Interview with ‘Night’s End’ Director, Jennifer Reeder

Heading to Shudder on March 31st, Night’s End explores the shut in lifestyle and experiences of divorcee, Ken Barber. When his monotonous everyday routine is uprooted by a supernatural entity, Ken turns to only people he knows can help him in his time of need. Directed by Jennifer Reeder, the film highlights the very relevant experiences of isolation and self-discovery that many have experiences prior and post-COVID.

Continue reading to read SL’s interview with Jennifer Reeder:

Shea: Thank you so much for joining me today, Jennifer. So we're gonna get into your new film Night’s End and just a brief synopsis if you will, about the film

Jennifer: Oh yeah, sure. So, Nights End is about a sad dad who is at a kind of crossroads in his life; he's divorced.

And without his two children, he decides to  make a fresh start by moving into a new city, into a new apartment. When we meet him, he's got sort of some depression and anxiety issues, along with shut-in tendencies. And he quickly realizes that his new apartment is haunted.

So he's in a real bind in the sense that he really does not wanna stay in that apartment, but he also does not have the full capacity to leave the apartment. 

Shea: That's absolutely what I was gaging from watching the film. So what inspired you to want to create this film? 

Jennifer: So  the script came to me from Brett Neue, who is the writer. He's a Chicago based playwright and he and I had been wanting to work together for a while and he wrote this. He wrote this script that felt like something that we could, make pretty quickly pretty and pretty cheaply and also with a pretty small footprint.

We shot this over 13 days in the summer of 2021. Even though it was made during COVID, I mean, and we're not post COVID, but we didn't, we don't want it to feel like or I didn't want it to feel like a COVID film.

It’s an isolation film,  I think that we are gonna be living. I mean, whatever prior to COVID, there were lots of moments of isolation,  I want this to still feel relevant and timely. You know, five years from now, 10 years from now. And I wanted to make a film where there was an adult male in the lead.

So many of the films that I've made prior to this, or what I've sort of been known for are making films about the experiences of girls and women, specifically teenage girls. I wanted to kind of like use my feminine lens or the lens that I use to look at adolescent girls kind of in the same way to sort of really look at Ken barber with tenderness and with empathy and curiosity.

A person at a crossroads in their life. And that's definitely where  Ken Barber is.

Shea: Absolutely. And you could come to get the feel for it. When you guys were making the film, like how, you didn't have everyone in the same place. It was kind of like, I could tell that it was during COVID, but it kind of fit for what Ken is going through being.

So it seemed to work out really well. And the cast is really amazing. Michael Shannon, Walker as Ken, Kate Monk to name a few. How did you go about putting these folks together for this film?

Jennifer: We wanted this production to be Chicago based. Even though Mike and Kate go back and forth between New York and Chicago, they both have deep roots here in Chicago. Kate is a Steppenwolf Ensemble Member and Michael's one of the founders of A Red Orchid Theatre, a Chicago based theater company.

So, I thought we could, we could claim them, as Chicagoans, Geno came to us through a local casting or Chicago based casting company, but I had seen him in South Side on HBO and I just was, I just loved him. And I was familiar with Fallon's standup. Daniel Kyrie who plays Dark Corners. I've known for a while, but is also a lead on Chicago Fire. Theo Jermaine is working on The Politician. I kind of put together my dream cast and asked the casting directors, I was like, can you try to get this, this exact group of people?

And we did, it was like a miracle. It was like the perfect kind of window. We shot everybody in and out in like two days, or maybe even less than two days. It was a low time commitment for the people involved. And they were like, sure, a day and a half, yeah! I can come in and be in your movie for a day and a half. It was a total dream and I had so many great conversations with Geno leading up to it because he's in every single scene and he had to really sew himself into that character of Ken Barber.

Gino and I, in particular,  talked a lot about Ken prior to shooting so that, and I loved collaborating with Gino about thinking through who Ken was and what his daily routine was like and what the chemistry was like with Terry, his friend, or with his ex-wife. What was the backstory with Kelsey's new husband, Isaac? [played by Michael] What's the relationship with the Exorcist et cetera, et cetera. So it was, it was a lot of fun to make, but it was like, I'm pinching myself still because it's a real dream cast. 

Shea: Ken appears to be not only incredibly anxious, but possibly even obsessive and was very organized, albeit limited pantry.. Did that play a role in what occurs in the film regarding the entity for him? 

Jennifer:  When Brett wrote this, he really was thinking about inner and outer demons literally. So are the demons that haunt us, that we sort of bring on ourselves.  Brett was really thinking about that sense of a guy with some inner demons who encounters a real demon.

 I won't spoil it, but I was really thinking also about encountering someone who spends a lot of time ordering their day, you know, really ordering their day. I wanted to think about Ken as someone who has a very ordered day,  he's got that routine, because that's what kind of keeps him grounded.

