Dave Parker & Robert Burnett Talk THE HILLS RUN RED - Interviews

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Dave Parker & Robert Burnett Talk THE HILLS RUN RED

This week, THE HILLS RUN RED is hitting DVD shelves (check out our early review here) after a three year long process. When both director Dave Parker and producer Robert Burnett became attached to the film, it was in a time when the horror scene hadn’t rediscovered their love of the slasher subgenre of horror.

According to Parker, “The horror industry is almost cyclical. When we originally started working on THE HILLS RUN RED in 2006, everyone was still in zombie overload. There were no real slasher films then. We certainly didn’t expect our process to go this long so we thought we had a jump on everything. Little did we know…”

“When we started conceptualizing Babyface, I knew I needed him to have a memorable look because he was going to need to stand out and be a worthy addition to the pantheon of serial killers. The script was important too because I didn’t want to make the same-old slasher movie. I wanted to turn the genre on its head,” Parker added.

One element of the typical slasher flick is the idea of the “final girl.” While it’s a concept that was brilliantly explored in BEHIND THE MASK, Parker knew that relying on that horror concept wasn’t going to be necessary for THE HILLS RUN RED.

“A lot of us taking out “the final girl” factor in the film is because of writer David J. Schow,” explained Parker. “With this film, you realize that even though none of the characters are pure and innocent, you still have sympathy for all the characters even though some of their actions are very unsympathetic.”

“We have strong women in the film and I think arguably the women characters are stronger than the men. Some of that comes from how much I love THE DESCENT. We have Sophie Monk playing Alexis, and she is this stunning girl who, quite frankly, is too beautiful to be in this movie. When you get through those layers and dig a little deeper, you get to see that the character is a little more complex than just what she looks like,” Parker added.

So, what makes THE HILLS RUN RED stand out from other modern slasher movies? Burnett offers up his take on the subject.

“In slasher movies, you have characters that are generally unaware that the wrath of hell is about to come down upon them in the guise of a masked killer,” Burnett explained. “With THE HILLS RUN RED, you have characters that are running towards the danger and seeking out something that is deadly. As Tad (Hilgenbrink) likes to say about his character Tyler, what was different about this script is that he’s running towards the horror you just don’t expect to see something like that in the horror genre.”

“I liked the fact that our characters have these motivations that ring true. They all have their hero moment but in the end, everyone is f***ed in this movie. I was pleasantly surprised that both Warner Bros. and Dark Castle embraced the dark ending instead of forcing us to wrap up the movie with a happy ending,” Parker added.

It was important to the duo that when they started making changes to the initial script for THE HILLS RUN RED that they took no shortcuts in making a grisly and startling slasher movie for horror fans. After all, they’re both fans at heart and wanted to make sure they did right by the genre.

“I love slasher movies, even for a dumb as some of them are,” explained Parker. “I think knowing those kinds of movies really helped me speak the language when it came time to do THE HILLS RUN RED. I think today’s audiences are certainly not dumb and are as well-schooled in these films as I am. So, we needed to have some surprises and pull the rug out from under them at times.”

“For the movie, I wanted to build up the characters in the beginning so that if the fans really stick with it at the beginning, the payoff in the end is totally worth it for them. I like that fans can’t really expect where the movie is going. That was really important to all of us. We are well-versed in film so we can easily cry BS if we do something that has no real reason to it and hopefully, we pulled it off for THE HILLS RUN RED,” Parker added.

“I really think that because of his extensive knowledge in horror, Dave Parker was born to make this movie. All he needed was the opportunity and frankly, I think he knocked it out of the park with this film,” Burnett said.