On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
In October 2024, we’re doing the Midnight Movie Monster Mash with films that challenge our understanding of evil characters and creatures just in time for Halloween.
First, read the spoiler-free BAIT: a weird and wonderful pick from any time in film. Then, come back for the BITE: a breakdown of all the spoiler-y bits you’d want to unpack when exiting a theater.
The Bait: “The Cabin in the Woods” Companion You Didn’t Know You Already Had
For years, scary movie fans have been dying for a “Cabin in the Woods” sequel. There are plenty of reasons that could never and should never happen; chief among them that it’s a damn-near perfect film and ends with a planet-destroying apocalypse heralded by none other than Sigourney Weaver.
But Fran Kranz — AKA Marty AKA the genre’s most beloved final guy since “Nightmare on Elm Street 2” — has a different horror comedy he’d be willing to revisit. It stars Pedro Pascal as its sexy-silly killer, features a cameo from “Scream” king Matthew Lillard, and includes some of the funniest improv comedy beats ever soaked in gallons of fake gore.
Welcome to “Bloodsucking Bastards.”
“I’m proud of the film. So it feels funny to be like, ‘God, it would’ve been amazing as a million dollar feature,’” Kranz said in an interview with After Dark. “But imagine ‘Bloodsucking Bastards’ with enough money to have even one exterior shot.”
Directed by Brian James O’Connell, this 2015 “Office Space” redux stars Pascal as Max: a seductive vampire who brings his menacing managerial talents to an already soul-sucking sales department as its readying for its next big penis enlargement account. This hidden gem was shot on a shoestring budget, estimated to be under $100,000 by Kranz, and follows a rag-tag group of wildly unmotivated employees as they attempt to resist onboarding with the undead.
“I hadn’t really seen that story,” said Kranz. “The whole conceit — turn ‘em into vampires to make them more productive because these humans are total deadbeats — there’s something really clever and original there that put the offer over the top for me.”
Kranz, who is best known for Drew Goddard’s directorial debut and Joss Whedon’s sci-fi series “Dollhouse,” has a long history with both sketch and improv comedy, but he didn’t know about the comedy group Dr. God until he was cast in the first film they wrote. The Los Angeles-based humorists (who haven’t been very active since the pandemic) made their leap to the big screen with “Bloodsucking Bastards” and pulled off a small miracle using the limited resources they had.
“When I met with the guys and understood what they were all about and realized how much we’d be playing, because their world is improv comedy and that’s their wheelhouse, it felt like a no-brainer,” Kranz said. “I think the movie became much more elevated because of that.”
Shot in a real office building in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley, this shaggy feature casts Kranz as Evan: a reformed slacker who we meet in the middle of blowing it with hottie from HR, Amanda (Emma Fitzpatrick). In the greater pantheon of workplace humor, Evan’s ambition to become Sales Manager — as opposed to “Acting” Sales Manager — resembles Dwight Schrute’s career trajectory in “The Office.” But the character can also be seen as what might have happened to stoner icon Marty if he’d survived “The Cabin in the Woods” and decided to work a crappy office job.
“Evan is more of the straight man, whereas Marty is the stoner-clown-jester or whatever,” said Kranz. “They struck me as different roles, but the idea of it being like Marty cleaned up trying to get his shit together is kind of wonderful. I love that.”
Actor Joey Kern, who genre fans may recognize from Eli Roth’ s “Cabin Fever,” takes on the part of the punchline here as the lovably lazy Tim. He, Evan, and the big bad Max all went to college together, but they fell out of contact when Evan got Max kicked out of school. After Evan is passed over for a promotion and his boss (Joel Murray) hires Max instead, the company’s douchiest employee Mike (Neil Garguilo) is found dead in the bathroom before mysteriously reappearing, fine just a little bit… off.
“Pedro and I quickly became really good buddies,” said Kranz, who shot a pilot with Pascal shortly after “Bloodsucking Bastards.” That project, titled “Exposure,” didn’t get picked up, but the duo bonded later when they both had theater gigs in New York. (Performing “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway kept Kranz from attending the “Bloodsucking Bastards” premiere at Slamdance Film Festival in Utah.)
“Getting to know Pedro more, just that magnetism and that charm, you know he is special,” Kranz said. “Almost to the point where you’re like, ‘Wait a minute, where have you been for the last 20 years?’ He told me, he had just been grinding. He’s the ultimate actor story of having paid his dues in the sense. A lot of people already loved him before his peak.”
In the movie, Evan and Tim evade Max and his evil legion’s efforts to make them into literal corporate ghouls by teaming up with security guard Frank (Marshall Givens). With Evan simultaneously fighting to win back Amanda — and Tim dodging a debt on an office betting pool he owes to the vengeful and now vampiric Dave (David F. Park) — the story evolves into a ensemble effort that, in the parlance of “Office Space,” lets everyone have a piece.
“Every scene had the space where we could be like, ‘Let’s just mess around,’” said Kranz, describing the shoot as one of the shortest and most enjoyable in his career. “So it naturally found itself giving everybody the opportunity to find the funny parts of their characters. It was a great script, but I feel like it’s quite an impressive piece of improv filmmaking just because you can be assured that a lot of what you’re seeing on screen was created spontaneously on the day.”
