Actress Katie Cassidy has contended with Freddy Krueger [2010’s Nightmare on Elm Street], sadistic slashers [2006’s Black Christmas], demented home invaders [2016’s Wolves at the Door] and psychotic grooms [TV series Harper’s Island] in horror. More frequently than not, her characters haven’t lived to tell the tale. That might change as Cassidy once again hits the genre full throttle with Speed Demon.
Directed by Jon Keeyes and currently available on digital platforms, the supernatural flick follows Sister Lu [Cassidy], a tough-talking nun who has lost her faith. During a trip from Montreal to New York City, Lu, Father Novak [William H. Macy] and the passengers encounter an evil presence hellbent on crashing their runaway train. In order to survive, Lu must perform her first exorcism and come to terms with her own personal demons… including a haunting connection to the fiend tormenting them.
Keeyes and Cassidy recently spoke to Scream about possessions, nuns with an attitude, the train setting and why Cassidy’s former horror endeavor, Harper’s Island, deserved a second season.
SCREAM: Not many horror flicks take place on a train, let alone one about possession. What was the inspiration behind this unique setting?
Jon Keeyes: It’s funny. I have never actually talked to Domenico about what actually inspired him with this particular setting. I know for me, when I got the script, I was like, “Wow. This is all over the place, in a very beautiful wonderful way. How often do you get to do a horror film with nuns and priests and possession on an action-filled runaway train…With comedy and flawed characters and arcs?” That was simply what did it for me. Even, without giving it away, the opening scene in the movie… I literally read this without knowing anything. And the opening scene in the movie completely threw me when the reveal of Sister Lu was done. “OK. I’m in for a ride here.” Breaking the rules and breaking the conventions was a huge thing for me with that script and just being able to have a lot of fun with it.
SCREAM: Any movie about possession is automatically going to be compared to The Exorcist. How did you go about breaking some of those rules and playing into what we might expect, but also delivering something new?
Keeyes: I don’t want to give away all the plot twists but there is obvious possession cliches built in there. We have the statue and the possessed being able to move from one body to the other. But I think the way that we handle the Catholicism in the movie and using that as the foundation of the idea that a nun can become an exorcist and what are the rules that we paid with demon possession… That’s where people are going to see something different for a lot of it. We did sort of start to create our own rules with the idea of a nun being able to be an exorcist.
SCREAM: Katie, horror has been good to you. What keeps pulling you back to this genre?
Katie Cassidy: I enjoy watching horror movies. It’s just the fact – especially if it’s a jump scare and just being afraid in general – it’s just fun. There’s like an adrenaline rush to it. They are hard to shoot, but they are fun to shoot. I guess it’s sort of the energy on set. When I shot Nightmare on Elm Street, it wasn’t scary when we were shooting. It was crazy, I remember, just the hours at night and my character not sleeping. It’s fun. It’s fun to get a reaction out of fans and people can go in, go to theatres with their friends, and enjoy some popcorn and be entertained.
SCREAM: Were you partially relieved when you read the script and had a lot less screaming in this movie than you’ve had in previous horror fare?
Cassidy: Yes. It’s really interesting. Maybe not in Black Christmas, but in a lot of the other movies I have done in horror, they really love to kill me off. It was nice to survive.
SCREAM: Sister Lu is hardly holier-than-thou. What about her flaws and her own personal demons elevated that character for you?
Cassidy: I think the relationship with her father and the backstory there… her abandonment issues and not dealing with that by self-medicating – and the irony that she’s a nun… She’s going against everything that she is supposed to stand for. And her inner demons and dealing with that internally and externally and going through her own trauma while she’s trying to help save everybody else.
SCREAM: Looking at some of your other horror characters, Sister Lu feels less like a victim. Did you get that sense in this movie?
Cassidy: Yeah. There’s definitely an inner strength. At the end of the movie, it’s acknowledged that she’s been gifted. She finds it within herself to step into her power, even though she was broken inside, in some ways. But she wasn’t a victim. She got to rise above and got to put down the bottle, step into her power and save the day.
SCREAM: Jon, we were speaking about tropes and conventions. How did you approach conveying when individuals were possessed?
Keeyes: It wasn’t so much wanting to do differently, but leaning into the things that I find fun, particularly with possession movies. One of the things we talked about frequently is the choice in how to present the demons. We can get the big CGI morphs. We could go with big, huge prosthetics. But, in this movie when you are dealing with so many characters, that are flawed and dealing with their own inner demons, I wanted to lean into the human nature. I’ve always been particularly been fond of seeing demons in their human form. Mild prosthetics and good makeup and good paint, but still be able to see the human, and remember there’s human inside that. One of the things Domenico and I did was I really wanted to lean into… there are various points throughout the movie, where you get to see some of the different characters struggling when they are possessed, but then the humans start to come out. We’ve seen it before, but we don’t see it a lot. To me, that was really important to put into this so we could see the struggle that was going on with them, as well. To me, they are likeable characters and we are rooting for them. Some make it and some don’t.
SCREAM: It truly feels like the season of horror lately. Katie, one of your standout roles is Harper’s Island. How often does that come up and with the success of American Horror Story where they reinvent every season, does Harper’s Island feel like a show before its time?
Cassidy: That show was so awesome. It was definitely before its time. I don’t know if you know anything about it, but it was Jon Turteltaub and it was from CBS. We all signed on to seven out of 13. We were guaranteed seven episodes out of the 13. Everybody had the same deal. The idea was in each episode, somebody is going to get killed off. There’s a killer. It was an ensemble, but they didn’t tell us who the killer was and they didn’t tell us who was going to get killed off when. We learned as actors, along with the audience… eventually they did tell the actor who was the killer that he was the killer. I think it was more than half way through the season. But after we got to see episode seven, it was awesome to get episode eight. One night I got a call from Karim Zreik, one of the producers. I remember answering the phone. I think I made it to episode twelve and he called and I was like, “Noooo. Don’t tell me.” He was like, “Sorry. We are killing Trish next episode.”
But back to your question, I do get asked about Harper’s Island a lot. It’s funny. I recently saw Chris Gorham and Matt Barr. We were together. Chris and I, about a year and a half ago, came up with a concept of how to do a second season. It was a really cool way in to how we could do that. We pitched it to Turteltaub and Turteltaub was like, “Oh, this is good. I am going to talk to CBS.” I know there was a meeting on the books. It might have been around the strikes or something, when nothing was really happening. But it would be very cool to continue that journey. It was an awesome show.
SPEED DEMON is out across cinemas now.
