The Big Picture

Director Jenn Wexler brought her second feature film to Fantastic Fest 2023, The Sacrifice Game starring Mena Massoud and Olivia Scott Welch. The movie is about two boarding school students who can’t go home for the holidays and find themselves trying to survive the night when a group of cult killers ambush the school. While in Austin for Fantastic Fest, Wexler told us all about her experience going from The Ranger to The Sacrifice Game, how she took a cue from Larry Fessenden and the filmmaking process at Glass Eye Pix, and more.

You want to see some serious acting range? Go watch Mena Massoud in Disney’s live-action Aladdin and then check him out in his upcoming horror film, The Sacrifice Game directed by Jenn Wexler.

The story takes place at The Blackvale School for Girls in 1971. Samantha (Madison Baines) and Clara (Georgia Acken) can’t go home like the rest of the students and are stuck spending the holidays at school with their teacher chaperon, Chloë Levine’s Rose. What starts as a holiday break bummer takes a very dark turn when the trio gets some unexpected visitors, a gang of cult killers led by Massoud’s Jude.

That brief synopsis well establishes that this is a very different kind of role for Massoud, but trust me when I tell you, no short description can do the wild turns Wexler, Massoud and co. take in The Sacrifice Game justice. As the night progresses, things get increasingly dark, twisted, and violent, affording the actors a wealth of opportunities to swing for the fences, and Oscar-winning prosthetics and makeup FX team, Morot FX Studio Inc., the chance to whip up some downright delicious gory movie magic.

While in Austin for The Sacrifice Game’s US premiere at Fantastic Fest, Wexler visited the Collider interview studio to walk us through her journey from her first feature, The Ranger, to getting the green light for The Sacrifice Game. She also went into detail on the casting process and highlighted how exciting it was to see how evil Massoud could get.

Hear about that and loads more straight from Wexler in the video interview at the top of this article or you can read the conversation in transcript form below.

Image via Shudder

PERRI NEMIROFF: Because our audience might not know about your movie just yet, can you give us a brief synopsis of The Sacrifice Game?

JENN WEXLER: The Sacrifice Game takes place in 1971 around Christmas, and it’s at this boarding school. A bunch of the girls have gone home, but there’s two girls that have to remain there over break, and then a Manson-esque group of cult killers comes to the school and they’re up to no good, and the girls have to survive the night.

I was reading that you wrote the first draft of the screenplay in 2013. What is the biggest difference between that draft and the finished film?

WEXLER: Oh man, there is a big difference. It would be a major spoiler to reveal it, but I’ll say it’s a plot thing.

[Laughs] I want to know!

WEXLER: I’ll tell you offline.

I definitely need to know just to have this information in my own back pocket.

I was reading a little bit about how you really appreciated the bootstrap approach to filmmaking that Glass Eye Pix uses, so can you give us an example of how you implement those techniques in your own filmmaking process now?

WEXLER: Oh, for sure. I worked for Glass Eye Pix, Larry Fessenden’s production company, from like 2013 to 2019. I produced six features for them. My first feature as a director, The Ranger, was through Glass Eye. You just learn to make movies with your hands. You learned to make movies with your friends, with what you have available to you. And, a really important thing I learned from Larry is what matters is what’s in the frame. That’s what matters. That’s what you have to keep in mind as a director. There could be a whole bunch of things going on, [but] what is the frame? And what’s the emotional undercurrent because that is what the frame should be displaying.

To get even more specific with that, can you isolate a specific filmmaking technique or tool that is affordable and useful, but people often overlook it because everyone is so focused on big budget and fancy resources, but you don’t really need those things because these tools exist?

WEXLER: You absolutely don’t. Even if you’re making a movie on your iPhone, embrace that format. Okay, it’s an iPhone movie. If you can, make that part of the story; is it found footage? Or whatever it is, just embrace that element. But then, take your phone and look for the most interesting frame around you. Like in this room, I could find 20 interesting things to point to. So you have to embrace what’s available to you and use it and think about theme and emotion and metaphor. You don’t need a ton of money to make something that’s effective.

Image via Shudder

You brought up The Ranger so I’ll go there next. I know that you said that you had The Sacrifice Game script, but you knew you weren’t ready to make that, so you did The Ranger first. What is something that you accomplish in The Sacrifice Game that you know you can credit to your experience making The Ranger?

