We spoke with director Marcus Dunstan about his film ‘#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead’
#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead is a horror movie with a Gen Z twist. Looking at obsession with public image, phones, and more, the movie, directed by Marcus Dunstan, asks questions about our use of social media while still giving us some great twists and turns.
I spoke with Dunstan about the release of the movie, and he talked about how it isn’t just a straightforward horror movie but has different genres mixed in. It makes you care about characters who are, on the surface, horrible people and takes you on this wild ride with them.
“I’m going to piggyback on a sentiment that was, I believe, delivered by Oz Perkins recently. And he was just like ‘Why Horror? It’s because horror invites in every other genre as well,'” Dunstan said. “And I was thinking beautifully said because yes, every time, I’m grateful and fortunate enough to enter the fray and tell a story, directing wise. I also want to make different movies within that movie. And the horror is there. The horror can be reshaped for how it, it might feel in the pulse of a moment. In the case of #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead we shot an order. Thank you Kirk Shaw. Thank you Stephanie, for that because we could evolve then. And even if a good line came, if a good character twist came, we can make this scare sequence better.”
Dunstan went on to talk about how it gave them freedom with the film. “We could do it with absolute freedom because we didn’t have to worry about the continuity of any of those ramifications,” he said. “We could roll with it. So I liked that we juggled a lot of different tones. I wasn’t necessarily going into All My Friends Are Dead making just a horror movie. Because there was a really good sense of dark humor to it that was cool. Josh Sims and Jessica Sarah Flaum’s screenplay had these characters that I felt like I was eavesdropping on. On this group of vibrant friends, maybe frenemies, maybe cabal of dark secret keepers. And then there was something that was the most surprising, this twist and that was like, ‘Okay, now that’s something to protect. I didn’t see that coming.”
#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead is available on VOD.
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