I recently had the chance to speak with director Lowell Dean, just ahead of the release of his latest film, Die Alone, available in Canadian theaters now. Read our full discussion below.
Congratulations on Die Alone as well as Dark Match, which I had a chance to see back at Fantasia Fest in July. WolfCop was this big cult success that had a campy, over-the-top tone sprinkled with a bit of humor. Both your new films have had this more grounded, horror approach while still featuring gory, bloody violence. Was it a tone that you wanted to shift away from after WolfCop?
Lowell Dean: I think that’s an interesting observation. By the time we did Another WolfCop, it was so silly that I think I needed a bit of a reset. I wanted to go a little more grounded. I’m still a genre guy through and through. I love genre storytelling. I think it’s a really interesting way to talk about characters, feelings, and life through the lens of genre. I don’t see myself writing something that doesn’t have some genre element anytime soon. That said, I did feel like I really wanted to get deep in character on Dark Match and Die Alone. I really wanted to do films that were really about psyche, people, motivation, and relationships. Sometimes I feel like when you go too campy or silly, it undercuts it a bit. It takes away some of the depth. That said, I love the characters in WolfCop and even Another WolfCop.
Die Alone, puts us through the perspective of Douglas Smith’s character, Ethan, as we see flashes of his memory as a result of his amnesia. The film has this unconventional order of events of what happened throughout. How was it trying to find that balance of storytelling that reveals different parts of the information at different points while still keeping a cohesive narrative throughout?
Dean: That was the dance. That was a whole dance that we tried to pull off with the film. There’s two parallel stories. There’s the emotional story, and there’s the narrative story. The big challenge for me in writing this was having the emotional story, even when sometimes we were going up/down, left/right, and all over his memories. I didn’t want it to ever feel like now we’re suddenly taking a step back and the characters aren’t having emotional growth. But how do you do that with a guy who keeps forgetting where he is? I think a lot of his emotion had to come out of the people around him. You have to cheat a little bit and have characters grow a little more frustrated on the fifth time they wake up somewhere. It was definitely a huge dance, trying to figure out the trajectory, keep it engaging, and not be like “come on, figure it out buddy.”
On top of this unconventional way of telling the story, were there any new filmmaking approaches you took into making the film?
Dean: This was a really hard film, mentally, for me to make. I was very afraid, and I was paranoid that I was going to have a continuity issue where there’s going to be some huge plot hole that someone is going to tell me halfway through or after finishing the shoot. I leaned on my crew a lot. I leaned on the cast. I explained the logic. There were versions of the script that were linear just so I could look at it and say “okay, he has amnesia but does it make sense.” It’s inspired, obviously, by things like Memento. If I put this story in this order, is it still going to make sense? Then, when I move it around to get the emotional arc, is it still going to make sense in that version? I would say that it was just a huge mental, chaotic adventure to undertake. Much like Dark Match, it’s a very straightforward film, but that was the most physical film I’d ever done. Dark Match was kicking my ass on a day-to-day basis trying to figure out how to do pyro, water fights, and so much hand-to-hand combat. Obviously, the fun part as a writer is coming with an interesting genre conceit with story and character. But as a director, what really gets me going is, in my own personal way, stepping into the ring of making a movie where I don’t ever want to do something that’s easy.
What is the production timeline of both films since they are being released so closely together?
Dean: It was very chaotic and stressful. They both got greenlit in the same month. Both producers told me in the same month that they were financed and ready to go. I had to do the dance of figuring out which one could go first, which one needed to go first, putting the producers in touch with the different films, and saying why one needs to go first while this one needs to go second. Films are hard to pull off, so there was slippage on both films. There were date changes on both films. Dark Match ended up going first, and it shot in November/December 2022. Then I immediately started editing it. By that summer of 2023, I was shooting Die Alone. They were both in post-production at the exact same time. Sometimes I’d think I was losing my mind because I’m like “what film am I talking about today?” But it’s really fun. What a gift as an independent filmmaker to get to make two movies you actually care about that are very different in the same year and a half time period.
You’ve worked with Jonathan Cherry about five times now, how has that working dynamic evolved throughout your career?
Dean: I think Jonathan Cherry is one of my secret weapons. I think he’s an underused, brilliant actor. He’s really funny. He has great comedic timing, but he’s also just a good actor, so he can do all the other things too. He’s just a consummate professional that knows characters so well. He is always searching for that really good joke. Both the character of Rusty Beans in Dark Match, and Tom in Die Alone were written for him.
I had a chance to speak with the cast of Dark Match at Fantasia. They all mentioned your ability to create complex characters and ones that break societal norms while still giving them room to build on their own takes on their character or wrestling persona. How was the writing process and collaborating with the actors on delivering that performance?
Dean: I’m pretty intense when I write, in that I try to have it all be on the page. I kind of direct when I write. I write a lot of detail and scene description in a way where I think it’s hopefully going to make my job on set easier in terms of questions that people have about “why am I doing this, where did I come from, and what does this matter?” All that said, I feel like the character of Mean Joe in Dark Match changed the most from script to screen. I admit he was maybe a little underwritten as a bit of a Hulk Hogan-type character. But what was really interesting is Ayisha Issa’s character became the center driving force of the film. I didn’t adapt Joe a ton. He was supportive to Issa’s character but wasn’t as emotional. That was one fun thing that Steven Ogg brought to that film was saying “let’s go further with this”. That’s one example that I can think of where what was on the page actually grew quite a bit through talking and working with an actor.
Can you give us some details on release dates for both films, whether it be through the festival circuit or theatrical release?
Dean: Right now I’m in Calgary with Dark Match for the Calgary International Film Festival playing on September 26th. We’ll be in Edmonton for a sold-out showing at the Edmonton International Film Festival on September 28th. I do know that there are release plans for Dark Match that I can reveal just yet. Both films are playing at Sitges Film Festival next month. I’m going to Spain to promote both those films. I’m very excited. Die Alone has plans for a US release on October 18th. Our main focus is that Die Alone which is coming to Canadian theaters on Friday, September 27th.
Special thanks to Lowell Dean and the Die Alone team for the opportunity to discuss the film. Stay tuned for our review of Die Alone tomorrow.
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