INTERVIEW: We Talk See No Evil 2 With The Soska Twins

I think this is my final Comic-Con post.  Thank-god. I’m tired of talking about Comic-Con, it just reminds me of the giant blisters I have.  However, for our final post, we got to do one last roundtable discussion and this time it was with the cast and crew of “See No Evil 2.”

If you want to know what it’s like to talk to the Soska Twins, give an energetic little kid a pile of cocaine and step back.  Okay, don’t really do that, but the Soska Twins are pretty close to that.  They’re so full of energy and enthusiasm that it’s almost exhausting to hear them talk.  They’re so knowledgeable about geek culture and their craft, that you feel like you could talk with them for hours. If you could get a word in edgewise.

But we only had fifteen minutes and with such a strict time limit, we didn’t have time to beat around the bush. The twins were first asked if they had seen the original film, which they had, and about how they planned to one-up it.

Jen Soska: We took where the first one left off and built on there and put it on steroids and human growth hormones.  It’s so much bigger than the last one.  Everything that you loved in the first one is in the second one, but then we went even further.

Sylvia Soska: Yeah, it’s our very first scary scary movie.  And we’re huge wrestling fans, we started watching when Kane was introduced, so to be able to do a Kane movie . . . we f***ing freaked right out.  And we love slasher movies, but I find a lot of times with modern slashers you’ve already seen that movie before and it’s very . . .

Jen: Formulaic.

Sylvia: Exactly. So we’re like, let’s do a throwback to when slasher movies first started.  Before it was a subgenre, before they really said ‘Oh this is what a slasher is.’ And turn the whole thing on its head so it’s completely unexpected.  And then, of course, we had to up the kills. We wanted to do some kills you had never seen before.

Jen: I love the eye gouging [in “See No Evil”] and I cannot comment on if it’s in this film or not, but after the third eye gouge I was like ‘Kill him in different ways! You’re huge! Rip their face off! Do something new.’ So there are a lot of creative kills in this and there’s one kill in this film that has never been done in any horror movie ever before.  It’s beautiful.  We also had a phantom camera so there are some beautiful slow motion stuff.

The twins are also the biggest geeks I’ve ever met in a press roundtable, and I mean that in the sincerest way possible.  Get them started on the WWE and they can talk at LENGTH about their passion for wrestling and how they grew up watching it during the Attitude era.  Eventually the conversation steered back towards “See No Evil 2″ and they were asked about the possibility of another sequel.  Perhaps a “See No Evil 3D.”

Jen and Sylvia: I want to do “See No Evil 3D!”

Jen: Are you kidding me? Absolutely! We’ve already started pitching things like he goes to a rave.

Sylvia: Could you imagine seeing Jacob Goodnight at Burning Man?

And that’s when a representative quickly stepped in and announced that the interview time was up.  Just when the Soska Twins were about to dish on future plot details! Ah well, I still had one more interview session and this time it was with Danielle Harris, Glenn Jacobs (aka Kane), and Kaj-Erik Eriksen.

With Glenn Jacobs being the returning veteran of the first “See No Evil”, he was asked how this new film would try and outdo the last one.

Glenn Jacobs: This one is going to be different because the cinematography is going to be from a new perspective.  If I could use the term ‘art house horror’, that’s what this is going to be.  I think it’s beautifully shot.  And this time the story delves into Jacob’s mind, so we understand why he does what he does.  And the characters are really well-rounded.  So this is going to have more emotional depth than the first movie did. I think if the first movie is good, then this is going to be pretty great.

Kaj-Erik Eriksen: The first one is good, but you don’t have to have seen it to jump into this one.  If you’re watching this for the first time, you can still get a sense of who Jacob Goodnight is.  I think it’s a real character driven film. It’s not a typical horror film where people are getting offed and you don’t care about them. People are going to be invested in these characters and the Twins really wanted to make sure of that. They said they don’t believe in disposable characters and that’s something that really stuck with me right away.

Of course, the real veteran of the panel was Danielle Harris who has faced many monsters throughout her career as a “Scream Queen.”  So, naturally, we wanted to know how Jacob Goodnight stacked up against the rest.

Danielle Harris: Kane was the only one… There was a moment where Amy [Danielle’s character] and Jacob come face to face with just a little something in between us.  And I remember Kane turned around and he actually growled at me and I was like . . . [she makes a terrified face].

I’m used to there being a lot of . . . I don’t know, Crowley’s face is messed up and Michael has the mask on.  So just to have this small little thing between us . . . There was definitely a moment where I was like ‘Oh, s***, I’m not as badass as I thought I was.’  There was one time where he came after me and he just hauled ass and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I’ve never really ran in real life and I actually ran in real life this time.

When asked about how much he pushed for a sequel to “See No Evil”, Glenn revealed that he didn’t really have much involvement in that decision.

Glenn: I didn’t really [lobby for it].  I was surprised it took this long, because the first movie was a pretty big commercial success.  It was WWE Studios’ debut and it did pretty well and I was pretty surprised.  A year went by, then a couple, and I was like ‘Okay, forget about it. They’re never going to do another one.’  And I got a call out of the blue and I was actually more surprised than shocked.

Glenn was asked if he ever wanted to move away from the horror-type of character he is known for and try a different role. To which he revealed that he was interested and they were attempting to branch out with this version of Jacob Goodnight. They didn’t want him to be just a silent antagonist and wanted him to have real emotional depth.  That means we’ll be hearing Jacob Goodnight speak so we can understand what’s going on inside his head.

Having been used to not hearing Kane ever speak in the WWF, it was insane to see the man in front of me without the mask and eloquently talking with us. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like to see a monstrous figure like Jacob Goodnight give voice to the insanity in his head.  It really sounds like everyone involved was passionate and thrilled about their work, so I hope the finish product represents that dedication well.

“See No Evil 2″ hits VOD on October 17th and DVD/Blu-Ray on October 21st.