Visualizing Terror: Shooting the Suspense Thriller
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” – Dr. Josef Mengele, Auschwitz-Birkenau’s “Angel of Death”
On March 2, 2008, principal photography began in Chicago, the city where David Goyer first conceived of the script, as well as the location where Platinum Dunes shot The Amityville Horror in 2004.
Though the suspense thriller was originally set in Portland, The Unborn was relocated to Chicago, with production shooting its first few weeks at Barat College in the suburb of Lake Forest. Fuller explains the decision: “We made The Amityville Horror in Chicago and had an amazing crew and a great experience. We needed a city that was cold enough to snow in March, and Illinois also has a good tax rebate program. Everything lined up nicely there, as we also needed to shoot predominately in practical locations.”
The actor in the majority of The Unborn’s scenes, Odette Yustman proved to be quite a trouper as she went through production-especially when filming the key scene where Casey visits an ophthalmologist (played by C.S. Lee) after one of her eyes begins to change color. This was just one of many physically demanding scenes that tested her mettle.
“The eye doctor sequence was the craziest thing I have ever done as an actor,” reveals Yustman. “I have very sensitive eyes and was worried about wearing blue contacts. Once I realized I was going to be able to wear them, I thought everything was going to be easy…until I heard David talk about sticking a speculum in my eye. I didn’t know what the hell that thing was, but it just sounded painful. He brought it to set one day and said, `It’d be really great if you could put this in your eye.’ I replied, `What? Are you kidding me?’”
Goyer recalls filming his lead while she rested in a chair with her eyelid propped open. “Once I saw that Odette was game to do a lot of her own stunts, I wanted to make the scene really uncomfortable and get the audience really squeamish,” he laughs. “I think we ended up doing five takes, and she was a little mad at me that day.”
Another sequence that tested Yustman’s resolve involved her being covered with hundreds of potato bugs, one of the many creatures that the dybbuk possesses in its attempt to crawl up the evolutionary chain. “When I was writing this script, I found a Jerusalem Cricket [potato bug] in my backyard,” Goyer recalls. “It looked really disgusting, and I decided I wanted to have hundreds of them crawling on Casey.”
His interest in featuring the insects as co-stars proved to also be a big challenge for other teammates in the production. A “bug wrangler” (Jules Sylvester) informed Goyer that potato bugs, much like cicadas, burrow in the ground and only come up at certain times of the year. The filmmakers hired entomology students to comb the desert to gather a few hundred bugs.
Goyer proved to his performers he was open to spirited method acting. “David had the great idea to throw a bunch of them on me right before the scene,” remembers Yustman. “I reluctantly agreed, and all I could think about was those bugs crawling up inside my clothes. They’re feisty and bite! It was horrible, and I think it shows on screen because I was genuinely terrified.”
Yustman wasn’t the only performer writhing about on set. After the dybbuk begins to grow in strength, it possesses wheelchair-bound Eli Walker (played by Michael Sassone), who chases Sofi along the stairs at the nursing home. To pull off the chilling sequence, the production enlisted the help of a contortionist (Mark Steger) and top-notch special and visual effects artists.
“Eli is one of the scarier characters in the entire movie and comes out of nowhere,” says Form. “Casey goes to visit Sofi in the retirement home, and Eli is sitting benignly in a wheelchair, because he’s had a stroke.” After she leaves, “wind chimes start ringing, and the dybbuk jumps into his body and possesses him. This gives him the power to move and chase Sofi around the home…with his head twisted upside down.”
Goyer explains the process of capturing the grotesque imagery with cinematographer James Hawkinson and VFX supervisor Mitchell S. Drain: “We tossed around a lot of ideas on how to do it. Ultimately, we decided to hire a contortionist and take a life mask of the real actor, so that we could make a photo-real mask of Eli’s face. We then filmed the contortionist doing all his movements in reverse-so if he’s supposed to be crawling toward Sofi, he would actually crawl backwards-and we filmed with the cameras going in reverse at the same time.”
Over the course of her journey, Casey grows to believe that she needs a Hebrew exorcism, and she seeks out Rabbi Sendak to perform it. The ceremony is her final attempt to gain freedom from the evil dybbuk, and the exorcism sequence proved one of the most challenging scenes for the entire cast and crew. To lens this section of The Unborn, Goyer, DP Hawkinson and the team shot over a period of 10 days in an abandoned old college.
Goyer describes his approach at preparing for the climactic scene in which the wind picks up, the lights start to go crazy and, basically, all hell breaks loose. “We shot for 45 days on the film, and the exorcism scene was almost a quarter of the schedule,” he says. “The scene had to be scary, and one of the first things I did was storyboard it, because there were too many moving pieces in the sequence.”
He continues: “Typically, you shoot a film out of script order, but we didn’t want to get lost in the massive scene with all the lighting cues, wind cues and wire stunts. We decided to shoot the scene in sequence and prepped by using storyboards as our road map. We also had a couple of rehearsals with 11 stand-ins and key crew.”
