Inheritance is an unnerving and deliberately-paced psychological thriller, an effective exercise of tension and atmosphere. I quite enjoyed the film, which is why I was pretty stoked to have a Skype talk with writer-director Tyler Savage, and produced J.P. Castel.

In this interview, they tell me (almost) everything about the making of the film, while also giving me a small insight into their creative process and their backgrounds in the movie industry.

For those who haven’t heard about your work; can you tell me a little bit about your background as a filmmaker?

Tyler Savage: I grew up in Los Angeles. I started being interested in film from five or six years old. I ended up going to NYU’s film school, and after that, I worked at Warner Brothers for about two years; I worked for the guy that produced 300, and a bunch of macho, sort of straight, studio action pictures. It was a cool experience, but then I got an opportunity working with Terrence Malick, and that was much more up my alley.

So I moved away from California to Texas for almost four years, and worked with him on four different features. That was the biggest education I got on film.

What films did you do with him?

Savage: I came in when Tree of Life was on post, then started on To the Wonder, and did Knight of Cups, Song to Song and Voyage of Time. Always divisive movies.

So you decided to make your own stuff after working with him?

Savage: Yeah. I left Austin because I wanted to start writing. My writing partner, Dash Hawkins, who also co-produced the film with J.P. Castel, he and I got representation based on a spec script and started writing full time for about three years. And then, after lots of frustrating experiences as a writer, where projects fall apart or where you get used to getting terrible notes, falling out of love with something you liked at the beginning, I decided to make our own picture. It was more satisfying in terms of creative freedom.

So how was the process of making your first picture?

Savage: Well, there’s not a lot of government funding here in the US. In Europe it’s better with those sorts of things. I have a friend who lives in Germany, who got like $40,000 to do some documentary projects from the government, from a grant. And I was like, “wow, that does not happen in here”.

It was personal equity, and calling in every favour. A lot of it was made possible due to the fact that I has a lot of contacts from the Malick world. Almost all of our camera package and all of our rentals and grip and lighting equipment, we got almost for nothing. You just call in favours; people who have connections at rental houses. 

We paid almost nothing for any locations; maybe 500 or 600 dollars. We had a family connection to get the house, and then the town that we shot in, really hadn’t had any shoots at all. It was a small, quiet town. So they barely charged us anything, and everyone had an open-door policy, in terms of letting us film, which was really special. And it also helps to stay under-budget, when a lot of people were either being paid very modestly, or not at all. JP probably handled six different roles on the film; it was keeping your belt tight, and keeping most of what you got.

Castel: Also, since it’s outside of LA, the typical place where people like filming, the benefit of filming in a place like Cayucos was that people were more open to letting us shoot. It was much more friendly. 

Savage: I think for younger filmmakers, you must put location first. And also your cast and crew. I was actually introduced to JP through Chase (Joliet), the guy who stars in our movie. I knew him from way back, because he was a P.A. on one of the Malick movies

s, so that was how we met. And he’s from Texas, so a lot of it came together organically. I was friends with Chase, I was friends with JP, I was friends with Dash. A lot of the cast, like Ashley (Spillers), who plays the sister, and her husband, the bearded guy, and Drew Powell, the big, burly family member (the “second cousin”)… we all knew them.

So a lot of the it was before the script was even done. A lot of the cast was in place. 

It made sense to be so precise, since both the house and the town seem to be characters themselves in the movie.

Savage: The look and feel of the film was as important to me as the narrative. Since it was my first feature, I didn’t want to do too much, like an ensemble cast with thirteen characters and seventeen locations, crazy stuff. I wanted something more manageable, that I could control. On the next one, I will certainly get more complex. Being in control and having a clear sense of tone and style, was important from the get-go.

You think of a pretty location, and then think of something dark to do with it. We wanted to take this beautiful place and then make it dreadful. There’s something always entertaining about contrast. You’re not expecting that tone in that setting, and I think that we wanted the film to have a tainted happy ending. It feels like this beautiful, happy, “riding off into the sunset” kind of ending, but we know that it’s not.

Going back to the script itself, what was the inspiration for the story?

Savage: Most stories come out of a character or out of a theme or an idea. In this case, most of it came out of the idea. We wanted to do a genre story that explores deep themes about family, and fathers, and sons. So we had this cool location, I knew I wanted to work with Chase, and I knew I wanted to do something about fathers and sons, about a son that had to unpeel a mystery about his father so that he can discover something about himself. So once you have that, I thought, “well, maybe he’s adopted”; he didn’t have a relationship with his father, so it was a seemingly wish-fulfilling situation where he’s inheriting this expensive house. But under dark circumstances. So I basically wanted to explore that kind of idea, and then do that within the constraints we had.

What genre would you say the film belongs to?