WEXLER: So with The Ranger, it’s a movie that’s set in the ‘80s. I like to call it ‘80s dreamland, just left of real-life ‘80s. We’re a little bit more colorful, a little bit more fairy-tale dreamlike than real-life ‘80s, but how do you accomplish an aesthetic? Because everyone’s like, “Oh, period pieces are expensive.” For us, the way we did that on The Ranger, it’s a movie that’s mostly set in the woods, and so we have the woods, that’s our set, and then we expressed the period through costumes. So you’re only focused on the costumes, and you’re only focused on the props, and I took that exact same approach with The Sacrifice Game. We had this incredible boarding school.

Beautiful location.

WEXLER: Thank you. It’s called Oka Abbey. It’s right outside of Montreal. That was our canvas. And then how do we express the ‘70s? We’re doing it through costumes, we’re doing it through props, and through set dressing, and music, all that stuff.

I was also reading that some crew members had ghostly experiences. I love hearing about those stories, so can you share any with us?

WEXLER: Absolutely. So this building was probably built in the 17 or 1800s. It’s beautiful. It reminded me of European arthouse films. When we were shooting there, I did not have any ghostly experiences because I was really focused on directing, so I was like, “Ghosts, do not get in my headspace. You better stay out of my headspace.” But other people on set experienced weird things with lights. Our producers were in a room, and there were all these candles that were set up, and they were having a conversation over here, and they all just knocked down by themselves. So yeah, creepy things happened. [Laughs]

I want to back up a little because I’m curious if you could give us a little insight into what it was like going from first feature to second feature. I feel like a lot of people might think, “Oh, making your first one is the hardest,” but sometimes it could be just as hard, if not harder, to get the green light on your second film after a successful first feature. So can you pinpoint a misconception about what it takes to get the go-ahead on your second film?

WEXLER: For me, I wanted The Sacrifice Game to be at a bigger budget than the first film, and that was really the thing that took a long time. Also, COVID was in there, too, so nobody was making movies for quite a while. I felt that I had made a lot of movies at a low budget and learned all about that, and I wanted to challenge myself and go up to the next step, which is why I didn’t do a ton of stuff by myself during that time frame. I was really focused in that time, thinking about The Sacrifice Game, writing The Sacrifice Game, and planning for when the day would come that, hopefully, we would get to make the movie.

So you got there, you got to make the movie, and you got to make the movie with a killer ensemble. Which character was the most difficult to cast, but then I want the opposite, one where it was like the right person just magically appeared?

WEXLER: I have to say, the whole process was really weirdly easy. In hindsight, easy. In the moment, of course, you’re like, “This is hard,” but in hindsight, easy. When we had Mena Massoud from Aladdin and other great things, when he came on, and also when Olivia Scott Welch came on from Fear Street and the TV show Panic, we were like, we had our financing. we were going. So that’s probably the hardest thing in terms of getting the movie going, which is often how it is. You’re green-lit when you’re cast.

But then the process was really great. Chloë Levine, who’s in The Ranger and one of my best friends, I had her in mind when writing the role of Rose, and she came on and played that role. We have Gus Kenworthy who plays Jimmy and he’s an Olympic skier and just incredible. He’s also in American Horror Story, so he’s an actor, an athlete, he does everything. And then we, through auditions, worked with actors from Canada, and we found – it’s an eight-person ensemble piece – so we found Madison Baines who plays Samantha, Georgia Acken who plays Clara, Laurent Pitre who plays Doug, and Derek Johns who plays Grant. But the process was really quick, actually. Everybody came on within a couple of weeks of us starting to shoot.

Image via Shudder

I love highlighting the different acting processes out there. Can you pinpoint two cast members in this ensemble who have completely different approaches to the work where it demands something different from you as their actor’s director?

WEXLER: Oh, interesting. I’ll say that Laurent, who plays Doug, is really into improv. He likes to improvise things, which totally works for the character of Doug, and there are some great lines in the movie that he just improvised. Usually, I’m a little bit against improv. I’m fine with it, [but] I’m like, “Let’s do the script first and then we can do a take where you come up with a different line or whatever.” But some of the stuff that he was giving was really in sync with the vibe that we were going for.

But I have to say, the way I like to work with actors is I like to have a lot of conversations with them, and we kind of define the arcs of the characters, we define the objectives of the character’s overall life – what do they want in life? And then, from there, we can go on a scene-by-scene basis. So I find that that’s a process that works for a lot of people.

