Interview with Nick McAnulty, Writer and Co-Director of CAPTURE KILL RELEASE

Interview with Nick McAnulty, Writer and Co-Director of Capture Kill Release 

Nick McAnulty, Jennifer Fraser, and Farhang Ghajar on set

Nick McAnulty’s Capture Kill Release (co-directed with Brian Allan Stewart, 2016) is a uniquely charming and deeply uncomfortable film. Its dark-humored hyperrealism lures viewers into a queasy intimacy that epitomizes the best of what the found footage sub-genre has to offer. We follow likable lovebirds Jennifer Fraser and Farhang Ghajar (playing versions of themselves) as they indulge in a murderous fantasy to enhance their love life that evolves into real-life, gut-wrenching bloodshed. 

Writer and Co-Director Nick McAnulty was kind enough to sit down with me for an interview. We discuss his intentions to subvert the traditional gendered expectations of the killer couple trope, the film’s unique production process, the allure of found footage, and so much more. 

Capture Kill Release is available to stream for free on Tubi, and I highly recommend that you check it out. The interview below contains vague spoilers, so please keep that in mind. 

Violet: First, let me say, I am such a huge fan of this film. It's ridiculous. I've seen it probably like twelve times.

Nick: That's awesome. I'm glad you're such a fan.

Violet: So thank you for creating it!

Nick: We don't always get that reaction. Fans really like it, but there's also the opposite of that, of like, who comes up with sick ideas like this? How dare they do that? So it's not always thank you. Sometimes it's a finger wag, big finger wag.

Violet: That's true. Why do you think people are so off-put by this film? I've seen it on a lot of the "most violently disturbing horror films of all time" lists, but it's really not terribly gory throughout.

Nick: Yeah. Sometimes I'm shocked by that as well. Because the subject matter is obviously quite shocking, and there's a lot of stuff in there that's disturbing and aims to be disturbing, but this isn’t a movie where that’s the aim. There's definitely a bunch of movies where that's the intention, to shock the audience, and that's kind of what they want to do first and foremost.

This movie has some really heavy relationship drama aspects to it. There's a lot of very dark, dark comedy to it. And that's to really get you comfortable before you get in there. So a lot of that was that first intent, which also probably contributes as to why. Some people feel that way because the subject matter is so grim, but the characters are, in their own way, just due to their charisma, quite likable in a lot of ways.

And they're also very blasé about what they're doing. It's so natural, and that's the big intention of what we wanted. That as they're going shopping for certain "equipment" it's the same as if you were going out to buy milk. So that's the intent. And I think when it lands with some people, that's how it gets on those lists versus that it's a gore fest from start to finish.

Violet: How did the concept for Capture Kill Release originate? What inspired you to make this film?

Nick: I can't pinpoint the exact moment. But to a degree it's kind of, I don't want to say ripped from the headlines, but it started from a conversation talking to some friends about crimes that happen like this, and the jump off point was, how does more than one person become involved?

When somebody goes out and they do something, it's easy to justify with the idea that they're wired the wrong way. And it's a scary thought, but I can at least justify that. It's when you read these crimes where it's couples, which happens and happens quite often, that it's like, how do you get to a point where two people can kind of be on that same wavelength and do something so awful? So that was kind of the discussion jumping off point. There's a lot of movies that kind of cover this. You've got your trope of your Natural Born Killers and Badlands where it's that killer couple, but it's usually the man that's instigating things. So we wanted to do a big flip on that traditional trope. A lot was kind of built off of, “what do those power dynamics look like?”

It starts with a bit of an idea, and it's a thread that you just pull and then kind of build your own ideas into from there.

Violet: So there are many films about toxic relationships in which the male partner manipulates and coerces his wife or girlfriend to commit acts of violence with him. This film very much subverts that trope, which is part of why I love it so much. Could you go into your motivation for subverting that trope or how you did so intentionally?

