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| Sebastian Croft and Maisie Ayres as Sam and Jessie in Get Away Photo: courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release. |
A family holiday takes an unexpected direction in Get Away, the latest comedy from the keyboard of Nick Frost – and by far his goriest to date. A hit at Fantastic Fest and Sitges, it’s now going on general release, and I spoke with some of its creators and stars about how the bloody pieces were put together. First up is a conversation with supporting cast members Maisie Ayers and Sebastian Croft, who play teenagers Jessie and Sam, as well as director Steffen Haars.
I had first encountered Steffen’s work a few years ago, in the form of the inimitable Ron Goossens, Low-Budget Stuntman, and when we talked we agreed that although Get Away is rather less sweet-natured, the two have a similar vibe.
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| Fun for all the family: Sebastian Croft, Maisie Ayres, Nick Frost, and Aisling Bea in Get Away Photo: courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release. |
“I got paired with Nick to chat with him about this project,” he tells me. “He, of course, wrote the script. It was something new for me because all the films I made before I wrote my own script together with Flip (Van der Kuil). Nick loved Ron Goossens, Low Budget Stuntman as well. And when I read the script, I was just like, ‘Oh, wow!’ I mean, I was already a big Nick Frost fan. Shaun Of The Dead is even the reason why I made a zombie film [New Kids Nitro], so it was sort of a dream to do this with him, and we had such a nice connection. I mean, I read the script, I thought it was really funny. It was just a perfect match.”
It was Maisie’s first ever feature film, and there were a lot of surprises for her, but in a good way.
“I just auditioned,” she says. “At that point I hadn't read the full script or anything. I just got two scenes, and I remember reading them and just being like, ‘This is hilarious and really interesting.’ And also Nick Frost had written it, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really cool.’ But I also wasn't really sure. There were so many unanswered questions from the script. So I remember just sending my tape off and I was like, ‘I know if this is the right vibe.’ But then it was great. I got to do the chemistry read with Nick, and Steffen was directing us, which was really fun, and he got us to do it loads of different ways.
“I had a lot of fun doing the audition, but I also had no idea how it went because it was over Zoom, which makes it really hard to gauge the energy of the room. I was over the moon that I got to be a part of it. I couldn't really believe it.”
It helped that she has always been a fan of horror.
“It's a genre that I really enjoy watching as a viewer. It was quite fun to play someone in that world who wasn't scared easily. It was a nice contrast. All these things are going on around her but she's weirdly calm throughout all the madness. I think that was a cool thing to bring to a genre that I already really love.”
“I'm very fortunate to have worked with Nick twice before,” Sebastian explains. “Once was in a film which is so far from the horror genre, the Horrible Histories movie. And then more recently, a film called How To Date Billy Walsh, which is a romcom. I'm a huge fan of Nick and his work and obviously grew up watching films like Hot Fuzz and Shaun Of The Dead. While we were filming How To Date Billy Walsh, he was telling me about this film he was writing, and then a few months later I got sent the script.
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| Meeting the locals: Maisie Ayres and Eero Milonoff in Get Away Photo: courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release. |
“He'd alluded to it being in the comedy horror genre, and it sounded really interesting, but other than the vague concept, I didn't really know much about what the story was or what the characters were. And so it was this amazing experience of reading something and thinking I knew what it was, and then as I got further into it being like, ‘This is blowing my mind.’ I thought it was so just perfectly tied up and it felt like this cohesive story. And so I jumped on a zoom with Nick and Steffen. It was one of those ones where it sounds too good to be true, and then you end up in Finland and you're making it and you're like, ‘Oh, it's happening and it's real.’ I had a sense that at any point it might not work out, just because it was such a dream group of people and such an amazing script.”
We discuss the way they worked together to build up a convincing sibling relationship.
“It was really fun discovering that because we really get along anyway,” says Maisie. “We were finding our own energies and then bringing that to the characters, finding what is it that makes the characters see eye to eye, and then what it is that makes them bicker. And finding the balance of when we were going to gang up on our parents together as a team and when I actually did not want to be in a team with him, because he was annoying me himself. Finding that balance was really fun and felt quite realistic to what siblings are. I've got two siblings. Especially with my sister, it's like we're best friends or we're arch enemies. So playing that was just really fun to do and felt real to real life relationships like that.”