Savage: It’s a bit horror, because we had to label the movie; it’s a way to get it into the marketplace. So I think that calling it a psycho-thriller is probably more fitting than a horror film. But we knew we were doing something different. And we didn’t want to make a haunted house story. We wanted to push the boundaries of genre expectations and see if we could do something a little bit more thoughtful and meditative, or philosophical, within the framework of a genre theme.

The hope was that you pull people in with the candy of the genre premise, have a few scares and the fun tone and the sense of tension, but, coming from the Malick background, I didn’t have any interest in making a straight horror film. I wanted to meditate on this sort of larger, personal and cultural themes.

In an ideal world, if we had a star in the film, and I was an established filmmaker, we wouldn’t have to put the movie in a box. We could’ve said it was a drama movie with thriller elements.

So how was the casting process for the people you didn’t know already?

Savage: Sara Montez was one of the only people that we really cast in a traditional sense. It was JP, Dash and myself in this casting session with Chase, since we knew he was playing Ryan. We had five or six women that we brought in, and it was pretty obvious by the time the afternoon was over that she was going to be the fit. It was good chemistry, honestly kind of sexual chemistry, with things going on between them that made them believable as a couple. So that really helped.

It’s always brutal, casting in L.A. It’s a tough game. And because we were making a movie on a small enough scale, part of me looks back and maybe thinks we could’ve gotten someone with a little more celebrity because he was on a TV show, or whatever. But because it was my first effort, it was mostly getting people who could play the roles well. But now that JP and I are putting together another feature, as the budget gets higher, we’re gonna have to make casting our number one priority. We’re gonna have to change tactics a little bit.

How much did the shoot last?

Savage: The whole shoot was twenty days. And then we had one day of pickups, like two months later. We shot the underwater imagery in my mother’s pool. It was really tight; we had something like fourteen days in the house itself, two days in the desert for the opening of the film, and then the rest of it was in the town. But we really did it in a smart order; we started in the desert, then in the town, and then we were at the house for the rest of the shoot. The more demanding parts in terms of location were at the beginning, so that you’re not 75% all the way through the shoot, losing energy, and then you have to start traveling between locations.

Castel: We also had a lot of prep time, to prep the whole house. It was not dressed in that manner, it was quite a whole re-do inside. But once we were there, it was like a living set, which is the way Tyler likes to shoot. We jumped between scenes, so once it was all pre-lit, we could move really easily in the house, which was nice.

Savage: Yeah, it was great. Our production designer, Margaux Rust, was fantastic, she used some of what was already there in the house. But it was very feminine, the design of the house, the layout. So, since it was supposed to be the house of an alcoholic, grumpy old man, it had to change. Add a bit, remove a bit. It was a fun process.

And more related to the story itself, what did you want to convey with secondary characters the protagonists encounter near the house?

Savage: I like ambiguity a lot. It’s a very tricky thing, because people can accuse you of being lazy, or not knowing what the answer is. But, you know, a lot of time in theatre or literature, a lot is left ambiguous so you can read into it. So I thought that was important. David Lynch is one of my favourite filmmakers, so there was supposed to be something of the bizarre, like you couldn’t quite tell the parameters of reality. “Is this literal? Is this really happening?” And since the movie is supposed to be an exploration of madness, with this guy unwinding, I like the idea of putting a subjective story where can’t quite tell the difference.

But for me, Drew Powell is an apparition. And the neighbour is definitely is supposed to be an oracle, whose mind is slipping. There’s a sense of alcoholism to her there, too. It’s a combination; I wanted to have a toned down leading man, who is brooding and quiet, and you put him with all these strange characters, who seem to want something from him. But he realises the only thing he’s got to fear, is himself. I wanted people to be distracted, looking for answers, for some other bad guy in the cast, only to realise that the main guy is wrestling with himself.

In that sense, the film reminded me a little of The Shining, with the difference being that Jack Nicholson start being… well, Jack Nicholson. He’s already a little crazy.

Savage: Chase really wanted to give more of that broad, big performance, without getting into any sort of imitation. So we couldn’t let the performance get too “Jack Torrance”, too weird, because it then starts becoming a fan movie of The Shining. 

He’s a quiet character because he doesn’t know himself. He’s angry. He’s got violence in him. He’s keeping that down, and this environment is pulling that from him. 

What was the idea behind the film’s ending?

Savage: The whole thing is definitely about autonomy. About how we’re not always in control of ourselves, and that maybe there are subterranean influences changing the course of our lives. And I do think I wanted the end to feel, with the talisman being in his bag, that the course was not going to go away. That he wouldn’t be able to run away from it.

Any new projects in the horizon?

Savage: Yes. It’s a new feature called First Born, and it’s a reinterpretation of Rosemary’s Baby, with a more traditional horror resolution. We’re in prep now, so hopefully we’re gonna be able to start production soon.