Nick: I think the other way has been done, done to death, so often. Stereotypically speaking, I think there's a bit more of a physical dominance that happens in sort of that traditional way, which is obviously threatening in one way.

But if you do the switch like this? The toolbox of what you're dealing with and that mindset is completely different. So it was just a lot more interesting to build off of. It really started with just that idea, but then really going into it, wanting to do it properly. That's when it gets a lot more interesting, and it just felt new to me, and that's not a slight against the movies that have gone the other way, because there's a lot of great ones. I enjoyed them, but it's something that's been told. It's probably been told better than I would tell it. And it's not a story that I wanted to tell.

Violet: Jenn is one of my all-time favorite horror characters. I want to be her best friend, even though I'm a little scared of her. But one of the reasons I love Jenn so much is it's unusual for women to be depicted as just, like, cold blooded killers, and even more rare for women to be depicted murdering for fun in a lighthearted way.

When women do kill, even in most horror movies, there's some kind of traditionally feminine motivation, like romantic jealousy, the maternal desire to protect your children, or the whole rape revenge thing. But Jenn seems fine. We see her with her mom. She had a great childhood. She was just born wrong, and we don't see that very often with female characters. Was that something you intended to highlight?

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. Again, that comes into the genesis of the idea that it's a lot easier if you can justify the "why." It's the scary idea that [killing] is just something that they want to do, that they're just wired wrong, and you see it all the time with men and in horror. And I think traditionally, a lot more serial killers are men. And you totally got it with the childhood stuff; I wanted to slip that in, that it's not some-deep rooted thing that went wrong. Her childhood was fine. Her mom is there and awesome and fine. And she's fine! Everything is just set up for her to be a well-rounded, well wired person, and she just isn't. But then still she's not even awkward. She's extremely charismatic and likable, and you could see why somebody would gravitate towards her and even go with what she's doing. She wouldn't have trouble in the world. She's charismatic. She's well spoken. She's attractive. She comes from a good background; everything's fine. It's that part of her and that desire that's not.

Violet: So another thing that I find very interesting about Jenn's origin story is that she kind of ticks a lot of boxes on those bullshitty sociopath checklists we learned about in high school psychology— wets the bed, hurts animals, and whatnot? She's clearly exhibiting those classic signs. But initially I think the reason she targets the “rich guy” is because he's discourteous to her when they have that coffee incident, and that feels much more like a stereotypical Hannibal type trope, where it's like, “because you were rude, that's why you have to die.” And we don't really see that with women in horror. 

Although she eventually justifies it to herself because he is a cheater, and he's having an affair.

Nick: A lot that's kind of going on in that setup, and it's totally that, that trope where it's kind of like, "oh, you just pissed off the wrong person, and now you're going to pay for it.” And we give some reasons to judge [the victim] that nowhere near justify the crime, but to get the audience on that side of like, "ooh, he's a cheater, and he's kind of an asshole.” So even though it's wrong, in a way, if that's how it suddenly went, then we'd be kind of like, okay, well, I guess he sort of deserved it, as you say, in sort of a Hannibal way. Then that switch goes, and it doesn't seem like it's going to work out, and suddenly that part of her is still wrong. It's to really say, "hey, you guys wanted bloodshed, you're going to get it." And it happens to the nicest person who doesn't deserve it in any capacity.

And that's to put some blood on the viewers' hands a little bit that it's like, okay, this is what you want. This is what you wanted to see. And you thought this is fun. And the buildup was kind of fun. I mean, the person that we thought it could happen to is sort of like, they deserve it, but this is, this is the reality of what this would kind of look like.

And then when it comes back to it, it's just a way to do it again. If it wasn't him, it would be somebody else. And after him, if she got away with it, there would be somebody else, and finding that way to justify it is just a way to keep it going.

Violet: Was your intention to make the viewer feel complicit in the crimes? I definitely feel a little bit bad every time I watch this even though I love it.