With that in mind, which character changed the most after casting, where what that actor brought to the role took the character in a different direction than you originally planned?

WEXLER: I’ll say, again, with Laurent, he really brought that character to life. For the record, they all brought the characters to life, but with Doug, I think maybe we had underwritten him slightly, and then Laurent found the nuances in that character.

You can’t have this many main characters and have them all be memorable unless all of the actors understand their character and know exactly how to bring them to life on screen.

WEXLER: Yeah, they were all incredible. And what was really, really lovely is they all became a family on set, and their dynamics and their energies fed into each other. Samantha and Clara – Madison and Georgia – they became best friends while we were shooting, which was like, that’s what we need. We need that energy. There’s a lot of different relationship dynamics that we’re playing with here, a lot of different people playing off each other, and how does that person feel about that person? How does that one feel about that one? Everybody was just in sync and created those relationship dynamics with each other.

Was the genie line specifically written when Mena was cast in that role?

WEXLER: It was before that.

It was before that? It was meant to be!

WEXLER: It was before he was cast.

Image via Shudder

He is really something else in this. He’s done other things, of course, but the large majority of people out there are going to see Aladdin take this turn, and it was a delicious opportunity for him.

WEXLER: Yeah! And it was really fun working with Mena and getting to go to those places and just being like, “Let’s see how evil we can get.” And he was so down.

Can you maybe give us an example of a time when he took a really big swing where, whether it’s in the movie or not, he just went for it?

WEXLER: Well, he is incredible because he really knows how to ride that line. With this character, he kind of starts off in an evil, dark place, and then there’s a whole journey after that. So, Mena was really great about finding that arc even when you’re starting from a dark place.

You bring up starting from a dark place, so I’ll go there next – the opening oner. Can you pinpoint the most difficult part of executing a shot, or multiple shots, like that?

WEXLER: It’s just a lot of moving pieces. It’s a lot of moving pieces when you have the camera, and you have the actors, and you have the blocking, and you have the special effects, and you have the guy who’s in the corner who’s gonna pull the blood at the right time. And we rehearsed it a lot. We did a lot of rehearsals of it. I feel like by the end of it, everybody – we’re talking about all night long. This is all we’re doing that night. But it was my dream. It was probably the first scene that I wrote back in 2013 was this scene, so to get to shoot it in that dream way. And also finding that house that it takes place at was literally like two blocks away from the school where we were shooting. So it wasn’t even like we had to change locations or anything. It’s just like, our home base is at the school and now we’re just gonna, “Okay, we’re all meeting two blocks around the corner to shoot at this house,” which just looks like it came out of 1971.

You brought up effects and I could talk about bloody, wild movie magic all day long. I know you had a great FX team here. Can you pinpoint something that you did on set with them that made you think, “I can’t believe that is what it takes to make it look like that on screen?”

WEXLER: Oh my gosh, well, we have the special effects team, the Blood Brothers, so they were responsible for bringing all the blood. They also brought the snow because we shot in the spring, so they brought the practical snow also. And then, separately from them, we worked with Adrien Morot and his team, and they did the prosthetics. By the way, Adrien Morot did the M3GAN doll and won an Oscar for The Whale. In our meetings, prepping for everything, it was just so fascinating just hearing his ideas. He’s the expert. I’m like, “Oh, tell me how we can take this idea and make it really exciting and really go there.” Also, there’s a design later on in the film that I won’t get too deep into, but there’s a design later on in the film that was really cool and that was all Adrien, and he rules.

Good tease!

Image via Shudder

One really big thing that I love to talk about is that with every single film you make, you find your storytelling voice more and more, and then you’re able to apply that to your next film. Can you tell me something specific you discovered about your own voice as a filmmaker on Sacrifice Game that you’re eager to explore more on a future film?

WEXLER: Oh, interesting. Well, I will say, you start to see similarities, you know? I see similarities in The Ranger, in Sacrifice Game, certainly from a storytelling perspective. I was very aware that I like writing scripts about young women dealing with stuff through the lens of genre. That I totally knew. But then, throughout the process, just realizing the lenses that I like to use, the kind of wide-angle lenses close on characters, those kinds of things, I’m like, “Oh yeah, I used that in The Ranger, too.” But I love it! Oh, it feels so good. I like this kind of a little bit comic booky, a little graphic novelly, a little fairy tale-esque. Taking these worlds and just making them have a slightly fairy tale kind of quality is something I really enjoy doing.