Mayhem, Ready or Not, and Scream VI star Samara Weaving continues her hot streak in horror with Azrael, a dialogue-free survival horror movie that gets biblical with the carnage.
IFC Films released Azrael in theaters today, September 27.
Set in a post-Rapture world, the latest from director E.L. Katz (Cheap Thrills) and writer Simon Barrett (The Guest, You’re Next) stars Weaving as Azrael, a woman on the run with her lover (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) from a murderous cult. Humans aren’t the only threat she’ll face in this intense horror gauntlet set over the course of 24 hours.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Samara Weaving ahead of the film’s release, where the actor talked about the challenges of filming this particularly grueling action horror movie, as well as her trademark scream, and why she keeps coming back to horror.
The lack of dialogue in Azrael made character preparation trickier than usual for Weaving. She explains, “To map out emotional beats that made sense to me… because I didn’t want it to feel just like action for the sake of action and this woman screaming and being psychotic, just because… my goal was to have the audience feel like there’s something, there’s a strong drive, and there’s thoughts behind it. So, I know Simon [Barrett] had a big backstory, and I was talking to him about that, and then I made up my own. I was being a very pretentious actor and journaling a little bit about what I think was happening, and that just really helped with some of the more intense action beats; just to have a reason.”
Courtesy of Gabriela Urm. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
Weaving adds, “But yeah, preparing, I don’t know. It was very physical, and it was kind of scary because there was no dialogue. So, there wasn’t an action I could take to feel like I was preparing. I could, but usually, that’s learning lines and being like, ‘I know my lines; I have the accent down, okay. Now we…‘ This was all just very internal and physical, which was great. I think that’s the reason why I wanted to do it; I wanted to challenge myself in that way.”
Filming Azrael, an intense horror movie reliant on physicality and action, was indeed challenging. There are no shortage of action sequences and gory fight choreography throughout to maintain the propulsive pacing, but there’s one key sequence that stands out to Weaving.
“The most challenging, craziest days were when I was hanging upside down in a tree,“ Weaving teases. “It took a long time, and it was really cold, and there was just so much going on. Because Nathan was at the bottom of the tree, and so [Azrael] is dealing with that. There’s demented burnt people coming at her, and there’s this horrid man. There was just so much happening. She’s climbing up a tree. It was just like there was so much; it was really challenging during those three days. And trying to have a full camera crew up in the tree with me and not having enough people up there. That was really fun. It was really fun.”
Courtesy of Gabriela Urm. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
Weaving continues, “The whole movie really pushed me, and I just really love getting down and weird and dirty and rolling around the mud and being freezing, and it was like, what? Four or five, four weeks of just pure night shoots, so no one saw the daylight for very long. It was just really all in, all the elements, and having that be a positive experience was great. Yeah, it was the least glamorous thing. It was just like, filmmaking, let’s go, let’s do it because we love it.”
Ready or Not and Scream VI demonstrated Weaving’s talent for powerful, primal screaming. Despite her mute character, Weaving still found a way to inject her trademark scream here.
“So that was actually some movie magic,“ the actor explains. “I had the same kind of thinking: if someone has their voice box removed, it wouldn’t change the muscles that you use to make noise. So, I was practicing how does your face look. Such a funny conversation. How do your throat and face look when you’re using those muscles, but they’re not actually making the sound? I pitched to them, ‘Hey, do you mind if I just, while we’re shooting, just scream and make all the sounds that I would.‘ Then, in post, they took it all out.”
As for what keeps bringing her back to the genre, well, it’s as much about the fans as it is the fun of horror. Weaving tells us, “Horror people are just cool. You guys, it’s a different vibe; it’s a different breed. And I just love that tone; I love horror.
“It’s like you get to experience life on a level 1 million.”
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