Nick: Yes. Absolutely. And that's a fine line, and this is coming back to... when you watch a lot of horror movies there's still a thrill. You're there to… I don't want to say you're rooting to see blood and chaos, but in a way you are. It's a bit of a roller coaster, and it's fun.

And a lot of what brings you into this love of the subject matter is that it's disturbing, but it's still fun. And you're kind of like, okay, I probably read the synopsis. You know what it is. You've kind of seen them do the stuff, and well, it's grim. It's fun! And even at that first point where you see the person that it's going to be, like, "Ooh, I wonder how this is going to turn out."

It's fun. But then it's not him. And then, hopefully a lot of people are like, "no, wait, not, not this guy!" And it's like, no, this is what you signed up for. This is what you wanted to see. We're going to do it. Okay. Can we at least get through it? No, we're going to sit through this whole dinner with them and we're going to get to know him better.

And then once it's done, it's like, “nope, we're not done. You work. This is what you asked for. So we're going to go through all of this.” So viewers are definitely culpable and complicit with what's going on. And so hopefully when you get to that point, you're not watching like, "this is so awesome that they're doing this." You want to look away, you got to this point, you got yourself there, and you knew what you were getting into.

Violet: Do you think that Jenn has genuine affection for Gary? I think in my opinion, as a viewer, she does. And that makes it all the more disturbing.

Nick: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. She even says later, “I like Gary," but it's just sort of a switch that goes on, like, you could have a farm, and you like the pigs there, but you still send them to the slaughter.

Violet: How did you find Gary? And is he as delightful in real life?

Nick: I know John (Gary). He's a friend of mine, and he's a fantastic guy. Super, super nice guy. All of the joy and other qualities he totally has. I would say the biggest difference is he is quite intelligent. He's much smarter than I am. And just kind of channeling into that. Not to call Gary dumb, but he's really found these rambling monologues of kind of nothing nonsense that are very sweet, but a little more vapid than John would actually go into.

Violet: Was the dinner scene largely improvisation or largely scripted? I know a lot of found footage films take more of a treatment approach with a lot of improvisation. But I think from interviews I've heard in the past that you've given, it was very scripted, and then the actors just sort of brought their own flavor to it.

Nick: It's both because some are, like you're saying, beats that they have. This did have a pretty, I don't want to say strict script, but a full, proper script for what's going on. We had beats that had to happen, lines that had to happen, flow that had to happen. But then we built that together with the actors. A bunch of the stuff that Gary came up with was all John. And that was us workshopping that stuff together. And then them all working together. A lot of it is just very talented actors with very good chemistry sort of lobbing that stuff back and forth.

So if one wasn't giving it back to the other, they wouldn't have necessarily got that. John and Jenn played off each other really well. And then Farhang gave a lot of good deadpan comedy of this person that didn't want to be in that situation. They just gave each other a lot to build on. 

Behind the scenes of the infamous dinner scene

Violet: The dramatic irony of that scene is just so incredible. I give so many props to those actors. Did Gary come up with the "cheers," or was the cheers a beat?

Nick: It was in there. His ramble of a toast was him though.

Violet: So good! Like, “the pork is soft, but not too soft.”

Nick: And that's all his genius.

Violet: Incredible! He's so lovable! And you know what's going to happen to him!

Nick: You do. But then you kind of hope, maybe, maybe it won't. Maybe it won't.

Violet: Gary's dismemberment bathtub scene is excruciating for me in the best way. I was so impressed by the realism of the practical effects. How did you manage to portray such convincing gore on what I assume is a smaller indie budget?

Nick: First off, props to Mitchell Stacey, our effects guy who did an incredible, incredible job. If he didn't bring it, then it just wouldn't have happened. He brought the magic, but then a big part of it was the planning.

Violet: There's one take?