For the man who plays Rabbi Sendak, the subject of exorcisms is one that he has long found intriguing. “Exorcisms and possessions are a viable reality, and I think we’re all fascinated by the supernatural,” Oldman says. “I have seen a few documentaries about exorcisms, and this film tackles the subject matter from a completely different angle. The history David’s created for The Unborn is very unique.”
For Yustman, shooting the exorcism was a new obstacle, as she had to engage in 10 straight days of intense, primal screaming. My main source of research was watching real exorcisms on YouTube,” she says. “People react differently. Some didn’t do anything, and some went crazy. It doesn’t matter how many books you read or videos you watch, nothing is going to help unless you’re physically committed to what you’re doing.”
The performer was strapped to a gurney, which had a special mechanism that made the bottom half of her body shake. Describing the process, she says, “To get me to that place of fear, I listened to songs that triggered certain emotions and thought of certain experiences I’ve had. When the cameras rolled, I just threw my body everywhere.”
Goyer praises the performance: “Odette hit it out of the park in the exorcism scene. There are lots of stunts and scenes where she’s covered in slime. There are also scenes where she gets choked and slammed against the wall. The list goes on, but fortunately, Odette is a very athletic young woman and she was up for the challenge.”
One element of shooting the sequence that caught everyone by surprise was when an earthquake shook the set during the middle of a take. A rare occurrence in Chicago, the earthquake-and the building’s residual shaking-left cast and crew wondering whether it was Mother Nature at work, special effects for the scene…or a restless spirit of another sort.
“I was working on set the night of the Northridge earthquake [during 1994 in Los Angeles], and the little shaking we had in Chicago was like a mosquito compared to that,” laughs Oldman.“But we’re making a supernatural movie, so it’s a little strange that we experienced something like that during the scene in a city that very rarely has them.”
“It was a really strange coincidence that during the first night of shooting the exorcism scene there was an earthquake,” adds Fuller. “We shot the scene in an old abandoned college. Before we started shooting, we had heard all these rumors about the building being haunted. It’s definitely a scary, freaky place, and I don’t think we could have picked a better place for an exorcism.”
Finding and transforming the old Barat College into the setting for the exorcism, as well as multiple sets for the film, rested squarely in the creative hands of production designer Craig Jackson. “We had scouted Barat more in terms of Eldon Estates, the location for Sofi’s character,” says the designer. “We scouted more than 50 different locations because the nature of the sequence, in terms of architecture, was very specific. For about a month, our location team tried to get access to the college. When we finally did, they mentioned they also had an abandoned church. When we saw it, all of our eyes lit up because the size and scale were perfect.”
The basic structure of the church proved almost as if it were designed for The Unborn. Jackson continues, “There had been some demolition work to the lower level, while the upper level was pristine and new. It became a question of tying the two together by adding some newer elements down below and distressing the upper level. We came in with graffiti artists who added their designs to the walls and brought in set dressing to this beautiful, empty room with its old leather tile floor covered with dirt. There were also very old, expensive stained glass windows on the sides, which were great, but they posed some lighting challenges.”
Compliments Goyer of the work from Jackson’s team: “I’ve been blown away with what he’s done on this film. He’s got exquisite attention to detail and does an amazing job with aging something to make it look authentic. It’s been one of those rare experiences where every time I would come to shoot a location, I was completely impressed by what Craig was able to accomplish.”
The cast and crew also enjoyed the collaborative working environment that was prevalent on set. Yustman commends: “David always kept track of the beats, the emotional level and everything else on set. He storyboarded all the supernatural sequences and really did his research. It shows on screen.”
“To really know what kind of film you’re making, it’s up to the director to set the tone,” adds Oldman.“David knew exactly what he wanted, and he had his game down. He’s very prepared, every day, and that gives you what you need as an actor.”
****
On May 2, 2008, principal photography of The Unborn concluded in Chicago. For the production team, the experience left them feeling like they had all shared in a uniquely creative journey.
“Shooting this film has been one of our best experiences,” says producer Fuller. “The actors escalated each other’s game, and it’s just been beyond any expectations we hoped for the film. David and everyone on the creative team worked extremely hard to make this film creepy and disturbing in a way that audiences haven’t seen before.”
Producer Form concludes: “We make these films and hope audiences enjoy the ride for 90 minutes. Hopefully, they can just have fun, get scared, cover their eyes a few times, scream, and at the end, walk out with a smile on their face.”
Of his gratitude to his team and hopes for the film, writer / director Goyer ends, “I am really thankful for the extremely hard work and tireless attention to detail my cast and crew gave me. Everyone came together to create many memorable, haunting images that I’m confident will resonate and linger with audiences on a psychological level.”
The Unborn (2009)
Directed by: David S. Goyer
Starring: Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Cam Gigandet, Meagan Good, Carla Gugino, Jane Alexander, Idris Elba, Rhys Coiro, James Remar, Atticus Shaffer, Rachel Brosnahan, Craig J. Harris
Screenplay by: David S. Goyer
Production Design by: Craig Jackson
Cinematography by: James Hawkinson
Film Editing by: Jeff Betancourt
Costume Design by: Christine Wada
Music by: Ramin Djawadi
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images, thematic material and language including some sexual refernces.
Distributed by: Rogue Pictures
Release Date: January 8, 2009
Visits: 115
