Karma’s a bitch… and she loves a genre flick.
M. Night Shyamalan just put the spotlight back on viral terror with “Trap,” an escape room horror about a killer attempting to outmaneuver the cops at a concert packed with iPhones. In fewer theaters this weekend (but streaming too!) is director Marcus Dunstan‘s “#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead.” That’s another internet horror movie featuring a major pop music event — only here the murderer and their victims never make it inside the venue.
Starring ex-Nickelodeon favorite Jade Pettyjohn and none other than JoJo Siwa herself, “#AMFAD” sees its masked villain ensnare a van full of wannabe internet celebs in a “Seven”-esque killing spree at a remote Airbnb. Both former kid-stars-turned-social-media-heavyweights, Pettyjohn and Siwa worked together years ago when the “Dance Moms” legend guest-starred with series regular Pettyjohn on “School of Rock.”
“I think we played potato friends? We had a job where we had to dress up like potatoes or something like that,” said Pettyjohn in conversation with IndieWire. “It was cute and ridiculous. We were teenagers and it was fun and we’ve always been friendly throughout the years. To collaborate on a film that’s definitely not a kid’s film now that we’re adults and in totally different stages of our lives is really incredible.”
In “#AMFAD,” obvious final girl Sarah (Pettyjohn) and her toxic college friends are on their way to a music festival called — wait for it — Karmapalooza when a flat tire leaves them stranded. A friendly police officer (Michaella Russell) helps them to safety but can’t protect the group from the metaphoric specter of their old friend Collette (Siwa) who died suddenly the year before. Jennifer Ens, Jack Doupe-Smith, Julian Haig, Ali Fumiko Whitney, Justin Derickson, and Cardi Wong complete the cast for a gory but still tongue-in-cheek whodunnit.
“I watched a lot of ‘Scream’ and bigger franchise horror films to pick apart what makes a good final girl and what the humor of it would look like as well,” said Pettyjohn, who describes herself as a steadfast genre fan and longtime enjoyer of Dunstan’s work. You’ll see “The Collector” and “Feast” filmmaker in theaters next with a screenwriting credit for the upcoming “Saw XI.”
“For how horrific ‘AMFAD’ can get, it is really disarming people with humor,” Pettyjohn said, acknowledging not just the wittiness of the dialogue in Jessica Sarah Flaum & Josh Sims’ hysterical script — but also the movie’s campy casting and crescendo, too spectacular to spoil.
Courtesy of Cineverse
For good or bad, summer 2024 has marked a major rebrand for the multi-hyphenate Siwa, who has used everything from shots of Fireball (taken onstage in the middle of her own concerts) to vinyl car wrap (bearing her face…over and over and over again…) to reestablish herself as a top-tier adult talent in the vein of Miley Cyrus at the 2013 VMAs. Known for TV projects like “The Righteous Gemstones” and “Little Fires Everywhere,” Pettyjohn is enjoying her own kind of relaunch with “#AMFAD” too.
“I was sent the script almost a year before we started filming it, and I almost felt like they had sent it to the wrong person,” she said. “I’ve never played a character like this before, but I was absolutely in love with the script.”
As the centerpiece to this especially chaotic nightmare for the digital age, Pettyjohn appreciates “#AMFAD” as a kind of cautionary tale highlighting the unintended consequences of virality and voyeurism. She also sees its clear visual appeal for the TikTok crowd Siwa already serves so well.
“It was very important to Marcus to make the kills beautiful and horrific and also indicative of our generation — playing with these candy-coated colors and bright lights to really dive into that viral world,” Pettyjohn said. “It’s filled with lots of color, lots of neon, and it’s very, very bloody.”
Speaking with IndieWire, Dunstan broke down the making of horror’s newest guilty pleasure.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
IndieWire: How did you come to direct “#AMFAD”?
Marcus Dunstan: Kevin Greutert, who has been a collaborator through the Saw Universe movies and whatnot, he was the original director on “#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead.” The obligation of “Saw X” was a passion project, and that production picked up steam while this one was still coming together. In that vacancy, I’m grateful to Kevin because he put my name in a hat. I auditioned and I was lucky to be chosen to do it.
Of course, after reading the script by Josh Sims and Jessica Sarah Flaum, I was scared because it had a twist I hadn’t seen before. It had a heart I didn’t expect. It sounded like people I’d eavesdropped on in life. And it also reminded me of people I knew and it was like, “Hmm, oh boy, let’s see what I can do.” I’d never been a part of a murder mystery. I wanted this one roar. It’s got something in there that I just haven’t felt before. It looks like the future and it’s got a twist no one will see coming.
You say you had to audition. What did you do to sell yourself for this project? What distinguished you?