Nick: Oh yeah, there's one take of that. But it was something where I knew you couldn't just jump ahead that it's [already] done. You're going to lose that effect completely. But you can't show the whole thing. We just couldn't afford to do something like that. So we went in knowing that if you show the start of it, and it's really good, you don't need to see everything else happen. Then the audience, they're going to buy into it.

So we just invested in a couple of very good, well planned shots with our very talented FX artist. And we knew exactly what we wanted. It came out even better than what I thought. If that didn't work, the whole thing would kind of fall apart. There's a bunch of movies in this genre, and some are very well done, and some are very not so well done. And I think it comes down to what you're saying about how in some there's a lot of improv. There's a lot of willy nilly, and that's not the approach that you can take for a lot of this stuff. You need to really plan; stuff could be improvised but still very well-planned. If you know exactly what you want, it's going to make it a lot easier to achieve and come out hopefully a lot better than if we went in on the day saying, "maybe it’ll look like this. Let's see." We knew that if we framed the shot like this, we'd be able to make it look like this. Off camera, you're seeing this guy pumping blood, going through here, and somebody's faking being a body. But It looks very, very raw on screen. So there's a lot of tricks and stuff that are happening right offscreen.

Violet: Sorcery. It's magic. It turned out so well.

Nick: Yeah, it is. Sorcery is a good word for it because it's evil.

Violet: So the heart of this film is the undeniable chemistry between Jen and Farhang. I genuinely just want to hang out with them. They seem like such cool people to be around.

Nick: They are! They're cooler people than me.

Violet: I mean, you seem pretty cool, but they seem fucking rad.

Nick: I mean, I'll take it, but if I'm this cool, they're very, very, very cool.

Violet: So are you and Farhang friends? I know he was in your first movie.

Nick: Yeah, and that's where I met him. He was a friend of a friend, a friend of mine that's an actor that he's worked with. And then I worked with him on some other stuff over the years. He's an excellent actor. He is so, so good, but he is also just a great person. He's a great person to just work with and be around, and he has this enthusiasm he brings that goes so far. Somebody could be a great actor, but then not those other elements. And you're probably not going to hang out with them outside of working together. He's just a friend from working with him, and working on  different projects over the years. So yeah, that's where he came from. It's just sort of years of working together and being friends from there. 

And then, I didn't know Jenn, but she was actually a friend of his, and I did some work, just like pairing different people up, and once I met her, that was like magic in a bottle. I met a lot of great people potentially for the role, but the moment I met them, and the first time wasn't even doing like a read, it was just the three of us hanging out. Just from that, I was like, holy shit, she has got something, something that's magic.

Violet: It's incredible! I thought they were actually a couple.

Nick: Yeah, she has that. He has that. And then together! Everything we did lived and died on how well that chemistry worked.

Violet: Did Jenn and Farhang's natural vibe when bantering with each other inflect the script's tone at all, or was that tone already there? I really loved the mix of the banal humor with the actual seriousness of what's going on. That juxtaposition is really compelling.

Nick: The tone was there from the start, and we'd adjust to fit to them. I think it got funnier just because he's very funny, but then she's got this excellent black humor. So that was there. It was always intended to be there, but once that chemistry starts working, we were definitely dialing it up where we had to, and it makes the other stuff a lot more shocking.

Violet: Absolutely.

Violet: I've been so curious about this. I have my theory, but I would love to hear it from the horse's mouth. So, at what point did you imagine that Farhang realized Jenn was serious? Did he ever intend to go through with it, or was it just a sex thing for him?

Nick: The big switch of, I'm in over my head, is definitely the cat. Up until that point, it's like, we've all had those like fucked up conversations with friends or partners, but this is obviously going further than that and continuing. But there's a sex thing; there's a bit of stick and carrot that's going on there. Then it's like, it's real, but is it ever gonna happen? Because it's so mundane building up there, and then you see when Farhang is like, “oh, if I seem a little more enthusiastic and proactive about this, it gets quite hot, and this is fun. Nobody's getting hurt.”