What if then, this kind of ordered person encounters something, he has absolutely no control over, which is this ghost. And when he thinks that he's met someone who can help you put your world back in order. And Ken is like, oh my God, thank you. That's exactly what I want.  Then of course, that's not what Colin does at all, he actually brings more disorder to Ken, to Ken's life. In terms of internal, external demons that Brett wanted to deal with, and then me as a kind of a character study wanted to really think about.. When you think that things can't get worse, they do get worse. 

Shea: Oh, yes, for sure. I was feeling very dreadful about Colin. I'm glad. I listened to my gut!  There were some parts of the film before things got incredibly hectic that seemed as if it could happen hallucinating. Was that intentional?

Jennifer: I think some aspect of it that’s subtle, but it's in there. Everybody around Ken is  encouraging him to do this thing that is giving him more anxiety. I hope it's clear that also that Kelsey, his ex-wife does care about him. Terry really does care about him. But those two in particular, the closest people in his life are encouraging him to capture the ghost know, get the ghost, do more ghost videos. Ken is clearly afraid of encountering this ghost, so these people who are at a distance because they're video conferencing with him because they're not in the same city with him anymore, but  they're kind of messing with him on some level. 

It's entertaining for them also⸺what's happening to Ken is entertaining⸺for them, but there's some sense  that maybe he's imagining it, or maybe he's fabricating it for attention. Then that kind of comes back on him where, where we understand just from his dialogue, that some people on his YouTube channel or wherever he's sending his self tapes are also suggesting that, which feels like another layer of that, that kind of gas lighting feels like. 

Layers of that just can really compound Ken's own anxiousness and anxiety, and has anxious tendencies, but he's not a liar, he's a very earnest person. I think,  through the kind of encouragement of his friends and family to kind of digging deeper into this ghost thing it actually, makes Ken crazier, which is unwittingly cruel. I don't think that Kelsey and Isaac, to be cruel to Ken, they care about Ken. It's a really awful, side effect of them just being kind of bored on the other side of a screen and being like, yeah, I mean, it's cool.

Shea: That it was nice that they were trying to be supportive. But on the same token, it was kind of like as soon as things started to get a little too crazy for them and they started noticing that maybe it's not what they think it is, that they were like you said, gaslighting him. He was already experiencing so much anxiety and also he's alone. That it can only compound it basically. What do you hope the audience walks away thinking or feeling after watching this film or what's the desired takeaway that you've had for this.

Jennifer: On the one hand I want, I want this film to feel entertaining. I think that through the score and through the ending, we tried to do something that was a kind of an ode like classic John Carpenter. 

I do want it to be entertaining, but I, I also would hope that if the audience wanted to have a deeper conversation around what are the positive and negative impacts of alone time. For instance, all this is not, I do not want again, I don't want people to think that this is only a COVID film, but it is, but it is an isolation film.
I also very genuinely wanted to make a film about [at least in American culture] who gets to be afraid  and who, and who is and who is feared. I cast Geno very, very specifically. I mean, he's like six foot three. He takes up the whole doorway. And I think both in film and in daily life, a man like that is not thought of as having, as having fear. But he is prey really. I don't necessarily want an audience to have to only unpack it through a  social agenda or through a Black Lives Matter agenda.

But for me as a filmmaker who has always known that representation and casting is, can be really, really impactful and take a film from entertaining to really meaningful in terms of representation. Hopefully be entertained, but also be able to have a smart conversation afterwards about fear and isolation.

Shea: I think that was really important, especially just because it does show him in a vulnerable light and you don't get to see that very often, especially with someone as imposing as Gino Walker, like you said, he is very big. 

Jennifer: We were looking at set photographs recently to sort of send to, to Shudder and there's one really funny of me and Gino in the kitchen of the space and he’s  just towering over me, but he's just got this really funny look on his face and I'm gesturing like very boldly and I just sent that to him and said what am I? What am I trying to explain to you here, or whatever I'm trying to sell you here, you are not buying it? He’s an imposing person but actually very true to Ken Barber. He's this giant heart and soft spoken, genuine  lover of plants, even though we had put his orchid room in there.

That his orchid room was kind of my ode to DMX who had passed away. Not that long before we shot this film, who was also a known lover of orchids. Gino was a guy who, at that point, even last summer when we were shooting, he did live by himself, he was like, I don't know, this feels weird. 

A lot about this is very autobiographical. I want people to also fall in love with Gino. I think that he's really mesmerizing and captivating in front of the camera.

Shea: Thank you so much, Jennifer. That was really great. I'm so glad that I got to see it and I really hope that everyone enjoys it just as much as I did. It was amazing.