Created and written by Ryan J. Brown, season one of the cruise ship-set horror-comedy “Wreck” is now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
The inaugural six-episode season, which first premiered last year in the UK on BBC Three, is described as a tense thriller, mixing comedy with a slice of slasher, set aboard The MS Sacramentum cruise ship. The series follows a 20-year-old new recruit, Jamie (Oscar Kennedy), who infiltrates the 3000-strong crew in a desperate race to find his missing sister. Then the murders force Jamie to wear his detective cap and uncover the shocking truth.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Brown about finding the line between horror and comedy, why slasher mascot Quacky the duck haunts him, and shifting subgenres beyond season one.
Brown explained where the cruise ship slasher series originated and why it’s so atypical, “So in the UK, the channel it was on, BBC Three, it’s the fun teen channel. They approached me and said, ‘Do you have any ideas for a horror show? Let’s do something fun.’ I had been circling the cruise industry for a while and cruise ships as a location because they’re strangely untapped. No one has really set anything on a cruise ship. We’ve got ghost ships, right? But never a cruise ship. For me, it’s a world that is very scary.
“I have to be so careful about what I say. But it’s an industry where I think they fly under the radar. Actually, people should be looking more into that industry because it’s crazy, it’s wild. It’s very, very, very scary. Depending on where you are, depending on your race and background and class, it can be a terrifying place.”
One of the most eye-catching aspects of “Wreck” is its cruise ship mascot-turned-killer, Quacky the Duck. The murderous mascot haunts its creator, but not in the way you’d expect. The series creator wants to recalibrate expectations straight away.
“It’s so funny because I don’t know how many episodes you’ve watched, but he really isn’t in the show that much,” Brown reveals. “I’ve been calling him our Hannibal Lecter because, in total, I think he’s only onscreen throughout the entire six episodes for six minutes, maybe. Which terrifies me because if people are thinking it’s the duck slasher show, they’re going to be disappointed. I think he makes quite an impact in the first episode. He’s become quite the icon over here, which is so funny. He haunts me. He really does. He’s the first thing people want to talk about. And I’m like, ‘No, but the show, it’s about dismantling capitalist structures, and it’s a show about the displacement of young people.’ It definitely has slasher elements throughout. It’s an amalgamation of all the horror that I love. But first and foremost, I’d say it’s a murder mystery, and Quacky is a big part of the puzzle. Each episode gets wilder and wilder. That was something I always wanted, to the point where the last episode is just insanity.”
When asked if the comedy makes pushing the horror and kills easier, Brown highlights the series’ ability to develop its characters and use their rooting interest to walk that line between horror and comedy.
He reflects, “With a show like this anyway, maybe with TV more than film, when you know you have six episodes. For this type of horror to work, you have to really fall in love with those characters. And I did make a conscious choice to go for that character development and the relationships and real feeling characters rather than body count. And then series two, I can go wild, which I am because we know these people now, and we love them, and they’re part of our family by the end. That was a conscious choice as well.
“So yeah, the line, I would say it’s a tightrope. I think you can do multiple things. I think, in some ways, you can. Then surprise, you lure people into a falseness of security, ‘Oh, this show’s goofy, this show’s goofy.’ Then when you hit them over the head with something terrifying, like a harpoon through the eyeball or a chainsaw to the face, people are like, ‘Oh, okay.'”
“I think an audience not knowing whether to laugh or cry is the most amazing thing,” Brown elaborates. “That’s something we strive for with this show. In comedy horror, you can explore quite uncomfortable truths, like the many uncomfortable truths related to the industry we were talking about. That’s such a great way of discussing things that are hard to discuss.“
“Wreck” may be finally washing ashore here, but Brown is already hard at work prepping the second season in the UK. He teases his master plan for the series, which includes shifting settings and horror subgenres.
Brown tells BD, “Each series will be in a different location. I can say that. Probably can’t say that. I said it, though. Each series will be in a different location with a slightly different feel, a different tone, and a different look. That was something I was keen to do. Not an anthology series by any means, but we’re taking these characters to different places, and the corporation running the cruise line is a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate with loads of different assets and interests around the world. It’s a big company. So that was always the plan to have this big corporation and this small group of misfits trying to take down the evil Velorum company. So, I’ve always had a three-series idea. In series two, we play around slightly. We don’t fully embrace it, but we get to play around with folk horror a little bit. We’re still, first and foremost, a darker comic slasher. But we dabble in folk a little bit.“
One thing that won’t change is the constant horror references, like the premiere’s overt nod to Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in the opening sequence.
Brown teased, “Every episode has at least a dozen horror references, like minimum. That’s the best part in the end. I’m such a horror fan. So, in series two, there are lots more of that. Like with the Jamie Lee Curtis H20 moment. It’s been great.“
“Wreck” is now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
The post “Wreck” Series Creator Ryan J. Brown Talks Killer Duck Mascot and Plans for Season Two [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.