The Taking made waves when it premiered in 2013. After meeting with several accolades at A Night of Horror Festival in Sydney, Australia, and L’Étrange Festival in Paris, France, the movie was released on Blu-ray. In October, I had the chance to sit down with writer/directors Cezil Reed and Lydelle Jackson (known as the BAPartists) to discuss their first feature-length project.

Søren

Hey, guys! I’m glad we’re getting the chance to talk about your movie.

Cezil

Oh definitely, definitely.

Søren

So I guess, just to start off – why a horror film? I’ve looked at a lot of your work and The Taking seems a little bit different than your other stuff.

Cezil

Well, we were talking about what our next feature could be. And we kind of decided together to go into horror because it seemed as though it would be a very accepting place for new ideas, and new filmmakers. I’m starting to think The Taking was a little too new.

Søren

Too new?

Cezil

Yeah well it’s – I don’t know if you want to speak on this, Delle –

Lydelle

Yeah, I could jump in. It’s funny because just this year we went on our festival run and we’d been having some good success on the festival circuit. We premiered in Sydney, Australia, at the Night of Horror and won the Independent Spirit Award over there. And then we were in competition at Stiges, which is the biggest genre film festival in the world. So, you know, we’re competing with people are just legends in these festivals – people like Jean-Luc Godard and people like that.

Cezil

(Laughs.)

Lydelle

And it’s funny because just this past weekend – the film was just released on Blu-ray – Cezil discovered on Sunday morning that the film had been leaked and pirated. And so we checked Pirate Bay, isoHunt – and it’s everywhere. 6,000 leaches on every site. Last time I checked it’d been downloaded 16,000 times.

Søren

Wow. In some ways that almost seems gratifying that people want to check out your movie.

Lydelle

Yeah, I think it’s kind of cool. So going back to the question you asked earlier, we really stepped out there to something new with horror and it fell into the hands of not the target audience we had in mind.

Søren

Interesting.

Lydelle

So we saw this giant response online that was like, “What the f*** is this movie?” And then you go to IMDB and you just see the rating change immensely. And you know, people are really responding strongly. Mainly harshly, but every now and then we get that one person that says, “Oh man, this film is amazing – this is some next-level  stuff.” And so maybe that’s what Cezil meant by saying that maybe it was a little  “too new.” Correct me if I’m wrong –

Cezil

Well yeah, the whole point was to do something different in the horror genre, in the horror world. But I think for the masses – I think people went into it thinking they were going to see a horror film. When in reality you’re seeing an experimental film with horror sensibilities.

Søren

Right.

Cezil

Most people, I think, they don’t have the patience for experimental filmmaking or telling stories in experimental ways. But I think if, for those who are open to that genre and then want to see some of their favorite elements from horror kind of put inside of it, I think it can be something very exciting for them.

But it’s cool, though. I think if people really hate what you do, it’s better for people to feel some kind of emotion, some type of response, than no type of response at all.

Søren

Better to be hated than be ignored.

Cezil

Yeah, it’s funny how angry people are – people are really angry. They’re very angry with us. It’s funny that most of the feedback is that most of the people haven’t been able to get past the first 10 minutes.