Horror Geek Life recently had the opportunity to chat with writer/director Jordan Downey and writer/cinematographer Kevin Stewart, creators of the new medieval horror-revenge film The Head Hunter , in select theaters and on demand April 5th. Other topics ranged from filming in Portugal, to their first film, ThanksKilling , and meeting President Obama while working for Funny or Die.

Check out our review for The Head Hunter here!

Horror Geek Life: The biggest news for your film recently was the name change from The Head to The Head Hunter. What was the impetus for the change?

Jordan Downey: We’d been met with a few lukewarm reactions to The Head as a title dating  back to when we were first working on the script. Then you’d have some people who  loved it for the same reasons others didn’t. A title change became more serious when  suggested to us by the team at Vertical Entertainment. To be honest, we were very  against it at first. But sometimes you have to set aside what you’ve grown attached to  and think about what’s best for the movie. I think we found a good compromise and I’ve  now come to really like the switch because it points to our protagonist. I think makes the  character a little more iconic.

Kevin Stewart: Yeah, it’s always a little nerve-wracking making a title change at any stage but  even more so this late. We ultimately agreed that the new title outweighed the old. And  as far as title changes go, this wasn’t that bad because we still got to keep the original  title in there as well.

HGL: When was it decided on, and how long had it been in consideration?

JD: This was first suggested around Christmas, and we took a few weeks to chew  on it. Kevin, Ricky (Fosheim, producer), and I combed through all kinds of medieval literature and threw out at least a hundred other options. None of them stuck and we came full circle to  something much closer to the original in The Head Hunter . Weeks spent to add one  word! But hey, you gotta make sure you get these things right and are making a choice  you can live with the rest of your life.

KS: I think it was decided in early January 2019, so about 3 months before release.

HGL: It should also be pointed out that the name change shifts the focus from the creature to the protagonist (played by Christopher Rygh). Did this factor into the decision? Do you think this might change how the audience experiences the film?

JD: This was the biggest selling point for us. Although we never really saw the  original title pointing towards the creature, but something else entirely. I think you can  make an argument for either title having its pros and cons, but I do like that while  watching the movie you are reminded that this is a character-driven horror film first and  foremost. It’s about the horrible loneliness of this guy. There’s little things in there, though, that still do what we wanted the original title to do, by reminding you of the  impending doom. For instance the title card “The Head Built By Troy Smith” in the  opening was very purposeful. We could have credited him a number of ways, but I  wanted people to know that in a movie full of heads, there’s still THE head out there. It’s  subtle, but it’s all about using every tool at your disposal to tell the story and keep  people engaged.

KS: It helped us feel better about the decision to change the title because it wasn’t  just to appease the masses, but now it also helps tell the story a bit more. To take what  Jordan said even further, we figured for a movie which features basically only one  character, it was important to highlight that in the new title. It’s not just Head Hunter it’s  The Head Hunter, which, as subtle as it may appear, helps drive the idea that the  warrior on the front of the key art is himself The Head Hunter and perhaps even the only  one in this world.

HGL: Talk about some of the films that inspired the look and feel of The Head Hunter.

JD: Quest for Fire (1981 film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud starring Ron Perlman) was a big one because of the minimal dialogue and bleak cinematography. The Witch is a great modern example of a scary period piece and we loved the way they shot fire at night. I looked at the opening of Wall-E a lot because it’s purely visual. After we shot the movie, the film’s composer, Nick Soole, showed me the original Solaris for the first time and I was blown away by how much the tone of that film is what we were after without even knowing it. We’re also huge fans of The X-Files and Tales From the Crypt , so we liked the idea of this having that sort of eerie movie-of-the-week feel. My main goal was to make something that felt really dreadful and wrong, like something you shouldn’t see on late night TV.

KS: Quest for Fire for sure. It’s an incredible movie that takes visual storytelling to  the extreme and knowing that our movie would follow a similar pace and mood with little  to no dialogue we turned to it for inspiration. For production design and cinematography, it was also a great reference – it wasn’t medieval but it was a period piece that relied on  sun and firelight as the motivations for lighting. It had a lived in, gloomy and muddy feel  to it and we felt like it would be a good way to approach our film as well.

