Posted in: Exclusive, Hulu, Interview, Movies | Tagged: Anna Zlokovic, Appendage, Brandon Mychal Smith, emily hampshire, exclusive, Hadley Robinson, hulu, interview, Kausar Mohammed

Appendage: Anna Zlokovic on Developing Short to Hulu Horror Feature

Director and writer Anna Zlokovic talks to Bleeding Cool about her latest Hulu psychological horror thriller in Appendage from short to film.

Anna Zlokovic, like many other aspiring writer-directors, is always looking for that break into the mainstream. The opportunity couldn't be riper for the taking, given how content-starved the streaming era has become. Luckily, Hulu decided to take a chance turning her short Appendage into a feature film following the Disney-owned streamer's anthology series Bite Size Halloween. The film follows Hannah (Hadley Robinson), a young fashion designer who seems fine on the surface but secretly struggles with debilitating self-doubt. Soon, these buried feelings begin to make Hannah physically sick and sprout into a ferocious growth on her body. Zlokovic spoke to Bleeding Cool about talking that call, the exhaustive creative process of fleshing out the story to feature-length, Robinson's chemistry with Emily Hampshire's Claudia, and the film's mental health themes.

Appendage: How the Horror Film Tackles Mental Health and Drew Inspiration from 'The Fly '(1986), 'Raw' (2016) & 'Black Swan' (2010)

Bleeding Cool: What was the inspiration behind Appendage?
Zlokovic: I've been struggling in an ongoing battle with anxiety and depression for a long time. When writing the film, I wanted to find a way to put that into art and make something relatable. The older I get, the more I'm like, "Wow, everybody's struggling with something," like this is a universal thing going on. I wanted to do that but also make it funny and digestible so that as many could relate to it. This is what came out of that.

How long did it take you to develop the script?
It was an interesting process because it was a short film first. I made the short film with Hulu as a proof of concept in August 2021. While we were making that, the team, which included 20th Digital Studio, came on set for the short and said, "We want to make a feature." I was like, "No, you don't. That's not right. You're going to take that back in a week." They weren't lying [laughing] and said, "We'd like to hear a pitch." That came together over around six to seven weeks. It was fast, and the script development process was probably about two months collectively, which is not usual. It's very unusual for me to write that fast, but the time crunch weirdly motivated me.

What was the most difficult obstacle going from doing shorts to a full feature?
The most difficult obstacle was making sure that the feature could stand independently and expanding the concept so that it offered something new and fresh. That it could take the concept of the short and unravel it unexpectedly. That was the constant, "All right. What happens next? How do I not be bored by this? What if this happens?" That was the propelling force.

Can you get into the casting and how Hadley [Robinson] and Emily [Hampshire] work well with everyone else?
We had an amazing casting director named Lindsey Weissmuller. She had sent hundreds of people for the role of Hannah, and I knew that the person playing that part had to be brave, vulnerable, and do things that people would say are unlikable or not. What do you want someone to be doing in a situation and not a save-the-cat kind of situation? You also want the person to be sincere because we deal with mental health issues. The second I saw Hadley when they sent me her work, I was like, "Whoa, this is a person like, no one else can do this like this." I know this person, and we moved the shoot two weeks earlier to make sure she could do it because her schedule was so tight, and she was on 'Winning Time' at that time.

Getting her was a big push; when we finally did, she was a gem. She's so wonderful and was a great person to work with. With Emily, it was a similar situation where it was like, "This is the exact person for this part." Emily's work is vast and varied, and I found her to be an incredible character actor and an amazing comedian. Not to spoil anything, but she had to be able to play different sides and be unique and specific with the role of Claudia. We were like, "You're the person." She was like, "I love this. Let's do it." It's cool.

What are your biggest influences in the film and how it evolved to what it became?
We screened all these films during production as well every week the biggest top three influences would be David Cronenberg's 'The Fly' (1986), Julia Ducournau's 'Raw' (2016), and Darren Aronofsky's 'Black Swan' (2010). The mishmash of those was a big influence.

Was there any sequence or scene in the film that was difficult to develop?
One of the most challenging sequences to shoot was towards the end. There was a big fight sequence and a hostage situation that was difficult because we had to squeeze it within two and a half days to three days in production. It was a lot to shoot during that amount of time. There were a lot of effects, stunts, and a lot of things going on. That wasn't easy to get through, but we did it. We're on the other side, and it was fulfilling to finish that and to get it done in a quality-assured way.

In terms of writing. I didn't have time to question myself too much during the writing process, where I usually would be struggling a lot and being like, "I don't know, and pulling on my hair." There wasn't time for it, so there were other drafts. The biggest struggle would probably have been [asking], "Why is this happening now in the movie? Why's her breakdown happening right now?" and we're having that discussion with our producers and the creative team.

There was a version of the movie where her mom died at the top, and then 'Appendage' became this grief monster, and I thought, "No, I don't want to do that." The movie's supposed to be about the mental health struggle almost in a vacuum, in a sense. Hannah has a lot of difficult things happening in the film. It was interesting to see how it shifted everything to have a traumatic event. It was interesting back and forth to say there mustn't be a singular traumatic event that occurs in the film that paints it a certain way. It's a movie about grief, it's a movie about whatever. That was probably the biggest overall thing that we worked on. The final product you can see is a movie about anxiety, depression, intrusive thoughts, and whatever spectrum you're struggling with mental health. We landed on that quietly.

Appendage, which also stars Kausar Mohammed and Brandon Mychal Smith, is available to stream on Hulu.

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