Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 6, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
In a still-proliferating indie slasher-film field rife with tired clichés and cheesy gimmicks, Stevan Mena’s Malevolence stood out when it began making the festival scene three years ago. Working with familiar elements, the writer/director spun considerable tension and terror via an application of no-nonsense craftsmanship and considerable technical polish, and the story of bank robbers on the lam and their mother-and-daughter hostages being terrorized by a masked murderer acquired further fans when the movie hit DVD from Anchor Bay in 2005. Mena always intended Malevolence to be the first in a trilogy of fear features, and at our recent Weekend of Horrors convention, he sat down with Fango to reveal that Malevolence 2 is very close to becoming a reality.
“The script has been in the works now for about two and a half years, so I’m pretty happy with it,” Mena says. “I’ve been working and working and working my way through it just to make sure it’s absolutely as good as it can be, and I actually wrote a sort of accompanying novel to the script as well. I definitely believe Malevolence 2 is going to be very different from what people are used to seeing in this genre, and I hope it will elevate what they’re used to seeing in terms of story structure. Because most of the horror that has been out lately is extremely predictable; that’s why you’re seeing it starting to eat itself. There’s very little out there with regard to new story ideas, hence the whole remake trend. Whereas with Malevolence 2, the first and foremost thing for me is the story.”
That narrative will focus on the background of the murderous Martin Bristol, traumatized following his abduction and years of captivity and abuse at the hands of a deranged kidnapper. Mena intends to delve much deeper into his psychology and reveal what turned him into the ruthless villain seen in the original movie, while also telling a scarily self-contained tale that’s bigger in every way. “I started out with this 500-page manuscript,” he says of the initial Malevolence saga, “and it’s probably 900 pages now. We didn’t have the opportunity to even scratch the surface with the first film, because of the money. Now we have a real budget and we’ll be able to get real actors—nothing against the previous actors—and it’ll be a completely different approach from the previous movie. In one sense, fans of that film are going to get something completely different, so don’t expect a rehash of the original; on the other hand, they’ll be very surprised by where this film ends up.”
Set 10 years before its predecessor, Malevolence 2 [later retitled Bereavement—MG] will go into detail about how young Martin was snatched by the vile Graham Sutter and molded into a single-minded slayer. “People always talk about the whole nature-vs.-nurture aspect of serial killers,” Mena notes, “and that’s what we’re exploring in this film—what he goes through and what turns him into the monster he eventually becomes. Now, for people who are familiar with the original film, there will be a certain element they’ll recognize, and the ending will have a certain sense of predictability. But as far as the mainstream audience goes, there’s a lot of this that they won’t be able to see coming.”
In so doing, Mena will add Martin Bristol to the growing list of cinematic madmen who have undergone onscreen psychoanalysis in recent years. The formerly mysterious maniac of Black Christmas was given an overly detailed identity in last year’s remake, the good Dr. Lecter’s taste for people was explained in Hannibal Rising and Rob Zombie’s upcoming reimagining of Halloween swings the focus away from heroine Laurie Strode to place it squarely on her relentless pursuer, Michael Myers. Mena is aware of Malevolence 2’s status as one of this pack, and assures that his film will take enough fresh detours to stand out. “It’s the same kind of idea, but it’ll be a very different approach in the way we’re going to shoot the film, and thematically it’s very distinct. There are so many ways you could tell this story—you could go the blood-and-guts route, you could go the supernatural-thriller route—and I believe the way we’re doing it will give you the opportunity to truly get involved with the characters, and give a depth of story that I hope people will respond to.
“I don’t think you see that in a lot of horror films today,” he continues. “I love the genre, and I do like the new stuff, but my complaint—and this is why I feel it’s starting to slip away from us again—is that I feel there’s such a rush to do it and get it out there before it all goes away, we’re getting a lot of movies that not much thought is going into. There’s a real lack of story, and people are starting to respond to that. Because you can only kill people so many ways; you’ve got to create situations people can relate to and characters they can fall in love with. I don’t think I’ve seen a film in the last two or three years where I’ve said, ‘Man, that really affected me, I want to watch it again,’ and I start talking about it the next day. With most of them, by the end of the movie, I’m like, ‘Whatever.’ It has no impact on me at all.
“The horror films I grew up with, I would talk about them for weeks. And I’m not the only one, because you’ve got the fans of Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead—people are still watching these movies, they’re still wearing the shirts, and I can’t think of any movie that has come out in the last five years where 20 years from now, we’ll be sitting at these conventions and festivals talking about them. That’s the big difference. I’m hoping that with Malevolence 2, we’ll bring back that element that I feel is lacking in horror right now.”
But first, actors and locations must be chosen. “Right now, we’re about to go into preproduction, so there are a couple of things we’re working on,” Mena says. “One of them, of course, is casting, which we need to give ourselves a good, long lead time on. We’re looking for a couple of young kids for two very different, very important roles, so that’s a tough one.” The writer/director also notes that he may not be returning to the stark rural Pennsylvania locations that gave the first Malevolence a good deal of its atmosphere. “We’re still up in the air about where we’re going to shoot it, so that has become a last-minute decision. It may be shot in Pennsylvania, but we may head down to North Carolina. We’re trying to figure that out. Otherwise, everything’s pretty much a go.”
Malevolence 2 hasn’t been the only project occupying Mena’s recent attention; this year will see the release of his Brutal Massacre, a satirical take on stalker movies and the people who create them. The mockumentary stars David (An American Werewolf in London) Naughton as filmmaker Harry Penderecki, a fright-film auteur whose best days are behind him. In a bid for a comeback, he launches the production of a new feature called Brutal Massacre—but the making of this opus becomes just as scary as the events unfolding before Penderecki’s camera.
“The release plan is theatrical in October, and then probably DVD early next year,” Mena says of Massacre, which co-stars Clerks’ Brian O’Halloran and features appearances by genre favorites Mick Garris (Masters of Horror), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) Foree, Gunnar Hansen (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), all three of the “Ladies of The Evil Dead” (Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly, née Sarah York) and Fango editor Tony Timpone. “The DVD is going to be ginormous. We have so much behind-the-scenes footage that while the film itself is probably going to be about 90 minutes, the making-of may be five hours. So much happened while we shot this movie, behind the scenes, and there’s so much that didn’t make it into the film that’s really interesting, that it’s going to make a very cool disc.”
While Mena awaits Massacre’s debut and prepares to delve into Malevolence 2, he’s already looking ahead to the third film in the latter trilogy, and says he “absolutely” plans to make it, “based on how people respond to part two. Malevolence 3 would be the culmination of the story, and probably the most interesting part of it. It’s a cool resolution, so I hope we get to do it. But it’ll all depend on how people react to Malevolence 2.”
