Posted in: Exclusive, Horror, Interview, Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: amandla stenberg, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, exclusive, interview, Jacqueline Castel, LGBTQ, My Animal, paramount

My Animal Director Jacqueline Castel on LGBTQ Film's Influences, Style

Director Jacqueline Castel breaks down the influences to her LGBTQ supernatural drama My Animal and the stylistic choices she made.

For anyone taking on their first film like director Jacqueline Castel, it might seem like a daunting challenge at first, but her experience in fronting shorts and over 15 years as a cinematographer has served her well. In My Animal, she's able to not only tell an LGBTQ coming-of-age story but also blend in supernatural elements for a horror twist. The film follows Heather, played by nonbinary actor Bobbi Salvör Menuez (Euphoria), a social outcast who's an aspiring hockey goalie hoping to work her way up in her small northern town. She meets Jonny, played by Amandla Stenberg (Star Wars: The Acolyte), an alluring but tormented figure skater. As the two discover their love for one another, Heather has to deal not only with the pressures to perform as an athlete but also with her alcoholic mother at home and hide her sexuality in the small conservative community. While promoting the film for Sundance, Castel spoke to Bleeding Cool about the film influences, the trial and error of a proper ending, and the more cerebral sequences between her stars.

Films that Inspired 'My Animal'

Bleeding Cool: Were there any external works that helped influence 'My Animal?'
Castel: I love getting into research for any kind of project that I do. Everything from researching books on the history of werewolves, the burning rituals that would be done when a werewolf died, or when you were trying to kill a werewolf, there were short stories by Angela Carter with 'The Bloody Chamber.' That was also like combined with Val Lewton's 'Cat People' (1942) or [Andrzej] Zulawski's 'Possession' (1981) or [David Lynch's] 'Twin Peaks,' where you have this very ordinary world that has interruptions into the supernatural realm. Those were all kinds of pieces that were interesting to me, but I'm inspired by everything. I'm inspired by music and art. All sorts of different things filter in and help create a world when I'm in prep.

The narrative with Heather and Jonny is tragic, given the characters' backgrounds and the world around them. Were there other endings you explored between the two, or was the original ending always the plan?
There were editorial changes made. There was a longer cap at the film's end after the climax scene. It's hard to talk about this without spoiling stuff, but there was stuff I ultimately ended up not incorporating into the final film. The ending changed pretty dramatically, which happens when you explore different things in the edit and see what feels right. After a lot of feedback I received and paying attention to my instincts, I thought the additional end chapter that happened didn't necessarily work for the movie. There was a different ending, and there were a lot of different scenes that changed and transformed throughout the process of the film.

There are a lot of cerebral and psychological scenes of what Heather was going through. Was there any particular scene or sequence that was more difficult to shoot than others?
For some of the more stylized moments in the film, I found that was supposed to be the easiest stuff to shoot weirdly because I knew strongly creatively what I wanted to do. It was finding the balance with the real world, how you shift between those two spaces, how you do it effectively, and how you experiment with that. That was something I was trying to hone in on.

In terms of the difficulty of stuff, it had more to do with the production side because we were shooting mostly night shoots and Northern Ontario in -30-degree weather. It was intense, and in terms of the difficulties, much of it stemmed from production. When you feel inspired and charged up by a scene, that's always the easiest stuff to shoot. When you're trying to find that middle ground, that's when you're like, "This doesn't quite feel right," or "Why is this concession stand so hard to shoot?" I don't know why it's so hard to shoot the space. Some things weirdly become the more complicated things to shoot.

Band with Pictures & Good Movies' My Animal also stars Stephen Mchattie, Heidi Von Palleske, Cory Lipman, and Joe Apollonio. The film comes to select theaters on September 8th and comes to digital on September 15th. Check out part one here.

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