our characters again. With this film, you are not only having to worry about your performers availability but also their personal opinion on the film and how they feel about acting out certain scenes. We had several accept the role, then read the script, and ultimately back out of the film due to those personal opinions. I never want anyone on my set to be uncomfortable, and at the end of the day you need to surround yourself with the type of people who believe and support your vision. This film would not be anything without the strong performances each of the cast gave our project.
The film deals with religious themes, do you feel this is a bit of a minefield to tackle?
I never approach anything with the intentions of wanting to upset anyone. It is always a minefield to tackle religious themes, specifically in the way our film handles it in a satirical way. With this film though, I wanted to take it deeper than religion and explore the ideology that we are all apart of a cult; because we are all chained to something.
Filming is now complete so what’s the plan for a release?
We have been working with our producer as we have been cold pitching the film to various distribution companies the past few months! We have received some incredible responses so far but have not found the correct company that understands the film’s style and offensive approach to our storytelling. As any filmmaker would, you want the best for the project you have poured years of your own blood into so we aren’t stopping until we can get that. Once we reach that deal, “Inverted” will be available to curse your home via DVD & Digital!
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