So it never seems like it's really gonna go there until it does. And then he's in just way too deep, and then at that point after it gets real, that's when it's really real. When they actually go to look for somebody, and there's a real face to it, that's when the excuses start flying out because she's in kind of in that serious, locked-in mode, and she's on, and you see him immediately dialing it back. Like, this is something that we can't do, and he kind of shuts it down immediately.

Violet: I read on the IMDB trivia page that police showed up to question you guys when you were shooting the burial scene in the woods, is that true?

Nick: That's true.

Violet: Wow. Really?

Nick: Yeah, we didn't have any permits, which, maybe we should have. This was out in rural Ontario, where we thought, oh, nobody's going to really bother us. But we got there and pulled off of the road, and some props started coming out. And I think it was just timing— I think they didn't necessarily think we were up to something, but they wanted to see if we were in trouble, or what's going on. And then Jenn, very much in character, kind of sweet talked them—like, oh yeah, we're doing this thing, showing these guys around. That happened, and she kind of talked them on their way, and I was like, “okay, see ya.” And they didn't actually check what was in the bins.

Violet: They didn't check?!

Nick : I don't think we have actually had anything incriminating in there, but we could have, and we could have been filming it. We would have been subjects of a Netflix documentary

Violet: Did you originally intend for this to be a found footage film, or was that more of a matter of necessity/budget?

Nick: It's sort of both. The early, early timeline of what it could kind of look like and what it transforms into can be so drastically different. So, those early conversations I was saying, I'm wondering how people get into this. This originally started as something like, what if a couple, way down the road in their marriage, they have adult children, and then this is something that she wanted to do. And she's suppressed it this whole time. So we started writing something like that, and very interesting subject matter, but totally not in this genre, and it just wasn't working. And so I kind of scrapped that. 

And then the idea of shooting it this way [found footage] brought this much younger, sexier feel to it, and it's a very big part of the story itself. They're not just doing it; they’re shooting it, and it’s part of what’s going on. And it's a little bit of criticism of our always having to turn it on for the camera society. Why do we really have to Instagram selfie everything all the time? 

So in the early, early germ of an idea, no, but then once it was shaping up to what it was actually going to be, yes. That came first instead of it being a budget thing.

Violet: That's so cool. I love found footage. It's just amazing.

Violet:  For my final question, found footage gets a lot of flack as a sub genre. People criticize it for being low budget for not being organized for all sorts of reasons. What are some unique strengths that you think found footage films can bring to the table?

Nick: When it's done right? It's like you're there in a way you're not for anything else. I would say probably the craziest movie theater experience I've ever, ever, ever been to was Paranormal Activity. The movie was just coming out, and the hype was huge. The theater was packed. I'm taking you've probably seen it: not much is happening in a lot of it. You just see, like, you're watching like bedroom footage, and a sheet moves. And as that's happening, people are losing their mind. They're screaming, covering their eyes. And it's just because it feels so invasive and real, that if you saw something that was, I shouldn't say polished because it's a stylistic choice. But if it was something that was shot a little bit more traditionally, and you saw that sheet move, that wouldn't be the big scare. You might get a scare, but not like this. I have never, ever, ever, ever seen something like that. And I think that it's just a little bit more invasive. It just looks a little bit more like I'm there. This could be me. So when it's done right, and it's tapping into things, I think it's just a little too real. It feels a little bit too much like my house. It feels a little bit too much like my friends, and it looks like I took my phone out, and I shot it. it's got its people that can't stand it, but for those that get it and are into it, I think that's a big part of what it is.

Violet: That was very well said. Thank you so much!

Violet: Is there anything else you would like anyone to know about Capture Kill Release?

Nick: it's always great hearing people dug it. Obviously this didn't have a giant budget or marketing budget to get it out there. So it's always nice to find that the grassroots people are discovering it, new people are discovering it. I just say, if anybody saw it and likes it, talk about it, share it, review it, spread the word.