Goodness. Well, in this case, we were adapting to resources and time. So directing-wise, you could say, “Hey, you can look at the five or six things I’ve done here, and you’ll see that it’s within a certain wheelhouse where there’s usually something scary and there’s something stylish.” This one had the added challenge of the mystery, but I still saw the opportunity to bring in the Italian color. I knew the language of keeping an ensemble going and really wanted to adapt and see if I could stretch and depict mystery.
The way I sold myself was, if you’re ever in a corner with production, the writer can save the day. And if the writer wants something that’s impossible, well, the director might know a few things about how to pull that off. So way back when Patrick Melton and I had our first screenplay “Feast” being made, it was the director John Gulager who did the exact same thing. He protected this tome of pages and he let us in on the magic of making a movie. So I was hoping to do that for Josh and Jessica.
Obviously, you’ve got the JoJo Siwa of it all. Talk to me about casting. Was she already attached when you joined the project?
The attachment when I came aboard was the awesome North Star of the whole cast, Jade Pettyjohn. Jade and JoJo worked together about 10 years ago on the TV adaptation of “School of Rock.” To see them resume that rhythm, it also unveiled to me like this whole side of Jojo Siwa, where she was more than capable of protecting the movie’s haunted heart. That’s a side that hasn’t been revealed in quite some time. Right now, there’s the showmanship and the big loud [person we see] doing live performance onstage — but this is something that’s completely an antiverse of that. I was thrilled to meet a performer that is capable of everything, who can deliver in every direction of the compass.
We wouldn’t have had that opportunity, if not for an executive at Roundtable named Jessica Schwartz. It was her concept, her execution, reaching out, getting in touch with that team, and making it so. Then, the great thing was — to speak to the character of JoJo — this is somebody that gave us extra time. I mean like three extra hours on an already ambitious day, demonstrated every emotion in the Richter scale and did so with such aplomb and warmth. I was absolutely grateful because once again, we found another protector for Josh and Jessica’s screenplay.
Like you mentioned, JoJo and Jade knew each other, but you have genuinely solid chemistry with the whole group. How did you achieve that? What’s your special sauce?
In this case, we were fortunate for two things. The first one was Julian Haig. Julian Haig plays the character L.B., who is a lustful kind of guy who finds himself being lusted after by death as well. Julian is a very accomplished actor [living in Vancouver where “#AMFAD” was shot], and we were the outsiders. We were coming from the United States — Jade, myself, Michaella Russell, and Peter Giles [credited as Agent Slick Rick in the film]. And then Ali Fumiko Whitney who was working in Vancouver, but also spent some time in New York.
These are all ace players getting into a cabal of friends who are frenemies who are suspects.
Julian, even before [the crew] landed, gathered Jade, Ali, Cardi Wong, Justin Derickson, Jennifer Ens, and Jack Doupe-Smith together. They rehearsed and they found the language of their friend group. They had found the modulations of that by the time we showed up. We only had 12 days in Vancouver. There was one day back [in the United States], and then I put my salary back in and Cineverse matched it so we could add another five days to really fill the movie out so it was an appropriate length and feel. We wanted, again, to serve this bar. We all saw something that was hinted at and in defiance of time, in defiance of resources, this movie was going to exist.
If it wasn’t for Julian, if it wasn’t for that, we’d have to have found the group’s pace along the way. The other gift was Kirk Shaw producing and Stephanie Rennie producing. We shot in order so we could find fun stuff along the way. This was a cast gifted with dark humor, gifted with percolating drama, gifted with the eye hockey that happens as subtext in these.
As we’re watching, the daggers come out between these relationships and we’re seeing like, “Oh, someone might be asking for it!” “Oh, maybe we want to root for this person…” “Oh, maybe someone is a bit more complex than that Instagram photos is depicting. It’s not all glamor there.” As their charm becomes harm, we get into something where it’s a feast for finding out what ties them together — and it’s a dark secret with a heck of a bang to it.
And I really could not have pulled that off if it wasn’t for a couple of ringers: Peter Giles, who I’ve had the good fortune of working with about four times, and then Michaella Russell. This is the fourth time we’ve worked together and she not only has a performance in this movie that’s great, but behind the scenes she produced all 33 of our original songs.
Why bother with original music?
We didn’t want to sound like a playlist from a laptop of yesteryear. No. This was a combination of wonderful South African artists that Michaella knew creating the sounds and the beats per minute and the pulse rate of something that was going to blend into the horror world and also have its own pretty snarky, good sense of humor. That’s what carries over into the trailer. Hopefully you’ve seen it. Watch the red-band version. The green-band is safe and fine, I guess, but you want the red-band trailer.
You’re slyly lambasting social media, but everybody knows that creating the internet believably for a movie screen is hard. How would you describe the version of the internet you’ve concocted for this?
