By Shannon McGrew
In the found footage film LOOKY-LOO, an inspiring filmmaker stalks women with his camera. However, his crimes escalate from voyeurism to murder as he becomes obsessed with a woman named Courtney, making her the star of his deranged film.
For the home video release of LOOKY-LOO, Creepy Kingdom's Shannon McGrew spoke with director Jason Zink and writer Nolan Mihail. During their chat, they discussed everything from the film's unsettling realism and improvisational approach to the eerie inspiration behind its voyeuristic horror.
Thank you both so much for speaking with me today. I'm curious: How did the title LOOKY-LOO come to be? It sounds like a kid's game.
Jason Zink: It was a lazy thing we ended up falling in love with [Laughs]. It started as a placeholder. We were about halfway through the movie and started to recognize some similarities between this and Peeping Tom. I looked up synonyms for peeping tom, and Looky-loo was one that we thought wasn't too bad. We kept referring to the film as Looky-loo, which stuck, and we fell in love with it.
What inspired the story, and did you look back on any urban legends or real-life stories for inspiration?
Jason Zink: Nolan and I planned to shoot a different movie before this, but we needed to test cameras that would do okay in low light. I started walking around my town at 2 or 3 a.m., filming things to test. I would walk down alleys and sometimes turn out of an alley and wind up walking behind somebody who was walking home, and they had no idea that I was filming them testing this camera. I creeped myself out. Nolan and I were looking at the footage and thinking something was compelling about it. I pitched to Nolan that we shoot a first-person POV serial killer movie. He misunderstood my text and took it as the character was actually a filmmaker you're watching, and he shoots and edits it. Nolan said at one point that the idea [for LOOKY-LOO] came from neither of us and both of us at the same time.
Nolan Mihail: I don't think the screenplay was even 20 pages long. We would shoot a sequence, and that's when it would get this full treatment of 5, 6, and 7 pages of more detailed things. There definitely wasn't a traditional script with this one, and sometimes, we would have to rewrite how it would work based on the location. Writing the script wasn't super difficult. What was difficult was the research. As filmmakers, we wanted to know everything about LOOKY-LOO, and we wanted it to feel real. I did an exhaustive jump into true crime, and the biggest inspiration, I think, was probably Michelle McNamara's book "I'll Be Gone in the Dark." I listened to that audiobook four times while we were doing this. I listened to every episode of Last Podcast on the Left that had anything to do with a serial killer. I listened to every episode of My Favorite Murder. I read books about BTK. Since it's about criminal profiling, I read "The Silence of the Lambs." We knew everything [about our character] and could write a psychological profile about him because you almost have to profile him to understand who he is. You can watch the movie and glean some clues about who he is and his motivations.
Found footage often thrives on improv. How much of the dialogue or decision-making was improv versus scripted?
Jason Zink: Most of it was improvised. What you wind up seeing was. We had the shell, the structure that no one provided, and then we would get there and start playing and walking through things. Some of it came from the actors asking what would creep them out or what they weren't comfortable doing guided us a little bit. Luckily, we didn't want to go much further than what you wind up seeing in the film. For being such a dark and awful little picture, we had a lot of fun [Laughs]. We're still friends at the end. Everyone's alive.
Nolan Mihail: As far as dialogue goes, it would be something like, okay, you're [the killer] hiding in the closet. Just tell [the actress] to improvise a conversation with a friend, and the friend's a little upset. It would literally be things like that. We needed it to feel real, sort of like a slice of life. I've worked on mockumentary comedy before, and with that, you have the scripted moment, but then it's always a good idea once you get a couple of takes to be like, okay, we'll now play a little bit.
Nothing sends a chill down my spine faster than the appearance of a mannequin in a horror movie. Who's idea was it to incorporate this mannequin into the killer's lifestyle?
Jason Zink: Our special effects artist, Arissa Beck, that's her mannequin, and it's named Vicky. There's actually a dedication in the end credits to Vicky, the mannequin. It's a 1950s mannequin that she really loves, and we wanted to showcase it.
Nolan Mihail: The mannequin was a gift that turned this into a movie for me. It's just this weird object that [the killer] has in his house. I don't remember how the idea of using it came about, but I do remember coming up with about 50 different things for him to do to it and being like, that mannequin will make all the difference in the world.
Jason, you directed the film and portrayed the killer whose perspective we see throughout. How did that dual role shape your experience?
Jason Zink: Troubling at times [Laughs]. It was pretty easy to work with the actors, and we would always check in with them about their limits. Like, here's what's written, but we want to ensure you feel safe. We don't want anyone to leave traumatized making an indie horror movie. There were definitely funny moments, though. There was a time when I was filming Kelly Lu through a window as she was eating food on the couch. I'm filming in the driveway with the ski mask on, and the neighbors behind us in their kitchen could see me through the window, so they started pounding on it. I turn around while filming and lift up my mask to try to communicate with them that it's okay. I wound up running inside right after the take and eating food at the window with Kelly Lou so that [the neighbors] knew it was OK and that we knew each other. There were moments where I was like, man, we are doing something risky. I could get arrested or shot or something. Then there were other times it would make you feel gross. There are a couple of kill scenes where we all needed a breather between takes to chat and get back to a level of normalcy and joke with each other before going back to the scene.
Lastly, what sets LOOKY-LOO apart from other found footage films?
Jason Zink: I did a podcast recently, and they kept coming back to the commitment to the gimmick to the story that they were saying they rarely see. The one guy who liked found footage really liked it because normally, in found footage, they kind of break their own structure or they need to do the mockumentary style to sell it, and they just kept coming back to the commitment. I think it feels incredibly grounded, gritty, and real. As Nolan has said before, we had to work really hard to make it look like we didn't work very hard [Laughs].
Nolan Mihail: Speaking as the writer, I think the challenge for me was there's not a clear plot, there's not a clear characterization, there's almost no dialogue, there's only like two or three lines in the whole movie. We really had to commit to trying to make this a very ugly slice of life, which is what sets it apart from other found footage movies. With LOOKY-LOO, there's no need to suspend your disbelief because the killer wants you to see it. I think that is the element that sets up apart from many other found footage films.
LOOKY-LOO is now available to buy on DVD or Blu-ray.