Whether on the stage or onscreen, Neil LaBute has brought a very particular vision to the world. Over the course of a long, fascinating career, the writer/director has always explored power struggles between people, dissecting the nastiness of human nature and the power dynamics inherent in sex and relationships through his typically unlikable characters (although, ‘unlikable’ is a subjective term that depends on who is doing the disliking, and if someone seems objectively likable, maybe you just haven’t gotten to know them).
LaBute brings this vision to his new horror film House of Darkness, in which a man gets more than he bargained for from his potential hook-up. That man is Hap (played by Justin Long), who has a nightcap with a woman he’s driven home from a bar, Mina (played by Kate Bosworth). She lives in a gloriously gothic old mansion, and fails to tell Hap that her two sisters are lurking in the house — Lucy (played by Gia Crovatin) and Nora (played by Lucy Walters). Crovatin and Walters spoke with MovieWeb about the film, working with LaBute, and what House of Darkness reflects about the current moment.
Gia Crovatin on Neil LaBute
“I’ve had a long admiration of Neil’s work, and I’ve worked with him on stage, and I’ve worked with him on film and on TV,” said Crovatin, who worked with LaBute on the film Dirty Weekend, the TV series Billie & Billy and Van Helsing, and several projects for the theater. “[House of Darkness] is kind of a marriage of that intimate, theatrical sort of interpersonal relationship, with the kind of grand scale and metaphors of horror. It’s a really good combination.” Crovatin’s character is a sarcastically playful, darkly magnetic presence that Hap immediately flirts with, forgetting the woman downstairs who he was hoping to sleep with just minutes prior.
Crovatin is a frequent collaborator with the director for many reasons, the most obvious of which is his unique prose. “It starts with the word,” said the actor, whose piercing eyes frequently steal House of Darkness even when buried beneath dark eyeliner. “It starts with the words on the page, and I just think he’s an exquisite writer. His words are the way that people really talk and think. There’s a musicality that’s unique and feels very visceral, and that is always a delight as an actor.”
Crovatin is living proof that some of LaBute’s early criticism is patently misguided. “There’s a perception out there that he’s a misogynist, or he could be a jerk or something like that, but he’s honestly like the biggest teddy bear in the world, just a gentle soul who loves making art and loves telling stories. It’s so great to work with people who really love what they do, and who want to support everyone that they’re with in that endeavor of truly making the best piece of work that they can.”
Covid, Vampires, and Human Touch in House of Darkness
The small cast (only the four actors) and crew worked in that supportive fashion at a beautiful antiquated mansion in Arkansas to deliver House of Darkness. “It was an 11-day shoot,” said Crovatin. “We shot all nights in the middle of nowhere Arkansas, in a castle. It’s the first project that all of us had really done out of the lockdown of Covid. So it was kind of this weird testing of the waters. We had all just gotten our first rounds of the vaccines, so there was this very kind of nervous, anxious, but also hopeful, energy, like we’re doing this creepy thing together.”
The looming threat of Covid-19 has affected basically every film released in the past two years in some way or another, but it seemed especially pertinent for everyone involved in House of Darkness, being the first major project they did since the pandemic. It also relates to the actual subject and plot of the film regarding touch and vampires. “Certainly in the pandemic, we were all just starved for skin contact,” said Walters, who is working with LaBute for the first time here but became immediately noticeable ever since her work in the film Shame. Like House of Darkness, that movie explored sexuality and relationships in a very distinct way.
“There’s something really nice about how his world is exploring sexuality,” continued Walters, whose character arrives late in House of Darkness as the older sister, a dominant and authoritative presence who seems much less interested in flirting with Hap, the way the other two sisters play around with him. “I was like, what if there’s just a little more weariness, exhaustion, and existential misery to her? I picture her being the oldest, whereas the other girls are a little bit more into the cat and mouse thing, torturing and playing with their food before they really kill it. I justified [my character] as being a bit more over it. She’s definitely gonna come for the kill, but is not that interested in the long talking part.”
Lucy Walters on the Complicated Horror of House of Darkness
The way each sister engages with Hap and each other is fascinating, fluctuating between lust, resentment, pity, and just plain hunger. “I am very close with my sister. I think there’s something very interesting about sibling relationships and just the sort of sister dynamics in here,” said Walters, and she’s right; it’s honestly delightful to see the three women interact, even if it is over the fate of poor, stupid, lying Hap.
How Hap responds to them says a lot as well. There are certain buzzwords that get thrown around a lot these days, and they’re certainly explored in House of Darkness, but so is the dark nature of the hungry human soul that LaBute has been reflecting for three decades, from his early dark comedies to his current horror projects. “I love this genre for just sort of exploring our darker fears and desires, and [House of Darkness] is disturbing in a psychosexual way,” said Walters, who acknowledges the phrases people want to apply to the film but concludes that LaBute’s work, like life itself, is much more complicated than that.
“I really do think Neil is rightfully shying away from having any sort of tidy didactic message. I don’t think there are any easy answers about heroes or villains. He is playing with power dynamics,” elaborated Walters. “You never know, like, are they gonna fight or are they gonna f*ck? I think it is mesmerizing to go into those disturbing dynamics […] Yes, we’re not impressed by the sort of glorification of rape culture or anything, but Justin’s character isn’t that sh*tty in the spectrum of sh*tty dudes. I’m not saying he’s any sort of model because that character is definitely not, but I think it’s kind of more interesting that we can’t totally vilify him.”
House of Darkness Asks How We Can Survive Together
“Like life, it’s very nuanced. I think that this is a larger discussion about society,” added Crovatin. “I think Neil writes beautifully about the interpersonal dynamics of men and women, and I think that this is just in the same vein. We’re talking about how we react to each other. If we’re already bringing our own biases and our own histories to everything, and we’ve already got a point made in our head about who you are, then how do we go beyond that? How can we kind of reconcile what’s happened and the things that we want in terms of revenge and in terms of retribution, with like surviving as a human species? I think that there’s an interesting dialogue to be had about that.”
Crovatin brings up a fascinating point about House of Darkness — what do we do with crappy people, the kind who aren’t criminals but rather exist on a plane of low-level awfulness from day to day? Do we act crappy to them in turn? What is the point of revenge against a person or group who have historically wronged others? How is equity attained? Through canceling ‘bad’ people and ostracizing them from society, or through violence, or through endless dialogue? How do we survive together?
House of Darkness is a fun, stagey movie with a great gothic atmosphere, but it brings up interesting debates when one sits with it long enough. “There’s no question that Hap is a total jerk, but I would love to hear the discussions that people have about whether he deserves what he gets, because I think that there are valid arguments on both sides,” said Crovatin. “Those are very charged and interesting territories to explore,” concluded Walters, “and I think hopefully this just raises conversations, but isn’t trying to pin anything down.”
Saban Films will release House of Darkness, a likable movie about living with unlikable people, in theaters on September 9, 2022, and on Demand and Digital on September 13, 2022.
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