Queer screenwriter Allina Green is hired to write the final Red Mask slasher. Under pressure and facing death threats, she and her fiancé retreat to a secluded Airbnb. A twisted game spirals into a deadly fight when uninvited guests crash.
Recently premiering at FrightFest and ScreamFest, The Red Mask is a meta take on the slasher film, exploring the contemporary themes of toxic fandom, queer representation, and how film reflects culture. As the film plays the festival circuits, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s director Ritesh Gupta about how his documentary background helped researching this story, and how faulty equipment led to one of the film’s most memorable shots!
Nick: I have to start by praising the fact that you have the team from Dead Meat featured in the opening montage of this film…
Ritesh Gupta: They were awesome! They were so much fun. They totally made it all feel real, like this film was going to make into the pantheon for genre fans.
Nick: I loved that whole opening montage – from the archival footage, and especially the way you captured the 80s slasher aesthetic with the original Red Mask films. It’s been stated this there wasn’t a huge budget for this film, so what was the process in creating that really authentic film-stock footage?
Ritesh Gupta: That’s a smart question, and it’s funny because the conversations early, and something that was really important to me when I read the script, was that this is a modern take on somebody’s point of view of slashers. So, what better way to open the film than with this minute-and-a-half sizzle reel on what ‘The Red Mask’ was.
The director of photography, Powell Robinson, who is an absolute genius, and I sat down and talked about whether we should recreate a couple of trailer moments, right? Things that would give an idea of what the original Red Mask was like. And we came up with the look of it, which was a lot of work on production design and styling. We watched things like Friday the 13th and Halloween Slumber Party Massacre for their cinematography. But then it really became about how do we get that VHS feel? Because of course, it’s set in 1982.
So, we filmed the footage digitally, then transferred it over to a VHS and ran that through another recording device.. And then – you’re going to love this, Nick – Powell took a massage gun and used that to shake the machine and create this natural shaky edit. None of the aesthetic was created in post. It was all done practically by Powell. He sent me this great behind-the-scenes of him doing it.
Nick: That’s actually incredible. I’m in awe of that process, and also how great it turned out! And you mentioned the Friday the 13th aesthetic inspiration, but I want to ask about tonal inspiration, because I felt like there was a lot of Wes Craven influence over the tone of this film…
Ritesh Gupta: Yes. That was very intentional. It’s interesting because this really is a mixed genre film. It mixes so many different tones. It’s a horror, but it can be comedic, and it’s a character drama. But we always kind of wanted the audience to feel tense. Wes Craven was a huge inspiration. Funny Games was an inspiration. The Strangers was too. We wanted this to feel very self-aware. The writers, Patrick Robert Young and Samantha Gurash, are brilliant. They’re horror savants, like walking encyclopedias, right? They had a list of films that they referenced when they set out to write this.
For me as well, David Fincher’s The Game was one. It’s one of my favourite movies he’s ever done, and I will never forget seeing it in the theatre and being on the edge of my seat. It’s all about subverting expectations, and that movie consistently did it right. I’m no David Fincher, but that movie played a big part in the tone of this film, too. I watched it a couple of times before filming so it was in my DNA.
Nick: When it comes to subverting expectations, I do like that in some ways, it’s not “the killer” that is the biggest threat, but in a lot of ways, The Red Mask is kind of the internet. There’s so much discourse online today about legacy sequels or “woke” sequels, and this story really explores that.
Ritesh Gupta: You nailed it. This idea of the mask is funny because there were times when we were filming that we were even like, “Do we call this movie The Red Mask?” But, it is that idea that we all kind of wear masks. In our relationships, with our family, at work, in public – we are all wearing a type of mask.
And one of the core ideas for me was why do we need a killer when there is nothing scarier than online anonymity? We open the film with these voices of antagonism, and there is the moment where everyone in the house takes their masks off, but what’s scarier is this bunch of voices constantly descending on us, constantly telling us who we need to be.
Nick: It feels scary too because the characters of Allina and Deetz are quite fully realised. They’re not a perfect couple, and their tension fuels the drama. I feel like audiences will resonate a lot with them. What was the process like in developing that authenticity?