Well, it’s holding hands with something that cinema asks us all to do. With cinema, we’re voyeurs and we like to look in these windows and into people’s lives. Let’s say a thriller or a horror movie has said, ‘OK, our interpretation of the voyeur is usually hiding in the tree line, usually waiting for your tent to become a silhouette of your vulnerability.’ Well, with the inclusion of this three-by-four black glass window to nowhere, we’ve invited the voyeur in. Come one, come all. We carry them in our pocket, and as we stare into it. We’ve shut our eyes to 99.9% of the world where the very real threat can know where your ping is, sneak up and grab you. Maybe they even know more about you than the fake “you” that you project online to say, “My life’s perfect.”
Another big, big influence was our editor, Andrew Coutts. Yes, he is an editor, but he is also an amazing director. You’ll see his work on the upcoming Star Trek series. Andy also is versed in special effects that were able to allow us to depict a solid version of our social media elements without getting in the way, without feeling clumsy or even dated because it’s changing. It’s like it’s an amoeba. It’s always evolving.
Aside from JoJo, is there any other online personality that you would like to see cast in one of your films?
Another major online presence? My gosh. You know, I think there’s something to Shane Gillis. What I like about him is there’s a guy who’s walking this razor’s edge between saying something that would be [gasping noise], but then there’s also a complicated route to a heart there. I had the great fortune of working with Bill Engvall in a very serious role. And [with comedians] no matter what, when their set comes on for 15 minutes, the light switch in their soul has to turn to funny. And I also think if you have that power, you have the power to flip it the other way. That’s what I love. You find that these comedians that have almost built up this armor of taking shrapnel and incoming fire, almost welcoming it, have a universe of emotions and stories to share with us. There’s something identifiable about that.
Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for NetflixGetty Images for Netflix
What other corners of the internet outside of social media intrigue you in terms of horror?
Doesn’t it represent a bit of the forbidden object? When I was a little kid, I remember my parents were so cross because I fell asleep with headphones on listening to Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious.” And when the plug came out of the speakers and they heard every four-letter word my little brain was not supposed to hear, they were [taken aback.] But it did not distort me. It did not change me. In fact, it made me more fascinated with why they had this reaction when Eddie made me laugh. I learned more about the idea of the concept of parenting than anyone else my age, thinking, “Oh, they were trying to deny me access to that vocabulary.”
And yet it distilled into a lesson that I hold dear: What is wrong with curse words? I believe someone said, “Well, if it’s used for comedic effect, got it. Sometimes when you stub your toe, you know what you’re going to say.” But let’s say you have a choice between using that four-letter word or challenging your mind to say anything else, your mind sharpens trying to come up with something to counteract that. So I love that about the forbidden.
Going back to why we look into the internet, well, what do we learn about ourselves when we’re not watched and when we can reach into anything? The horror movie is usually waiting to be like, “Hey, something’s watching you too. Something’s looking for your fingerprints. What does this person want? What are their latent desires? Their own forbidden twists?”
Courtesy of Converse
There are so many similarities there in what you’re talking about with something like the Saw Universe. What in your filmography felt like it best prepared you for “#AMFAD”?
It was a combination of everything. I would say “Unhuman” was the most helpful because that was the first time I was capturing an ensemble — just to get versed in the absolute choreography of camera. I knew how to puppeteer what I needed. The first “Collector” movie was super helpful too because that was a lot of us on our own. That was the other time I essentially took everything I made from writing a couple of the Saw movies and funded an additional two weeks of photography for that. Everybody signed up to do the violence, but only the cast and I were down for the character development. Like the first 20 minutes of that movie we made on our own, and that was really cool and — wouldn’t ya know — it’s what sticks with folks. That’s the biggest high wire act to do.
Patrick Melton and I once worked on a movie that had a budget of $200 million and, in one sound stage, was just the one foot of a robot. I can’t say any lesson bestowed from that experience can prepare me for anything else but that experience. But I will say, when I was in high school and I had a camcorder and a piece of paper in my backpack and a few notes and the Tom Savini Grande Delusions makeup effects book, that’s what prepared me for this. It was all, “You can do it yourself. What does the camera need to see? What does the magician need to do to make the illusion come together of your intent?”
Looking ahead, you’ve got “Saw XI” coming up. How are you feeling?
With that one, you’re just always hoping to honor the opportunity with something unexpected, something that results in that lightning in a bottle once more. And with Kevin at the helm, it’s got the best shot ever. It’s like bringing Babe Ruth to a little league game when you have Kevin at the helm.
Anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to add?
Please stay through the credits. We’ve got more twists than a stick of licorice, and we don’t stop giving ’em until the last image flickers out. So please, if you’re sitting in the seat, please just keep watching. Or if you’re at home, don’t let the streaming platforms shrink the window to the lower right — click it if nothing else. You’re going to see a lot of cool names from people who gave their hearts so you could have these arts.
The only other thing I could share with you, if I may, is that “The Collector” is finally back after five years of legal un-entangling. And we’re coming back big. I’ve got my first meeting on that tomorrow.
“#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead” is now playing in select theaters and streaming on Cineverse and VOD.