Asked why he remembers playing Evan so fondly, Kranz continued, “There was also that element with Emma Fitzpatrick and the role of Amanda, that love story element and longing for a coworker, that was quite fun and felt like a different thing that personally I hadn’t been able to do in that kind of space before.” If only we could’ve seen the real Marty with a girlfriend!
“Bloodsucking Bastards” is now streaming on Peacock, Prime Video, Tubi, and more.
The Bite: Now Showing “Bloodsucking Bastards” (20??)
Murderously mess and still slaying above its weight, “Bloodsucking Bastards” sticks out as an indie success story that Kranz thinks could have been even more. It’s the kind of flick hardcore fans (hello, After Dark-ers) will double-back for, but could be truly fang-tastic as a remake.
“The movie is what it is and it’s very charming,” Kranz said. “You wouldn’t want to mess with it, but God had that movie just had half a million dollars. It’s like where was the financing? It’s such a difficult business to get financing. But look, with a movie like that, everybody did such a great job and, man, just a little extra money and just a few extra days, if one person could have stepped in and given that thing a little more life, who knows?”
Read on for more tidbits from IndieWire After Dark’s interview with Fran Kranz:
- Shooting in the Valley in Los Angeles, “Bloodsucking Bastards” took the bottom floor of a building that was otherwise occupied by real office workers. “By the end of the shoot, it was covered in blood and totally destroyed,” Kranz said.
- He continued, “But the people we shared the space with definitely had a sense of humor about the fact that there was a horror film being shot downstairs. It was also this incredible source of material that we could go up there and watch this company and team of people at their desks staring in front of their computers, bored out of their minds trying to get through the day. We had all the inspiration we could ever need just right there in front of us.”
- “Bloodsucking Bastards” is the shortest shoot in Franz’s career — “and that’s saying a lot because ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ was 11 or 12 days.” As a fan of Shakespeare, the actor appreciates meticulous language in his scripts and said, “You can feel that background and training when you’re working with certain actors that have it.” While bonding with Kranz in New York, Pascal was performing Shakespeare in the Park.
- Kranz compared witnessing Pascal’s explosion in popularity thanks to “Game of Thrones” (and later “The Mandalorian” and “The Last of Us”) with Chris Hemsworth’s first-ever film role for “The Cabin in the Woods.” That project helped Hemsworth secure “Thor” when he was a total newcomer to the industry, said Kranz, who witnessed the birth of “an obvious star” through the monitors on that set. Kranz noted again that Pascal had been working much longer when they met for “Bloodsucking Bastards,” but said the experiences for him as a fellow actor were somewhat similar.
- Matthew Lillard appears briefly as a representative for Phallicyte — moments before Evan declares “MEETING’S CANCELED!” — but Kranz (who also worked with Lillard on “Bickford Shmeckler’s Cool Ideas” in 2006) didn’t remember Lillard’s role: “God, I would think there’s probably a lot of people who have watched this movie and totally miss that that’s him. Look at me forgetting that he’s even in it, but I know those guys are buddies. There was definitely a Dr. God connection.”
- Special effects are tremendously difficult to pull off with a limited budget. Here, to achieve the blood explosions seen throughout the film, production assistants tossed buckets of red liquid directly onto the performers. Kranz said he was impressed that something so simple worked for the most part. He said, “I remember there was one when Sean Cowhig blows up and that effect didn’t quite get there, but they definitely did what they could to make the most of it.”
- Kranz continued, “The funny thing is that big budget sets will also have effects that don’t work. On ‘The Cabin in the Woods,’ they had an alien that they just gave up on during the middle of the shoot. It just wasn’t working. I also did a show on HBO called ‘Ballers’ that needed projectile vomit and then the aerosol or whatever just didn’t projectile. Instead it sort of… dribbled. It doesn’t matter what the budget is, effects just sometimes don’t work and there’s no time to fix it. ‘Bloodsucking Bastards’ did pretty well when it comes to that.”
- Over the years, Kranz has become less inclined to take roles that involve getting drenched in fake blood and gore. He recalls relishing the experience with “The Cabin in the Woods” (“I was a kid in a candy store,” he said), but now the actor pays more attention to the level of discomfort required for certain projects. He recommends using shaving cream to remove stains on your skin, but warned, “Sometimes you’re just pink and you’re going to stay pink for a month and you have to roll with it.”
- Looking back on his first time seeing “The Cabin in the Woods,” Kranz said, “We got a private screening at Lionsgate and it was just Bradley Whitford and I in a screening room together. It was just the two of us. And halfway through it, he turned to me and he was like, ‘We’re in the greatest movie ever made.’”
IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations every Friday night at 9:30 p.m. ET. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
- Freaky Farmers Take Down Skiers, Swingers, and a Slew of Motorists in the Extra Chunky “Motel Hell”
- “The War of the Gargantuas” Dares to Ask Which Kaiju Monsters Have Souls
- How Ant Timpson and Tim League Made a Midnight Movie Masterclass Using 26 Shorts in “The ABCs of Death”
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