IN CONVERSATION WITH HAYDEN HEWITT

After its world premiere at FrightFest 2024, Hayden Hewitt’s directorial feature debut is released by 101 Films on digital platforms. Starring Elle O’Hara as the titular character, CARA is the uncompromising story of a young woman facing her harrowing past while dealing with feelings of paranoia of being sent back to her care home.

Dealing with such issues as psychiatric trauma, online sex work and abuse, Hayden Hewitt’s uncompromising and tough debut film sets out to unnerve its audience. Gore In The Store talked to Hewitt about the genesis of the project, its confrontational nature and his own influences.

How did you come up with the idea for the film, and why do you feel the need to tell the story, in the way that you did?

HAYDEN HEWITT(HH): When you get asked this, it's tricky. You want to have a really clever answer about how you formed the idea. Something that you know, like a bit of grit might get into an oyster, and over the years, it makes a pull. The idea developed whilst doing other things. It's based on things I've seen, things I've read, personal experience, people I've known, and it all came together into a story that I became fascinated with. Cara as a character I became fascinated with, and the opportunity arose that I could feasibly tell the story. So I just went for it. Strangely, this is actually slightly toned down from the original idea.I was just fascinated with the idea of telling a story of someone that wasn't a black widow, a perma victim, trying to make a whole person with these issues, going through these situations, and that was the story I wanted to tell at the time.

You just mentioned your own personal experiences there. I'm just wondering, what research did you did for the film?

HH: One thing I knew I didn't want to exploit was the mental health aspect. A lot of research went into making sure I didn't want her to be a swivel eyed movie psychopath. I wanted to look at very real conditions, and then you have to change them a little, because realism can often be the enemy of cinema. You have to find a middle ground. I always hated it when you could tell someone had done the research, because they used all the jargon all of the time. And it became very much a stereotype of a Wikipedia article. It's also based on talking to people I know, like I say, and personal experiences. It was a long, ongoing process, and some of it was done when I was working on the character with Elle, because we worked on Cara for a few weeks. I gave her an entire life story for Cara, and she had lots of notes, and a lot of it developed through there as well, especially in the portrayal of it. Like I say, I didn't want to make a hero completely in control of their problems, but nor someone completely enthralled to them. I didn't want to make her someone people would be overly compassionate about but at the same time, they had to quite like her, they had to feel something for her. So it all came from research, conversations and experience, literally. I mean, the research was the longest part, just to make sure I didn't fuck it up. I didn't want to get that wrong. I wanted to make sure I could be as realistic as I could with what Cara had going on.

Are you worried that because of the uncompromising way that you tell Cara's story you might get some pushback from an audience who may be unprepared for the film?

HH: I don't worry about that, because you can't put something in place to protect everyone if you're telling a story like this. What could I have done to protect everybody? It's impossible. You can't put enough trigger warnings on things, and I think a lot of pushback of that type might be quite performative. I think people will know what they're going to see. Hopefully they'll have read something about it. I don't imagine this is going to be a great Saturday night date movie. I didn't set out to upset people with it. I did set out to make it confrontational and abrasive and dark, but you don't set out to hurt anyone, you set out to have a conversation. So I'd rather people felt something. But obviously, if anyone is hurt by it, I can't control that and I don't see how you could think of a way of protecting everybody.

What was your actual burning desire to tell the story? What was your first idea that was the spark for this?

HH: I can think of various things. There's one going back to the dawn of cam streaming. Strangely, I was working on different sorts of websites, and never worked in that industry, but you meet people, and someone said, have a look at this. And I click the link, and it was one of the earliest examples of porn cam streaming. So we're in this terrible looking room. And there was a woman sat on a bed, naked, apart from an ankle tracker. And she looked like she had a hard life. And then in the chat, there were loads of really angry men. They were just angry. And everyone seemed to hate it. Everyone seemed to hate it in that room, the woman, the men. And for years, that stuck with me, because I could never quite understand what anyone got out of that, apart from, being able to humiliate somebody, which isn't, isn't a very noble thing. That was one of the things that stuck with me, and that got folded into it. And there's been other things I've seen, some of the sites I've worked on, that have stuck with me in the worst ways that have also been folded in.

I did want to talk about mental health issues, the system we have for dealing with those, about misogyny, about porn, and I wanted to do it in a way that was observational, without being too dry, but not being preachy, because I don't want to tell people how to think. I like the idea that you can watch it as a very dark revenge thriller if you want to, or you can think a little bit more what's in it, and it's not trying to be too clever or anything. These are things I think about, and they naturally work their way into whatever I'm working on. These are things that concern me, worry me, interest me, frighten me, and that all makes its way in.

Were you expecting something as confrontational as this to be your debut film?

HH: Originally, Ken from Black Octopus (production company behind CARA) and I  were going to work on a very bizarre, unusual comedy film. And the more that went on, the more that looked like it was going to be more problematic. Then one day, he said, "I believe you've got a horror story." So I told him the story of Cara, as it was then. And he said, right, let's do this. So Cara became the one, and then the script developed. Because I was having trouble with the script, it wasn't quite working for me. And we were shooting another short film, which, funnily enough, we're not releasing. I remember going into the living room set during lunch on my own, the first time I really felt like a director and because I'd gotten a few chops over the other shorts, I was really feeling it, and I thought it's lovely to do something grown up like this, and that just pinged an idea for CARA. When we finished shooting and editing the short, I went straight into the script, for CARA. I wrote the first draft in two weeks, and then banged out another eight or nine drafts after that, where it obviously evolved, became a little less extreme. There was some stuff that did go in that would have been great, and the festival guys would have probably really lapped it up. I think it took it in a slightly different direction. Even on set, the ending got changed a little, made a little less grim, if you can believe that, because of how I felt with the actors at the time and the performances they were giving. I just decided to change something there and make it a little less brutal. It's just been a wonderful evolution to get to do this for my first film. That has been amazing because it was just very satisfying to tell the story, and I think we got it right. It's not up to me now, obviously, but I think we got it right and in the time that we had, and whatever constraints. I am immensely proud of what we all managed to sort of achieve, though, really.