“It's lovely that you said it felt like a realistic reflection of a sibling relationship,” Sebastian says. “I think the family dynamic is an interesting one because everyone has a lot of conflict with each other. Often in scripts when characters are nice to each other and they get along so well, it's so hard to find the 3D complexities of that. What I loved about this dynamic was in the family, Sam has a conflict with everyone and then those moments of sweetness feel earned, but they're never there for long.
“Knowing everything that happens and that you learn, it was so fun to dig into the overlaps of what it means to be a teenager and to not like your sister or to not like your dad and have those conflicts, and then also those reflections in the genre that we're in and what it becomes. I think we wanted to try and make it so that both if you know all the spoilers and if you don't know any of them, it feels real both ways.”
Things not being quite what they appear extends beyond the story to the setting.
“The setting is a small island in the sea,” Steffen notes. “So you would say ‘Let's find the perfect island and shoot everything there.’ But we had to shoot in this region of Finland because of producing, how the budget was spent and stuff like that. So we were in a place where there was no coastline. There was no sea at all, so that was quite a challenge. There were some lakes and we had to create this island by picking out all these bits and pieces of this region. We found this awesome location with this church. It felt perfect for this small community to have this small island with this really big church.
“Finland is, of course, not Sweden, so that was a thing, to create Sweden. Luckily there's the same kind of architecture and the house that we found, I'm so happy with that and that worked. But it was a big challenge to create like that. And it was not easy, and that's why, I think, it worked so well.”
Creating Sweden, in this case, also involves creating a series of rituals associated with the island where the holidaymakers go, including a play which commemorates its tragic history.
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| Messing about on boats: Nick Frost, Aisling Bea, Sebastian Croft and Maisie Ayres in Get Away Photo: courtesy of IFC Films and Shudder. An IFC Films and Shudder Release. |
“It was so much fun. I mean, the Karantän play, I talked a lot about that with Nick, and how far this goes back in history of the islanders and how secluded this island is. The fun thing is that once every ten years they do this Karantän play, and it used to be a little bit wilder back in the days, with some cannibalism involved. But now, of course, in these days, this is something that is frowned upon by some people. This play needed to be created and there was not a whole script. There were just scenes. So I had to make up this whole bigger thing. The most fun about this was letting all these really great Finnish actors play terribly bad actors. We did some rehearsals and it was like, ‘Alright, this is great, but let's now just do it very crappy.’ It was so cool of these actors also to show themselves in that way, because it's very vulnerable, if you’ve got a talent, to throw it away.”
It’s also very gory. Sebastian grins when we talk about that.
“I just loved it,” he says. “I think the hair and makeup department that we had did such a phenomenal job. There was so much going on the whole time. And I think what was awesome was Steffen wasn't afraid togo for things. Like there were times where you go ‘Oh, is this too much?’ And Steffen would go further with it.
“I think what was nice as well is I feel like the horror aspects are really earned, so by the time you get them, you want them and you're hungry for them and you understand where they come from. Obviously when you film it, you don't film it chronologically. And so you have this kind of beginning part of the film where you think you know what it is, and then there's this whole swathe of horror action. I didn't see some of the stuff. Even in the trailer, there’s a shot of one of the Karantän plays, and there's just blood spraying everywhere. I didn't see that being filmed, so when I saw it in the trailer, I was like, ‘This looks so good!’”
“For me, it's quite important to work practically and not use digital too much,” says Steffen. “I mean, it was great for enhancing stuff, but I always try to go for something real because there's just something extra happening in the scene. I'm not spoiling when I say that there's going to be a lot of bloodshed in film. I mean, that's where the story is heading towards. But doing this with prosthetics, real blood, I mean, you get all this presence. You also get some situations where people get some blood in their eyes, stuff like that happening.” They all laugh. “I think there's some risks involved, but it brings all these extra things. And also, I was really going for this nostalgic feel, and I think you have to do the real deal then and try to get as much as real in camera as possible.”
“Because I love horror, I just felt like I was in a fairground,” says Maisie. “I didn't realise I would love being covered in blood quite as much as I did. It was just so much fun. Whenever it sprayed everywhere, I just thought it was brilliant. And watching how they did it, for me, it was so cool to actually see, ‘Oh, this is how they're going to make this effect work.’ The logistics of all that. ‘This will go up this tube and out there and then spray there.’ It was so cool to see how the pieces get put together to make what you see on screen. I was always hanging around by the props table, just seeing what was coming up next. Which fun thing are we going to play with now? So, yeah, it was really cool, and cool to be a part of.”
Coming up: Nick Frost and Aisling Bea on Get Away.
