K Asher Levin on genre films and his vampire movie Slayers Digital Trends Kasherlevin - Slayers HEAD TOPICS

K Asher Levin on genre films and his vampire movie Slayers Digital Trends

10/22/2022 9:06:00 PM

In an interview with Digital Trends #KAsherLevin speaks about the origin of his vampire horror film #Slayers and his ongoing collaboration with Thomas Jane

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In an interview with Digital Trends, KAsherLevin speaks about the origin of his vampire horror film Slayers and his ongoing collaboration with Thomas Jane. In an interview with Digital Trends, K. Asher Levin speaks about the origin of his vampire horror film Slayers and his ongoing collaboration with Thomas Jane. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Congrats.Yeah, absolutely. So, how recently did you watch the cut? Because I’ve noticed it’s really fun to talk to people right after they’ve seen it because it’s such a weird experience.It is. When you say unique, it’s a vampire action-hunter film with this technological spin. What was kind the origin of this story? After that, I ran and launched a very big young adult digital company called BRAT, which is still really popular and very, very different than everything I do now. I was inside the tent with a lot of people that are super-famous today, and we got famous, young adults, that were 12 and are now 18, 19, 20. I sort of saw how the sausage was made. This was the in-between years before I went back to directing feature films. It was like a job that I had, basically. Read more:
Digital Trends » The best Apple iPad (2022) screen protectors Digital Trends 2024 GMC Sierra EV revealed in 754-hp Denali trim Digital Trends 20 years later, The Ring is still terrifying Digital Trends I'm ready for an iPad with macOS — I just need Apple to be Digital Trends

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On Saturday's 'America Right Now,' Tom Basile explains why American parents need to demand better phonics for their kids in schools in the upcoming November ... Read more >> The best Apple iPad (2022) screen protectors Digital TrendsApple's 10th-gen iPad is here, and we've rounded up the best iPad (2022) screen protectors around to keep your new purchase safe from harm. 2024 GMC Sierra EV revealed in 754-hp Denali trim Digital TrendsThe 2024 GMC Sierra EV blends carryover tech from the Chevrolet Silverado EV with unique styling and a more luxurious interior. 20 years later, The Ring is still terrifying Digital TrendsThe American remake of TheRing came out 20 years ago, and while we don't use VHS tapes anymore, it's still plenty terrifying. I'm ready for an iPad with macOS — I just need Apple to be Digital TrendsWe're again hearing rumors of macOS coming to iPads. More than ever, the stage is almost set in 2022 from the hardware side. It's Apple that is holding it back. Elder Scrolls Online players can now move their Stadia data to PC Digital TrendsStadia users will keep their ElderScrollsOnline data as Bethesda has provided a way for them to transfer their progress to PC for free. The Peripheral review: Westworld creators have another hit Digital TrendsPrime Video's adaptation of William Gibson's sci-fi story ThePeripheral delivers a complicated but intriguing mystery that unfolds across multiple timelines. K.Apple's 10th-generation iPad has landed, and the new iPad (2022) has plenty to recommend it.The Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks are twins, and that will continue to be the case when they go electric.When you really think about it, few things feel more dated than the central conceit of The Ring. Asher Levin is first and foremost a fan of cinema. What started as a conversation to promote Slayers quickly turned into a discussion about genre filmmaking and the legendary filmmakers of the1970s.9-inch Liquid Retina display, this is also the first iPad in Apple's lineup to ditch the Home button and kill the Lightning port in favor of USB-C connectivity. For the record, it’s hard to disagree with Levin’s point about how Martin Scorsese is the greatest genre filmmaker of all time. Some of those features were actually pioneered by General Motors two decades ago on non-electric trucks, and are now making a comeback. Nevertheless, Levin is a student of the game, and Slayers is his attempt to inspire a new generation of genre fans. We've rounded up the best iPad (2022) screen protectors you can buy right now. Written and directed by Levin, Slayers follows Elliot Jones (Thomas Jane), a vampire hunter whose sole mission is to hunt down the creatures who killed his daughter. The Ring shows us why style matters If you remember the plot of The Ring, you likely remember something like this: A newspaper reporter in Seattle discovers an urban legend that suggests that watching a certain videotape will leave you with just seven days to live. After years of hunting, Jones has found those responsible for his daughter’s death, but needs help infiltrating their layer. Contents ESR Tempered Glass Screen Protector Jump to details amFilm Tempered Glass Screen Protector Jump to details Sparin Tempered Glass Screen Protector Jump to details Otterbox Alpha Glass Screen Protector Jump to details Omoton Tempered Glass Screen Protector Jump to details Show 2 more items ESR