Once in a while, the agents of director Nicholas McCarthy will pitch him on the idea of making a found footage horror movie. How does McCarthy respond to this seemingly reasonable request? “I’ll be like, ‘F— off!’” says the filmmaker.
To be clear, McCarthy has nothing against the found footage genre per se. But his own tastes run to a more rigorously composed visual approach as evidenced by his fondness for the films of horror maestros Val Lewton (Cat People) and Dario Argento (Suspiria) and his own debut move, The Pact. In the supernatural thriller Caity Lotz (MTV’s Death Valley) recruits the help of a cop, played by Casper Van Dien, after her sister disappears and she herself is attacked by some unseen force at the house of her recently deceased mother. “It is quiet and a little bit eccentric,” McCarthy says of his film. “But when I was growing up I saw so many films in multiplexes that were just that, that were unusual little horror movies.”
