Known for directing films like 12 Feet Deep and Trauma Center, filmmaker Matt Eskandari will see the release of his newest project on demand and in select theaters this week. Called Survive the Night, the movie is a home invasion thriller featuring Bruce Willis, Chad Michael Murray, Shea Buckner, and Tyler Jon Olson. With the film releasing on May 22, I took a moment to chat with Eskandari about Survive the Night, and you can read the full conversation below!
Horror Geek Life: Thank you for this chat, Matt! We’ve chatted in the past about the release of your thriller 12 Feet Deep. Because I enjoyed that film, I couldn’t wait to check out Survive the Night. While both stories are horrific, this one is much, much darker. For our readers, can you take a quick moment to let us know what the movie is about?
Matt Eskandari: Thanks Jeremy for being a fan of my work and great to connect again. The story of Survive the Night, is about two brothers — one of them gets shot in the leg in a robbery gone awry. Since they’re on the run from the law, they have no choice, but to trail a country doctor home that night and force him to do surgery to remove the bullet. It’s a home invasion thriller where we ask the question; How far are you willing to go to save the ones you love? It’s definitely a darker movie than 12 Feet Deep, but it explores similar themes of family relationships and redemption.
Horror Geek Life: What was it in particular that made you want to direct this film?
Matt: Getting a chance to work with Bruce again on a much more elevated script was one major reason. It was also a pretty contained story and I wanted to see how far we could stretch the tension and suspense. The father/son arc and parallel story between the two brothers offered some fascinating themes I could explore as a storyteller.
Horror Geek Life: The antagonists in Survive the Night are pretty dastardly, certainly one much more so than the other. Because of them, there are some very, very dark moments in the film. What’s it like filming these kinds of gruesome scenes? Do you get emotionally invested at all, or is it all just part of the job for you?
Matt: The antagonists Jamie and Matthias were honestly my personal favorite characters in the film. They were inspired by Lenny and George in Of Mice and Men where they’re just two ne’er do wells on the run from their mistakes and circumstances spiral out of control. There is some real history and suffering in their past and it informs the flawed and ultimately tragic choices they make. I’m forcing you to sympathize with the bad guys and that might make many people uncomfortable, but that’s part of taking calculated narrative risks in a story. Shea Buckner especially plays the character with such nuance and depth, that it makes you question at moments if these two guys are actually as dastardly as they seem or just misguided.
One beautiful moment early on, after they hold the family hostage, Matthias slumps into a couch from the pain of his injury and recounts how they “grew up in a house just like this… wasn’t as big though.” Moments like that show there is more to their story and maybe these people aren’t all that different from one another. I hope people will invest into both sides of the story to some extent. Of course, you will instantly side with Rich, the father trying to protect his family, but at the same time, these two brothers’ tragic journey is just as fascinating to me as a filmmaker.
Horror Geek Life: What would you say was the biggest challenge for you with this shoot?
Matt: The 10 day shoot schedule was the toughest production hurdle I’ve ever had to tackle. It’s not really fun having to shoot a movie in 10 days, more like an exercise in controlled planning and inevitable chaos. Then you add on to it, that it was the rainy season in Georgia. Monsoons. Thunderstorms. The mud was everywhere on the farm. Our trailers were sunk a foot. We’d rework the story because the mud was not part of it. And you have to figure out how and when to shoot a 2 page car chase in the mud. You can never second guess yourself or any choices you make because there’s literally no time for hesitation or indecision. You have to trust your instincts as a filmmaker and storyteller and move forward.
Thankfully, I was working with an incredible cast and crew and we had a great short hand between my AD and DP and I. We had just shot Trauma Center together so the engines were well oiled so to speak or I don’t think we could have survived the experience. The constant rain which started and stopped on it’s own was an obvious interference at first, but eventually once I incorporated it into the story it added a cool atmosphere. That’s about as fun as it gets behind the scenes on these movies. It’s tough but there isn’t much time to entertain yourselves when the clock is ticking on a 12 hour day with 8-10 pages to shoot.
Horror Geek Life: On the other side of that coin, I’m always entertained by more fun behind-the-scenes stories from movies, especially films like this one with such serious subject matter. Do any particularly amusing stories come to mind from the set of Survive the Night?
Matt: Well one entertaining scene was later on in the film, Bruce’s character Frank is injured and running away from the antagonists in the woods. In the script, he collapses at a tree and collects his breath for a moment before taking off again. When I called “Action” Bruce stumbled toward the tree, then pulled himself back up and released this massive, “Predator Scream” into the night sky. At the moment, I was like “What is going on?”
We all shared a laugh about it, but as I looked back on it during the dailies I saw he made an interesting acting choice and captured the pain/suffering and hurt in a more visceral way. Bruce is so unpredictable like that in that if he’s invested, he just makes very instinctual choices that other actors might never do because they’re playing it safe and boring. Sometimes it might not work, but other-times it’s pure gold.
Horror Geek Life: There are a lot of stories out there of what it’s like to work with Bruce Willis. You have the distinction of directing the Die Hard star twice now, as he also starred in your film Trauma Center. What was it like for you to work with Willis over the course of these two movies?
Matt: I saw from my first experience that while Bruce loves being the badass action star and jumping in to do stunts and fight scenes; he also loves doing more intimate character driven scenes even more. It made me scratch my head as to why we were giving him these clunky, long expositional scenes and one note characters with not enough emotional stakes. I made the concerted effort to go back and rewrote his character in Survive the Night to make sure there are genuine emotional stakes in the story for him to dig into.
I wanted to make sure there was something for Bruce to invest in and elevate the story. He’s judgmental of the choices his son, played by Chad Michael Murray has made but at the same time has more vulnerable side with his wife that shows he carries guilt for his own failures. Then when the home invasion happens, he has to learn to let go being the leader and give his son the chance to save the day.
It’s challenging because we have to shoot so many pages with Bruce and only get 2 days to do it. Having that prior experience in the belt I knew how much I could get. In fact, he’s in 40 minutes of the film which has to be a record for these type of films. Hopefully, years down the line people can look back on some of Bruce’s later performances without bias and this one will be one of the more memorable and interesting of his action/programmer fare.
Horror Geek Life: After Survive the Night is released, what else can we look forward to from you? Any other projects in the works you can tell us about?
Matt: I’m finishing post production on a heist-thriller starring Jesse Metcalf about paid mercenaries on a deadly mission for hire job. It’s got the most action and shoot outs I’ve ever done in a film before so it was a lot of fun to direct. Other than that, still on the look out for the next potential projects and see where my filmmaking journey carries me to next.*
Survive the Night will be available to watch on demand and in select theaters on May 22, courtesy of Lionsgate. You can watch the official trailer below.
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