Tempered Glass Screen Protector Pros Cons Keep your new iPad's screen safe from scratches, cracks, and drops with this two-pack of tough tempered glass screen protectors from ESR. Design The Sierra EV updates the design language of the internal-combustion GMC Sierra for the electric age. Enter “The Stream Team,” a group of clout-chasing social media superstars who lack self-awareness and humility. When the team is invited to a billionaire’s estate, they quickly learn the compound is a breeding ground for vampires.3mm thick, ensuring touchscreen responsiveness isn't affected, and you can use your Apple Pencil as normal. Forced to team up with Flynn (Kara Hayward), a gamer on the team, Jones conducts the hunt of a lifetime inside the house to avenge his daughter. Like the Hummer EV and Silverado EV, the Sierra EV uses GM’s Ultium modular battery architecture which, among other things, means the battery pack is an integral part of the structure. Framed as a vampire movie, Slayers is also a unique takedown of the media and its capitalistic principles. ESR Tempered Glass Screen Protector amFilm Tempered Glass Screen Protector Pros Cons For $12, you can grab this two-pack of tempered glass screen protectors from amFilm. Of course, The Ring isn’t an entirely original creation. In an interview with Digital Trends, Levin speaks about the origin of Slayers, the inspiration behind Elliot Jones, and his burgeoning collaboration with Jane. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.9% high transparency, you'll hardly even notice your screen has a protector on it, and these protectors are also compatible with Face ID and the first-generation Apple Pencil. The Sierra EV also borrows the Midgate setup from the Silverado EV. Digital Trends: It’s been a busy couple of months for you with Dig and Slayers. Have you had a moment to catch your breath? K.33mm thick, is scratch-resistant, and boasts an oleophobic coating that keeps greasy, sweaty fingerprints to a minimum. Asher Levin: I haven’t.0-foot, 11-inch bed length to 10 feet, 10 inches. In the case of The Ring, though, this hue gives the entire film a feeling of unreality, as if what we’re watching is some sort of warped document of past events. I had my second kid in April. amFilm Tempered Glass Screen Protector Sparin Tempered Glass Screen Protector Pros Cons This 9H hardness tempered glass screen protector from Sparin ticks all the boxes when it comes to serious protection for your new iPad. Congrats. Thank you.99% light transmittance, it preserves your iPad's original screen brightness, so you won't find yourself squinting at the screen in bright sunshine. But the design itself, with a freestanding portrait touchscreen and rectangular instrument cluster, looks suspiciously similar to the Ford Mustang Mach-E cabin. We finished locking the cut of a film that comes out next year. A few months ago, I started prepping for a movie I’m about to shoot now.33mm thick, it also preserves your iPad's touch sensitivity, ensuring compatibility with the first-gen Apple Pencil. And yet, because of some jolty editing and Samara herself, who has hair covering her entire face, the images feel exactly the right level of disturbing. Then, I have these two movies that just came out, so it’s been a pretty wild ride for the last three months, and doesn’t seem like it’s ending yet. Tech The Denali Edition 1 gets a 16. [Laughs] Hopefully, you get a well-deserved vacation soon. You get two protectors in the box — keep one as a spare or share with friends or family. Yeah, absolutely. So, how recently did you watch the cut? Because I’ve noticed it’s really fun to talk to people right after they’ve seen it because it’s such a weird experience. Sparin Tempered Glass Screen Protector Otterbox Alpha Glass Screen Protector Pros Cons Chances are you've bought an Otterbox case at some point or know someone who has — the brand is renowned for its tough protection.0-inch head-up display. I watched it this morning. That grounding makes the scares, when they come, feel all the more sinister. Oh, amazing. You can expect shatter-resistant drop protection with fortified glass designed to resist splintering and reinforced edges to prevent chipping. Great! OK, cool. That includes the CrabWalk feature from the Hummer EV, which turns the front wheels and rear wheels at the same angle for low-speed diagonal driving. I like the unfiltered, right-away responses because it’s such a unique film. Otterbox Alpha Glass Screen Protector Omoton Tempered Glass Screen Protector Pros Cons Installing a screen protector can make using your Apple Pencil a no-go, but this tempered glass protector from Omoton works seamlessly with your Apple Pencil and is only 0. It is. When you say unique, it’s a vampire action-hunter film with this technological spin. Made from 9H hardness tempered glass, it is designed to protect against scratches, chips, and drops, with a plasma oleophobic coating to keep your screen crystal clear by minimizing smudges and fingerprints. Like other GM EVs, regenerative braking is controlled by a steering-wheel paddle, with true one-pedal driving capability. He only shows up for a few key scenes, but he’s entirely chilling in every moment. What was kind the origin of this story? The origin of the story is that about over a little over