HGL: The film is shot on a relatively minuscule budget of $20,000, yet it looks much grander in scope. Much of that is no doubt due in part to the shooting locations in Portugal. What led to the initial decision to film there?

KS: Well, I grew up in Porto, Portugal and I spent my childhood going to my  grandma’s village on summer vacation. That village is called Soutelo Mourisco, near the  town of Bragança in the north of Portugal, and only three people currently still live there.  One of those people is my grandma. It’s a great looking two-hundred-year-old village  with crumbling stone houses, ruins and amazing landscapes all around it. Jordan and I  had been wanting to go shoot there for a few years, but we didn’t have the idea for a film  yet. Finally, after brainstorming different concepts for the better part of a year, we landed  on the idea of doing a medieval-horror film. So with a crew of three people and one  actor, we knew that with this location we could shoot a period piece for very cheap and  not suffer in production value. Not only that, but the location would lend itself very well to  a horror movie.

That being said, with a tiny budget, we knew we couldn’t involve too  many characters. We decided to focus on this lone character and his day-to-day  solemn life as the kingdom’s monster hunter. At the heart of it, it’s really a story about a  grieving father that happens to have an interesting and dangerous job. In other similar  movies, the monster hunter gets called into action and then goes back to where he  came from – but we really liked the idea of telling a whole story about that character and  what it’s like to live in solitude, surrounded by death.

HGL: The film’s signature scene takes place in a water mine. How was it shooting such a vital scene in a narrow, damp space like that?

JD: Horrible! I’m serious, shooting in there sucked… but it looks so good. It was as  cramped as it appears on screen. We had to get Chris and the crew in single file, no  one could move around one another. So if someone needed to get out, we all had to  leave. However, the things that held us back in there were also the reasons we chose it  in the first place. Our monster isn’t this massive hulking figure – so how would it ever  hope to take on a trained warrior? Intelligence. Our hero is great with a sword, so we  found a way to make his weapons useless by giving him very little swinging room in a  tight space. Which forces him to engage this thing at less than full strength. So the  monster being smart and luring him in here ended up being a great compromise  between story, available locations, and budget.

KS: It’s funny that it has now become a signature scene because, at the time, we had  no idea where we would shoot that climax. It wasn’t until my cousin told us about a  water mine that he owned that we saw the potential of shooting that scene there. For  those of you who don’t know (we didn’t know either), a water mine is basically a tunnel  that is hand carved until you reach a water source so that you can irrigate the lands in  the middle of the mountain sides. Since the main objective is to just hit water, the  tunnel’s width and height is only carved for one person to get through. When we saw it, we immediately thought we had to shoot there but we didn’t know what. It wasn’t until a  few days later that Jordan said to me “we’re shooting the finale in there.” I thought it was  genius, but crazy – how would we shoot a fight scene in there?

Needless to say, it was  one of the most difficult scenes to film since it was cramped, dark, wet and for the torch  scenes – full of fumes. There was also the challenge of lighting it in an interesting way –  we ended up just placing a battery powered LED light at the end of the tunnel to create  a silhouette and then front lit him with a china lantern on a pole for a sourceless  ambiance. We would file in one by one – first Chris, the actor, then me with the camera,  then Jordan watching the shot and holding the lantern for light. In the end, we spent  three very difficult days shooting all the scenes in there and, as you said, it is now one of  the most memorable scenes in the movie.

HGL: Talk about the interesting process that went into creating the creatures and the warrior’s armor.

JD: The armor is absolutely incredible. Not only is the craftsmanship of it top-notch,  but more importantly, the overall design and how well it works for our story is what blew  us away the most. We went back and forth early on with a number of different designs  and ideas. The main thing I wanted was to remind people with the costume that we’re  watching a horror movie. This character was more Leatherface than he was a character  from Game of Thrones. So, there’s a scariness in the design of it, and there’s all sorts of  little heads and faces stitched into the cape. It really shows the history and gory nature  of our guy.

The main creature head was built by Troy Smith, who worked with us on the  ThanksKilling movies and made the critter for our Critters short. Outside of those guys,  we had no production design or special effects team so we did the rest of the monsters,  set construction, and props ourselves. A lot of the monster heads and props in the  movie are cheap Halloween store items that we aged and painted and hid in the  shadows. You really have to think through what items and artifacts will get significant  screen time and delegate your time wisely.

