THE BLACK SHEEP INTERVIEW: SAM FELL (PARANORMAN)

ZOMBIES, BUT WITH HEART.
An interview with PARANORMAN co-director, Sam Fell

“On the surface, I was attracted to the zombies.” Personally, I can think of worse reasons to make a movie but this is the reason PARANORMAN co-director, Sam Fell (FLUSHED AWAY) gives me when I ask what first drew him to his latest stop-motion feature film. When you allow him to elaborate, it doesn’t sound quite so creepy.

Fell, fell further in love with PARANORMAN as he got deeper into co-director, Chris Butler’s personal screenplay. “Chris was cooking this for years before I came on board. As I got into it further, I think what attracted me most was the emotion. It has so much heart and packs an emotional punch.”

Heart on the page does not always translate to the screen, especially when it needs to be communicated to children by another child. Enter Kodi Smit-McPhee, an actor no older than 16 (he was 13, the same age as his character, when the film went into production). Having caught him in THE ROAD, opposite Viggo Mortensen, Fell knew there were few young actors out there who could take on Norman like he could.

“A clever kid character can so easily be precocious. A troubled kid character can be whiny and self-pitying. There are so many ways that you can lose the audience with a kid character. We were so fortunate to find Kodi.” Fell doesn’t stop there either. His praise continues, “That kind of maturity in that young an actor is rare.”

Heart can also have a hard time getting through to an audience when its being served in a zombie movie package. This is especially true if parents worry PARANORMAN might be too scary for their younger brood. Fell, a parent himself, hopes kids don’t miss out on what PARANORMAN has to offer. “I think parents tend to worry more than they need. Kids enjoy scares. I think kids enjoy challenges as well. I think fiction can provide some challenges to kids in a safe environment. They can try out the emotion of fear and test themselves.”

Fell, centre, with Butler, to his right

Even adults have to put themselves in potentially uncomfortable positions from time to time. Going into PARANORMAN, Fell had some concerns about working with Butler on a project he was already so close to. “I didn’t sign on to be a technician; I was there to be a filmmaker,” he says about his initial concerns. He quickly dismisses these though. “In the end, we just liked each other. Some things are just a true collaboration and you’re twice as strong because there’s two of you.”

Having two people at the helm of a demanding stop-motion animation project is probably best for all, considering how much work is involved. “It’s not just people sitting at computers. It involves many disciplines, like a costume department, a lighting department, engineers that do all the rigging,” Fell explains of just a few of the elements he had to oversee during the production. All the hard work is well worth it in the end though. “It’s a very human endeavour and I think it comes across on the screen. You can see that it’s handmade and all the lovely imperfections that come with that. It’s like it’s coming to life on screen.”

So PARANORMAN has heart, scares and comes to life on screen but when it comes down to it, none of these reasons are the true reason Fell wanted to make this movie. The real reason? “This is zombies for kids. I’ve got a kid; I like to make things for him. I like to score points with my son, to be honest.”

Points scored, I’m sure.

LET ME IN

Written and Directed by Matt Reeves
Starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins

Abby: Just so you know, I can’t be your friend.

I have a reasonable amount of sympathy for Matt Reeves, the director of LET ME IN. He made a perfectly adequate and genuinely authentic remake of Swedish filmmaker, Tomas Alfredson’s LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, but there was no way for him to come away from the experience as a winner. Fans of the original, of which there are many, and of which I count myself among more or less, see no reason to mess with success. And so, to appease these fans, Reeves remains as true to the original vision as possible. As well intentioned as this is, it renders LET ME IN even more pointless as a result.


It begins with a children’s choir singing ominously over a humming that is eerily chilling. It continues with the same slow, quiet pace that allowed the supernatural elements of the original to appear fully natural. Owen and Abby (Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz), the American counterparts to Oscar and Eli (Kare Hedebrant and Lena Leandersson), meet on what looks like the same jungle gym, in the same courtyard, behind the same low income housing where Oscar and Eli met. He is the same loner kid who gets picked on regularly at school and she is the same little girl, hiding her vampirism from those around her. Both are ostracized and both find understanding in each other. Their relationship, in great part thanks to these two fantastic, young actors, is just as tender and terrifying as Oscar and Eli’s was. Is there any point in retelling the exact same story the exact same way though?


I’m all for remakes; at their best, they can take already brilliant screenplays and reimagine them visually in all new manners, with sometimes all new meanings. At their worst, they are embarrassments that can be so big, they even tarnish the reputation of the original. LET ME IN falls directly in the middle of this spectrum. As dark and delicious as it can be at times, it never manages to give any reason for its existence other than to make it more accessible for audiences uninterested in subtitles. If you’re going to make a remake, you should have a good reason to do so, perhaps a new take on the subject that makes remaking it relevant. Pandering is not one of these reasons.