a decade ago, I started reading about Howard Hughes and his later years at the Desert Inn. I saw this cover of Time magazine where there’s a black-and-white sketch of him, and he looks like a vampire. Omoton Tempered Glass Screen Protector Editors' Recommendations. I thought it would be really fun to do a revisionist story of Hughes’ later years set at the Desert Inn in Vegas in the late ’60s. Specs The initial Sierra EV Denali Edition 1 version will have two electric motors sending power to all four wheels, with a combined output of 754 horsepower and 785 pound-feet of torque in what GMC calls Max Power mode. The way to do it is this classic Dracula story of young adults showing up at the Desert Inn under the auspices of the lead, Jack, being there as a young reporter, having a one-on-one interview. The Flynn character is his sister, the Liz character is his wife, and the Jules character is her best friend. When their bodies are discovered, they’ve been horribly disfigured, almost as though they drowned. Then, the Elliot character was originally called Robert Maheu, based on a security guy that was connected to Hughes. That’s not as quick as the Hummer EV’s claimed 3. So that was sort of the origin of it when we started working on it. After that, I ran and launched a very big young adult digital company called BRAT, which is still really popular and very, very different than everything I do now. I was inside the tent with a lot of people that are super-famous today, and we got famous, young adults, that were 12 and are now 18, 19, 20. It’s worth noting that these acceleration and range figures match the Silverado EV. I sort of saw how the sausage was made. It’s the kind of thing that could be scary or silly, but Verbinski’s decision to keep Samara in black and white against the green backdrops that he’s already established make her emergence feel like the ultimate violation. This was the in-between years before I went back to directing feature films. It was like a job that I had, basically. With standard 350-kilowatt DC fast charging, the Sierra EV can recover 100 miles of range in 10 minutes of charging, according to GMC. It was pretty tough on the soul, to be honest, and I got really cynical. I ultimately left the company because it was just too hard to keep going creatively with that, and then immediately, I was hired by Snapchat to develop and create shows for Snap Originals before they stopped doing scripted. When they were in and doing reality, we had two shows that were released, Save Me and Players, and I learned a lot about the digital visuality there. Pricing While the Hummer EV is more of a toy, the Sierra EV is intended to be a real truck aimed at GMC’s existing customers. It seems to suggest that, if people could just muster up the willpower to look away, the whole thing would be null and void. While I was doing that, I brought in my buddy, Zack [Imbrogno]. We wrote this other script that we’re still working to get made into a slasher film. I knew how much he loved horror films, and I had a whole different spin on this. The Denali Edition 1 will be followed by a standard Denali model, an AT4 off-road model, and an Elevation trim level. This was eight or nine years after I’d written the script initially. I wanted to really explore the vampiric elements of media and specifically, digital media, but also media beyond news media, etc. , and use these characters as a cipher. Meanwhile, the number of electric trucks is growing. So the Elliot Jones character really is Alex Jones. That was the sort of riff on the name. Originally, it was even wilder. But, the Sierra EV’s greatest rival might be its Chevy Silverado EV sibling, which shares most of the GMC’s key features and will have a wider range of configurations stretching down to lower price points. He was like a real Alex Jones rip-off. He had a camera. He was shooting his own conspiracy videos. He’s in the news as we speak. Yeah, and honestly, the vaccine stuff was just a happy accident, or a not-so-happy accident, because we had written the script and the vaccine was already in there. My buddy [Zack] is a real conspiracy nut and thinks everything’s controlled. As we started working on the movie, the pandemic hit. Our shows that were supposed to go to the second season on Snap were canceled because they weren’t doing scripted anymore. So I told Zack, ” Hey, let’s just go make Slayers now.” We went and got some actors and some friends I knew, and we got the movie up and running. All of the stuff that we had talked about initially became real with regard to vaccines and viruses and all this stuff. We were able to really lean into it. [For] the influencer stuff, it was always important for me to not have that be what the movie was about. I’ve seen a bunch of trashy influencer horror films and this is not that. I wanted it to be that it was just their occupation, and the theme in the movie was really about media and the vampiric elements of the media through capitalism. Elliot was a really great sort of balance to that. Also, Flynn as a gamer and not an influencer was really important to us. Once we made the movie, we looked at it and some stuff worked and some stuff didn’t. It was very clear that the Elliot and Flynn relationship was the part that was really, really working. Not