Director Jaume Collet-Serra knew his feature film debut, 2005’s “House of Wax,” came with, shall we say, restrictions.
“In certain stories you can’t develop the characters. In ‘House of Wax,’ there‘s no room to develop them. Who cares? They‘re going to die in 10 seconds anyway.”
That isn’t the case with “Orphan,” Collet-Serra’s second film which hits theaters July 24.
The movie follows a sweet-faced young girl (newcomer Isabelle Fuhrman) who turns her adopted family upside down.
And then some.
“You have a kid, a new element that comes into a family. She breaks it down little by little. That exploration was satisfying to me,” says Collet-Serra, who spoke to WWTW last month between events at StarFest ‘09 in Denver.
Collet-Serra directed television stars like Chad Michael Murray and Jared Padalecki as well as hotel heiress Paris Hilton during his major film debut
With “Orphan,” the director steps up to the big leagues. The film stars Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard as the parents of sweet little Esther.
The director originally worried Farmiga would pass on the role since she recently played the mom of another twisted child in the underappreciated gem “Joshua.”
But Farmiga quickly signed on, he reports.
Collet-Serra hails from Spain, but he says his countrymen don’t consider him part of the current wave of Spanish horror (“Rec,“ “The Orphanage”) since he moved to Hollywood years ago.
He still respects the work coming from his home land.
“Spain is a great country, but one that has a bit of a dark side. People are able to explore that,” he says.
It’s just another example of how the better horror movies come from outside the studio system.
“When you’re not dealing with big studios, the chances of success are actually better for horror,” he says. “Sometimes you need to be really basic for what you’re trying to do, not try to cater to what you think people want. In Spain, they’ve really got that down.”
(Photo: Director Jaume Collet-Serra on the set of “Orphan.”)
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