KS: We were also able to pull a lot of ancient artifacts and rusty contraptions from my  grandma’s house basement. Things that were used by my family years and years ago,  mostly farming tools and such, but they really helped add age and authenticity to the  frame.

HGL: The movie recently had a screening at the Fantasporto Festival in Portugal. Given that the film was shot there and that Kevin was raised there, what was that experience like for you guys?

KS: It had been a dream of mine to screen a film there one day, so it was quite an  incredible feeling to finally do so. Fantasporto actually has an amazing history of finding  young unknown filmmakers that are about to hit it big, such as David Cronenberg, David  Fincher and James Cameron just to name a few. A lot of my family and friends all live in  Porto, so they were all able to come to the screening and show their support which was  pretty magical. We ended up winning two awards there as well – one for Best Actor and  one for Best Portuguese movie (the movie is in English, but because it was shot in  Portugal and me being Portuguese we were able to compete in that category). The  whole thing was really great and I will never forget it.

HGL: The film has garnered near universal praise on the festival circuit. You (Kevin) have received accolades for your cinematography and Christopher Rygh for his acting. How have you all responded to that?

JD: I’ve been so happy for everyone involved. I think these guys deserve every bit  of praise that comes their way. It simply means what we set out to do is working for  people. It’s finding an audience and that’s all we could ever hope for.

KS: Any time you pour your heart and soul into a project that you believe in, it’s very  gratifying to receive that kind of recognition. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting such a  good response because the movie has such a limited scope with little dialogue. We  decided to make this film because we were tired of waiting for an opportunity to come  our way. So, it’s been a really nice surprise and we couldn’t be happier for the whole  team that helped get us there. Christopher now has two Best Actor awards for his first  ever role as a lead and deservedly so. He was great to work with and this movie  wouldn’t be getting recognized the way it has been without him and his performance.

HGL: You are probably best-known among horror fans for your film ThanksKilling and its subsequent sequel. How did that film come about and how did you come up with the iconic character and voice for Turkie (voiced by Jordan)?

JD: I think The Head Hunter is much more who we are as filmmakers, but I will  always have a soft spot for campy b-horror. I grew up obsessed with talking villains like  Leprechaun, Jack Frost, Chucky, and Freddy – I’d rent those movies endlessly. At the  same time, we were really into South Park , Sick Animation , and any kind of crude R- rated animation. Add the two together and you get ThanksKilling . It all started as a joke  and the challenge between Kevin and I to “go make a feature film” that we carried  through to the end. The voice of Turkie is more or less my poor rendition of Robert  Englund meets Trey Parker.

KS: I think we were juniors in college at the time we came up with the idea for  ThanksKilling . Being young and hungry, we were looking for a way to go make any  feature that could somehow find an audience. We loved bad B-horror movies, so we  thought of doing one of our own. We knew it had to be ludicrous and unique and people  would actually watch it. At the time, the Thanksgiving holiday hadn’t really been  exploited in the B-horror world so we came up with a killer turkey Thanksgiving movie.  We immediately came up with the tagline “Gobble, Gobble Mother Fucker,” and laughed  our asses off. At that point, we knew we would have to go make the damned thing. That  movie was actually the start of us believing we could make films this way – with almost  no crew and little to no resources – as long as they were unique in some way.

HGL: Kevin, you have worked with the Funny or Die team in the past. How was that? Any interesting stories from your time there?

KS: Funny or Die was a great learning experience because I got to shoot a good  amount of sketches with well-known actors. To be able to be around them and see them  work (even if it was light-hearted) allowed me to hone in my craft in very tight schedules.  I got to work with many different up and coming directors in a forgiving environment and  around some of the best actors and entertainers in the business. It was a great platform  for me to learn and experiment. The best story from those days was going to the White  House to be part of the crew that shot the Between Two Ferns episode with President  Obama. (Jordan was there, too!) We had 30 minutes with him to shoot and then got to  each personally shake his hand afterwards. It was a pretty surreal and exciting day.

HGL: Back to The Head Hunter, what kind of distribution can we look forward to?

The Head Hunter is releasing on April 5th in select theaters and VOD. Here is the full list  of where you can find it:

Select Theaters week of April 5th:

You can follow more news about The Head Hunter on the official website and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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