that the rest of it didn’t click, but that it was so wildly entertaining to watch Thomas embrace the role and his interactions with Kara. We wanted to figure out a way to bring that element in really, really early. Knowing my background doing Snap, my editors suggested, “What if we really enhanced the movie and gave it an overall digital look that you know better than anyone else?” Once we started doing that, then the movie really became what it was. I was able to then expand on a lot of the mythology that Zack had started. In the scene in the trailer where he talks about the Illuminati[I] embraced my inner Chuck Palahniuk vibe and it creates this very unique vision throughout the film. SLAYERS Trailer (2022) Now for the next script you write, all of this stuff is going to come true 10 years from now as it did in this film. [Laughs] Shit, I hope not. I actually haven’t really written a script in a while. I have two movies that I am working on script-wise in between shooting all these things. It’s so hard because you’re like, “I gotta go direct now.” Both of them are definitely in the “Slayers zone.” Not necessarily on the camp factor of it, but in the sort of contemporary, techno horror element of it. I really am intrigued by the subversion of our society and ways to kind of find humor and violence within it. Thomas Jane has now been the lead in your last two films. How did your relationship begin? When I find an actor that I like to work with, it’s easier for me to operate. As you see from Slayers, I’m pretty ambitious with my shots, and it’s hard to do that when you don’t really know who you’re working with. So selfishly, I keep bringing people on that I know how to work with already. Emile Hirsch is another one that I work with a lot. I look at them as collaborators. I am such a huge fan of [Martin] Scorsese and [Robert] Altman and [John] Cassavetes and filmmakers of the ’70s who over and over again were working with the same actors and built a repertory. I think that they selfishly did the same thing. They want it to be able to go fast and shoot a lot and working with the same actors helps you with that. They understand your technique at that point. With regards to Thomas, it was once again a bit of a happy accident. We were searching for the Elliot Jones role for a while and my brother-in-law had spoken to Thomas briefly in the past about doing a comic book with him. He’s a big comic book guy. [My brother-in-law] said to me on a Sunday as we were having bagels and stuff with our family, “Hey, you know who would be great? Thomas Jane. ” And three days later, Thomas emailed me back and was like, “Hey, this is great. Let’s get on the phone. Let’s talk.” And that was that. We started talking and then he came to set, and we had a blast. While I was editing this movie, my producing partner, Daniel [Cummings], had another film, Dig, that he was working on, and Thomas was already talking to him a little bit about it. Then, we all decided that I would come on and do that, too. After that, I had another film that I was producing that’ll come out soon, and I recommended Thomas to my buddy John [Stalberg Jr.], who was directing it. So we brought [Thomas] on to that. Now, I’m developing one more with him, and then he’s going to be in the movie that I’m out here prepping right now. Wow. Thomas is a really cool guy and also such a wonderful father, too, and a really great guy with a ton of experience that gives me a lot of advice about things and knows a lot about genre. Whether I’m shooting a horror movie or a crime thriller or even a sort of weird comedy, they all sort of fit in the vein of elevated genre or elevated exploitation, whatever it is. That’s the type of stuff that I like. I think the world is too crazy to be that serious about it. Ultimately, I think that even when you watch people like Sam Raimi do a drama or thriller like A Simple Plan or something, you could still tell that they’re genre filmmakers. The Coen brothers, too, by the way. You could still sort of tell. Honestly, I always say that Scorsese is the greatest genre filmmaker of all time because I don’t think that his films adhere to the rules of dramatic directors. I think he’s more ambitious and more fun with the camera than most of them are. You hear him mostly praise weird horror movies that come out [Laughs], and I think the reason is he loves genre just as much as [Quentin] Tarantino does and understands that film is a pop culture medium. If you could find a way to reach the masses or reach a niche of mass while showing them stuff that they’ve never seen before, then you’re really you’re extending the cinematic language to a whole new audience. I hope that this movie is really that. This distillation of all of these different sorts of things that I’ve seen and that I love. An introduction to that 12-year-old kid who’s like, “Oh, my God. Slayers fucking rocks. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” And then someone one day goes, “Oh, well, you know, Asher ripped off [Brian] DePalma in this scene and Edgar Wright in that scene and Scorsese in that scene.” They’re then like, “Who are those people,” and they go see those movies, and suddenly, they have a whole film education. Slayers is now in theaters, on digital, and on demand. Editors' Recommendations .