Ritesh Gupta: I really have to credit Helena Howard and Inanna Sarkis so much for that. When I presented this to them, they fully embraced it, and Helena was actually the first to come on board. She was so key. But Innana also really understood the DNA and the bones of the characters and the situation.
It would’ve been so easy to virtue signal and make this a queer couple who didn’t have any issues. But, we’re all imperfect. I come from the world of documentary, and we all have different backgrounds, and we all have our flaws. It’s something I noticed straight away about these characters, and it was something I really actively wanted to push.
Why did these people come to this house? It can’t just be to write a script. So, was it to fix their relationship? What if the subtext is underlying within this weekend retreat? It was about finding the point and the layers. It really is like an onion, and there are multiple layers for the audience to keep peeling back. But, I also wanted to reveal things about them to the audience.
I really wanted Helena and Inanna to embrace this imperfection of their relationship, because in a way, that made the characters more real than if we just virtue signalled. It was also important to me to show friends who are queer, who identified with with LGBTQ+ community, and ask them what did they think? And many of them told me it felt like their experience. It felt authentic, and that’s the most rewarding thing.
Nick: You mentioned your background in documentary filmmaking. Does your directing process change at all whether you’re doing a project that is non-fiction or fictional?
Ritesh Gupta: I love that question. I’ve never done a narrative feature before. I only do documentaries. And as a filmmaker, you want to be Fincher, Spielberg, Wes Craven! And it’s really intimidating when you don’t grow up in narrative filmmaking, to come up through that ladder. But, all I could do was resort to what I knew, and that was doing a lot of research. I made a 60 page bible for the key things of the film. I did a ton of background work on the characters, the visuals, the technical aspects, and I brought everyone on board to contribute to it.
Especially with the characters, like, I didn’t want to just make shit up. So, I had many long Zoom’s with Helena about the characters, and how we don’t judge them, even the antagonists. It’s not my job to judge them. Maybe, I don’t agree with them, but I wanted to find the kernels of humanity so we could connect with them. And that’s how I approach everything.
Something I did for this film was I interviewed each of the actors as themselves, and we went through the key story points and emotional points, and I created this emotional map and timeline of what was going on in the movie. Then I took that and wrote a page of interview questions for their characters, and then I interviewed them as the characters. Some of those interviews went for, like, 3 hours!
Nick: I feel like that intricacy is really felt through the characters! Ritesh, I’ll close out on this, but it’d be wrong not to ask this. The Red Mask is an iconic horror character within the world of this film. As a horror fan, is there an iconic character you would love to take on and give the modern day revamp to?
Ritesh Gupta: Oh, man. That’s another great question. Like, The Toxic Avenger was one of the first horror films I saw. I haven’t seen the new one yet. I didn’t get a chance at Fright Fest! I mean, I grew up with Friday the 13th, The Nightmare on Elm Street. They also stood out to me. But there is such a high bar to climb over if somebody asked me to remake those!
Actually, I’ll tell you this little anecdote. As we spoke about, we did not have a huge budget for this film. But, we had one location that was actually the house from Friday the 13th: Part IV. It’s literally the same house. It’s so meta! It’s been there for over 40 years and has had very little modifications done to it!
But, we had to hire this balloon light for the shot that takes place outside during the final scene. And it cost so much money, I really had to convince the producers that we needed it. They kept saying no, but we got there in the end! And it was going to be like our huge day of filming. So, we were shooting nights, you know, starting at 8pm and finishing at 8am. And, we’re prepping this balloon light at 730pm to film, and it explodes. All the helium just popped. And my jaw is dropped. I’m thinking to myself, “What the fuck are we going to do?” So, we had to light that entire scene with the headlights of a Toyota pickup truck, with a PA fanning up dusts and a using a bounce card to light the scene from the truck! And it looked so much better than a balloon light!
Thank you so much to Ritesh for his time, and to Lumos PR for organising the interview. The Red Mask played at this year’s Fright Fest and Scream Fest, and is coming soon to cinemas and VOD.
