We get the 411 on The Terrible Two, the new film from Billy Lewis, ahead of it’s March release.
-PH: Horror. What do you love about it?
-Billy: The thing I love about horror is it can evoke emotions and feelings in you that you may have never experienced before. As far as making horror films they are a great genre to make because I feel the fan base is so wide for these types of films.
-PH: There’s different levels of horror though and a lot of subgenres, too. What type of horror film do you generally enjoy?
-Billy: I tend to gravitate towards the paranormal/psychological genre of horror. I normally don’t want to depend on blood and gore to carry a movie. I really believe in the story and feel like with the above-mentioned genres it easier to tell a good story through those.
-PH: Tell us about your favorites…
-Billy: Favorite what? Some of my favorite horror films are ‘The Shining’ ‘Misery’ ‘The Strangers’ ‘Signs’ ‘The Sixth Sense’ most of Alfred Hitchcock’s stuff and many, many more.
-PH: Anything that served as an inspiration for your film?
-Billy: Not really. I was just ready to make a new movie and I had the location and we just did it. My wife and I bought the house we did the movie in about a year before production. So I kicked her and my daughters out for 2 weeks and we shot a horror film in it. We still live in the house to this day and my wife is super thrilled that I took her house and turned into a house of horrors, haha.
-PH: Where does this one rank compared to some of your earlier work? Is it up there with the best?
-Billy: Ummm, I’m my toughest critic and everything I do I always look at it and think that it could’ve been better. This movie is great for what it is at the budget level we had to make it. So I hope to improve as a filmmaker with each new project I take on.
-PH: How do you think you’ve improved as a filmmaker?
-Billy: Just keep working hard and hopefully getting better and better with each new project I take on.
-PH: Have you a favorite kill in the movie?
-Billy: Yea the only kill you see in the movie, the father. I wanted one of the girls to pull his guts out with their knife, but we just simply didn’t have the budget to do that. So we had to settle for several kidney and stomach knife blows.
-PH: How do you think you’d react in the situation these folks find themselves in?
-Billy: Well the parents made several mistakes as most naïve characters do in horror films. They had plenty of time to get out of the house but simply chose to stay like a bunch of morons. So I would’ve hightailed it out of the first time I saw one of the kids shopping carts roll to moms feet by itself.