By Shannon McGrew
In DIDN'T DIE, Vinita (Kiran Deol), a podcast host living in quarantine with her two brothers and sister-in-law as the zombie apocalypse unfolds, has to learn how to find a new sense of normalcy to keep calm under threats as their audience dwindles amidst all the chaos.
For the World Premiere of DIDN'T DIE, Creepy Kingdom's Shannon McGrew had the chance to chat with the director and co-writer Meera Menon ("Ms. Marvel," "The Walking Dead") and actor Kiran Deol (Destroy All Neighbors). During their chat, they discussed everything from their unique approach to the zombie genre, blending humor with high-stakes survival, to the collaborative process that made DIDN'T DIE a true labor of love.
Thank you both so much for taking the time to speak to me today. Meera, what inspired this film?
Meera Menon: It's a number of things. I had been working on all those larger-scale television shows, and I just wanted to make something small and intimate with people I love that I already knew. I think television is the greatest gig in the world, but you're often a stranger to the process when you're just jumping in on a show already running. I wanted to return to an indie film process that imitated the first film I made, but I also wanted to create an environment that was just a bit looser and freer.
With the zombie movie element, Paul Gleason and I are fans of the genre. When I directed "The Walking Dead," I was interested in creating something in this genre because I felt like the stakes of the world were obviously the biggest there is. I think there's so much emotionality to be mined in this idea of what to do to continue when you've lost everything. "The Walking Dead" explored that a bit because of the breadth that television allows. They were able to explore some of those emotional corners. I wanted to go into those ideas more deeply and build a team of like-minded people who could develop them with me.
The idea was always to bring the actors in from the very beginning before I even started writing out the script to really make them a part of the process from the gate. I think that also comes from being primarily a director and having done so much directing work, like wanting to make sure the actors are a part of it from the gate.
For you, Kiran, what about DIDN'T DIE made you want to be a part of this project?
Kiran Deol: when Meera texted, she said, "I know you've been on TV, and I didn't know if you'd be down to work on something small again." I was like, oh, well, I don't really want to work on something small, but I suppose if it's with you, I'll do it [Laughs].
Meera is brilliant, very actor-friendly, and actor-focused, making it a super collaborative process for everyone. It feels like an ensemble. It feels like a team. There was so much iterating together working off of a 60-page outline. Then getting to improvise, have a say, help shape the project and the process, and do it with friends.
[Meera's] husband, Paul, shot the movie and is a friend. I have his number. So every day, you can tell him, make me look like Charlize Theron, and he has to make you look good, or else he will never hear the end because I have his telephone number [Laughs]. The editor, Geoff Boothby, has been harassed into coming to my comedy shows, so he understands my specific comedic timing very well. He lurks up with his baby during various events and must do you justice. So it's nice that it's a very friends and family team.
Speaking of your comedic background, how did that help inform and shape your character?
Kiran Deol: One thing I really love that Meera will say is it's just pieces. I like to get the holistic version of the scene, and we treated the first 10 days of the shoot as a little bit of an experiment. The one thing that's very cool about that is you are so relaxed because you're not worried about if it was good or interesting. You can take your time. You're working with somebody you trust—getting those little things to show how she would cut high-stress situations with humor to try to make it a little bit palatable and make a challenging world more palatable. I think we both, thematically and creatively, are very interested in that. I know I'm really interested in that in my work as a comic and I loved that this film really was willing to explore that.
Meera Menon: When we were thinking about making a zombie movie, we were like, who would we want to put at the center of it? And it was Kiran and the spirit of cutting through the darkness with humor. Before anything had been developed, the kernel of the idea was Kiran and the zombie apocalypse.
Kiran Deol: Then there's also the resilience and getting to play a real arc, having to get a character who goes through stuff that's funny, but then also what's underneath that, and is there grief underneath that? That's a massive opportunity to show those colors of like you get to be you. Getting to do some action with a stunt coordinator is a real gift and a privilege for an actor to play a range of things while also getting to be funny and, let's be real, make fun of me.
DIDN'T DIE reminds me of films like Pontypool and Night of the Living Dead. Were there films that helped inspire your approach to how you wanted it to look visually?
Meera Menon: Night of the Living Dead - there's a lot of that movie that's the chamber piece, like actors in the house with that kind of action at the beginning and kind of the end and peppered in between. Creating the model I wanted for this movie, it felt like that was a good reference point. Also, I am a fan of the genre's history with films like The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, which is kind of a proto-zombie movie, the same with Carnival of Souls. I think we were intersted in that proto-zombie movie where the mythology is between vampire and zombie mythology, that's where the day/night [aspect of the film] comes from.
Lastly, what do you think it is about zombie films that capture audiences' attention?
Kiran Deol: I hadn't done a ton of genre before Destroy All Neighbors and this film. It's so interesting to watch how a container movie because it's a genre and it's heightened, allows you to still explore very grounded and real emotions within that. You can use the genre as a metaphor for an external environment and the things going on around you, and it also still has high stakes that are interesting to watch. We also looked at Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration as that old-school model of set-piece improv and how to make those scenes start to work. That's been a really exciting thing to work in as a performer and as a comic.
Meera Menon: I think it's under-explored as a genre, which is what we were trying to do, something markedly different. I hope people walk into this with the understanding that this will not be your typical zombie movie in that way. I think that is why people are drawn to it. I was reminded of it in the sound design phase of making our film, where we did a lot of looping zombie sounds. Paul, me, family members, and random friends came into the ADR studio and were primally screaming. It was so therapeutic to create this bed of zombie noises in this movie that I think there's something to the catharsis that horror provides to the people who watch it and definitely to the people who make it.
DIDN'T DIE had its World Premiere on January 28th at the Sundance Film Festival as part of their Midnight section.