That actually leads into my next question, which was, how did you handle your actors? Obviously, the film handles very tough subject matters. Were any safeguards put in place?

HH: Oh, constantly! You have to remember that I like my sets to be very relaxed, very chilled. No one will ever know what mood I'm in, apart from a good one. It's a real thing for me to create a good environment, because everyone works harder. I don't believe in screaming and shouting at people. I don't believe that because it’s a dark film, we should make everyone really uncomfortable, because that would just be really shit. But, when we were sending scripts out, I ended up having to put a cover letter on them, saying we'll have a chat about it. Don't just look at it through your mind. That's always worse. It's like when you read a book.,the novel of Salem's Lot will always be infinitely more terrifying than any film version, because the cinema in your head is the most extreme cinema there is. And a few actresses did refuse. There was a group of people, I don't know who they are, but they didn't want it to be made, and tried to dissuade people from making it. But Elle read some sides, sent in a self tape, and then we sent her the full script, and she was off. She was just off.

Obviously, on set, day to day, it doesn't matter how dark it is. A dialog scene is a dialog scene. We always make sure everyone's comfortable. There was no nudity in the film, but anytime we were close, it was a closed set. No one could go beyond certain points. During the dream sequence with the Father, the actors worked very closely together in where everyone was going to be, he didn't actually, apart from when he touched the face, which he got full obviously, asked about it. When he reaches off camera, he's just shaking the bed. He doesn't touch Elle. It was all about people being comfortable, because if your actors are comfortable, they'll trust you, and if they trust you, you have an obligation then to ensure that you've not misplaced it. There will always be a better performance when your actor does trust you, does understand that you would never do anything to harm them or even make them uncomfortable beyond what they want to do for the role. I try to treat everyone, whether it's the lead or the runner pretty much the same on set. I'm not a 20 year old auteur. I've done a life, and I've been at both ends, so I tried to make sure everyone gets treated properly and well, but the actors, they know the score. They will tell you if something's not correct. But we didn't have any problems like that on CARA, to be honest. And I'd have been mortified if we had.

What were your influences, not just on this story, but as a director, and your directing style itself?

HH: I don't know about my style itself, because I'm probably still discovering that, and probably always will be, but my big directors, the ones I worship well, George A Romero, obviously. I love not only his films, but his approach to filmmaking and his directorial style. He was very, you know, steak with pepper on rather than steak with peppercorn sauce on. He got everything in each cut. I think Lucio Fulci was a very underrated director, because most of his scripts were pretty bad, but he was a great director. And Sam Raimi. Because I came up through the video nasties era, that's where my formative horror years were, outside of the Universal Horrors. But the biggest one for me was Romero, and probably always will be. I adore his output, the way he worked, and everything else.

Without going into spoilers, the end of the film is very different from the beginning in terms of style, and you take it up a notch. You're obviously into horror, and as you mentioned George Romero, like him you're obviously into melding it with social realism as well. Did you have any difficulty marrying the two together?

HH: Not for me, because throughout the film, you can see how Cara perceives the world. When she goes into episodes, she perceives it very differently to how it is in reality. And at the end, it was about her freeing herself from what she imagined to be the situation she's in. I always knew I wanted that very strong red look that then snapped into reality. But what I didn't want was the violent content to happen when she was in the fantasy world. I knew that it had to happen grimly and with great reality, and I wanted the violence to be as uncomfortable as I could make it. I didn't want it to be like when you watch something like SAW or TERRIFIER, where you go, yeah, get the chainsaw on his balls, dude, do it!. I didn't want that, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's fantastic, it's wonderful. But I just didn't want it for CARA. I think that would have been a really cheap cop out. I wanted illusory red and blacks with a really strong look to snap into a very dull color scheme for the rest of the film. I didn't have a problem with it. Some people said the ending of the film was a little abrupt, and I'm not sure how long I could have dragged that on for, to be honest with you, but I do know that that was influenced by anything other than just how I had to tell the story. That's what I wanted it to be and I wanted it to be her perception of what was happening in that room, and then the reality of what happened in that room.

What are you planning next?

HH: We're going to be shooting the next film this year. We've not pulled a trigger on the actual date yet, but probably midway through the summer. It's called Uncle Jack. It's a very dark drama dealing with dementia, losing people while they're still alive. Also online, pedo-hunting gangs, because there's been so much about that, that I find creates a real duality of thought. It is a story that Ken came up with, and I turned it into a feature length script. It's another story I'm itching to tell. I really, really want to tell this story. I think after that, I'm gonna have to do something ridiculous. It's very grim. The writing process takes it out of you but I don't want to make out like poor me, but it was rough. So Uncle Jack is definitely the next film that we're going to be doing. So I guess that'll be out sometime in ‘26 maybe.

CARA is released to purchase on digital platforms by 101 Films on 17th February.

Check out our review of CARA here.