Posted in: Exclusive, Horror, Interview, Movies | Tagged: exclusive, interview, megan fox, S. K. Dale, Subservience, Vertigo Releasing, xyz films

Subservience Director on Sci-Fi Thriller Inspirations & Power Dynamic

Director S. K. Dale (Till Death) spoke to Bleeding Cool on how Fatal Attraction & The Hand That Rocks the Cradle influence Subservience.

In Subservience, S. K. Dale wanted to tell a cautionary tale about humanity's dangerous relationship with technology. Blending his love for thrillers like Fatal Attraction (1987) along with revolutionary commentary from AI-sci thrillers like Ex Machina (2014), The Terminator franchise, and M3GAN (2022). Vertigo Releasing & XYZ Films Subservience follows a struggling father (Michele Morrone) who acquires Alice (Megan Fox), an android designed for domesticated duties, to help run the household along with his daughter (Matilda Firth) as his wife (Madeline Zima) is recovering from a medical episode. Dale spoke to Bleeding Cool about working with writers Will Honley and April Maguire's script, his most difficult scene to film, and how he was careful structuring the story's power dynamics.

Subservience Director S. K. Dale on Filming and Carefully Constructing Narratives

Bleeding Cool: The script from Will and April opens the discussion of AI's influence on our daily lives. Were there other stories to help influence the narrative of 'Subservience' a cautionary tale?

In terms of inspiration, there were the erotic thrillers of the 90s and 2000 where you've got 'Fatal Attraction,' 'Unfaithful' (2002), and 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' (1992), which is funny because Madeline [Zima] plays the little girl (Emma) in that. When we had our first meeting, she was like, "You know [what] 'The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is." There are a lot of similarities here, and I feel like I've been prepping for that role my whole life since I was a kid when I was in it.

That was exciting, and it felt like coming full circle. Those films inspired the family relationship, particularly the first half. Once we got past that point, we leaned more into the sci-fi elements in the horror and thrillers. That was exciting, taking the film's first half and leading in a different direction. They did a great job of that as well. I want to credit the riders. They established these characters and the story well.

What was the most difficult scene to film?

There were a couple of technically difficult scenes. One is Michele and Megan sitting at a bar and a simple scene. He's there, and she comes in one half of the element; she's playing this glitching android, so finding that performance within her, we played with a few different things. The most difficult part was the day we went to shoot it. Michele was sick and couldn't come in, so we shot her half with the stand-in, and then we couldn't fit the next half of the scene until a few weeks later. We had Michaela in and wrapped filming with Megan by that stage. We had another stand-in with him, so there was a lot of physical and emotional interaction and trying to shoot his side a few weeks later, which was nerve-wracking. Can we make this work? It's one of my favorite scenes to watch; part of it is knowing the difficulties.

With the power dynamic, the traditional social commentary comes from the male lead character and the power he's exerting. Since this flips the narrative, it leans more towards 'Fatal Attraction.' Can you break down how the film's infrastructure resembles the thrillers you mentioned earlier and how that evolves in the 2024 setting? What was okay then isn't so much now.

One of the biggest differences between this film and the others is that we have an android coming in and playing with that element of it all. There was a sense of nervousness when we went into it, like, "How do we approach certain scenes? We don't want Nick to come across too strong in this way. We wanted it to make it feel like Alice desired certain things and wanted this element to happen." In terms of certain sex scenes, there was a power dynamic. We switched it and had Alice embracing the power in those scenes and going so far as to blindfold him. I wanted to make her feel powerful in those scenes, which usually when I see other sex scenes, we tend to see the man having to be as masculine as possible and exerting power. I wanted to flip that on its head and look at the other side of things.

Subservience, which also stars Andrew Whipp, is available on digital.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!