Filmmaker George Ratliff says there's nothing scarier than becoming a parent. That feeling drives his new film Joshua (opening July 13 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas and other select Theaters). It's about a Manhattan family bringing home a new baby girl.
KPBS film critic Beth Accomando speaks with the director about his unconventional take on family life.
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The happy family of Joshua (Fox Searchlight)
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Filmmaker George Ratliff has a dilemma. He has to promote his film yet the best way for audiences to see Joshua is to not know anything about it.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "That's exactly right. If I had my druthers no one would have any inkling of an idea. I mean even the poster's too much."
Ratliff has come to terms with the fact that the studio is marketing Joshua as an "evil kid movie." That's because the title character is a sweet looking boy who may be the cause of the strange happenings in his family. But Ratliff knows that audience expectations can affect the way people experience a film.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "It's not a horror movie and think that if people think they're going to a horror movie they have a different set of expectations and we were trying to do a very frightening movie that was based in reality that could happen to anyone. Being a parent I think is one of the scariest things you could do so finding the horror in that situation is, having a child that for no good reason was just a bad kid and what's more he's a lot smarter than you are."
FILM CLIP
BRAD: "Can I ask you a question Mrs. Danforth? Joshua, how smart is he?"
MRS. DANFORTH: "We may be getting a head of ourselves but we think Joshua might benefit from skipping a grade, maybe two."
Joshua 's smart and so is the movie in the way it slowly ratchets up tension within the family.
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Jacob Kogan as Joshua (Fox Searchlight)
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FILM CLIP
JOSHUA: "Do ever feel weird about me, your weird son?"
BRAD: "No."
JOSHUA: "You know you don't have to love me, it's not a rule or something."
BRAD: "But I do love you, you're my son, I'll always love you no matter what."
That love gets tested as Joshua's father sees the family fall apart. Ratliff creates a visual style that reflects the family's downward spiral. He begins the movie with pleasing images of family life. He uses a handheld camera that creates what he calls "a living frame." Then the film begins its slow descent.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "The height of the camera is lower and lower as Joshua this boy is taking over the movie The moves stop being handheld, and become more precise and calculated."
The result is a film that builds a disturbing sense of unease. Ratliff describes it as a combination of 70s horror movies like Rosemary's Baby and something that's happening right now in French cinema.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "These very intense thrillers that are steeped in naturalism like With a Friend Like Harry or Cache or Read My Lips , which I think are very frightening movies but they are finding the frightening in the mundane or the day to day stories that could happen to you. They feel real in the way they're shot and the way they look and Joshua feels that way."
Ratliff shot a documentary called Hell House . It's about a real Dallas church that creates a haunted house to scare kids into Christianity.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "It's frightening the way they do it but it's frightening the belief system that's behind."
The director says that documentary proved to be good prep work.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "I was really playing with this connection between this nervous laughter and anxiety and fear and that's one main thing that carried over into Joshua is playing with that relationship."
Take a scene where Dad finds Joshua preparing to embalm his teddy bear.
FILM CLIP
BRAD: "Hey what are you doing?"
JOSHUA: "In Egypt when they embalmed people like Pharaohs they broke the nose and removed the brain through the opening."
The scene makes you laugh but you also worry what Joshua will do next. Ratliff suggests that his film might make people think twice about starting a family.
GEORGE RATLIFF: "We always joked that this is a population control movie, a little cinematic birth control."
Well maybe for audiences but not for Hollywood. Joshua has plenty of cinematic siblings-from The Bad Seed to The Omen -and there are bound to be more evil offspring if these films continue to attract audiences.
Companion viewing: Hell House, Rosemary's Baby, With a Friend Like Harry, Lemming , The Omen
