Tina Kakadelis
The Catholic Church does not allow nuns to perform exorcisms. They aren’t even allowed to be in the room where it happens. But if you found yourself on a train possessed by the demon Asmodeus, hurtling along the tracks at high speed, wouldn’t you trust a nun to save the day? Speed Demon is as though The Exorcist and Speed had a baby in the form of a train. Written by Domenico Salvaggio and directed by Jon Keeyes, Speed Demon stars Katie Cassidy as Sister Lu, the last line of defense who’s battling demons of her own.
Jon, I read that you were drawn to the script because of the fun, surreal, horror elements of it. What about that genre excites you as a director?
Jon Keeyes: I started my career off in horror, and I’ve been grateful that I’m able to circle back. I’ve always been fascinated about the darkness inside us. I think we get to see a lot of those things in horror movies more than in a lot of other genres.
When we started delving into Speed Demon, where every single character is flawed and every single character is dealing with their own inner demons, that, to me, was highly attractive to wanting to do this movie.
Katie, you’ve been in action movies before. You’ve played a superhero who’s strong and in control. Was it kind of exciting to play a character who’s growing into that strength over the course of an hour and a half?
Katie Cassidy: There was a little bit of similarity with that journey in Arrow and Laurel Lance’s transformation, but that was over several seasons. In this regard, it’s an hour and a half, and she didn’t have any other choice. She was like, we’re all going to die or I’m going to have to step into my power and figure this out.
And she does. It was definitely a fun character to play and to go on that journey with her in the short amount of time that we had. What I love about the character, too, is when we meet her, she’s dealing with her own demons. Drugs, alcohol, and self-medicating from trauma from her past, but she wasn’t a victim. She wasn’t victimizing herself in a way. She seemed to still have a little bit of strength. When I first read the script, it gave me encouragement that this character is actually going to be able to pull something like this off.
As much as it is a fun horror movie, I was surprised by these heavier topics. What was really interesting were the ideas of possession and addiction and the Venn diagram you’ve created between the two. Could you talk about the conversations you had to get into the headspace of Sister Lu and how you wanted to blend the fun with these really heavy, important conversations?
JK: One of Hitchcock’s rules was make them laugh, make them cry. The peaks and the valleys. We needed to have those peaks and valleys with the humor side of it as we were tackling some of the more dramatic stuff.
I’m a recovering drug addict, and I’ve been in recovery for a very long time. There was this big scene where Katie and Bill are talking about her addictions and the fact that she’s aware of it and she just can’t stop.
I had asked Domenico if I could write that scene. A lot of that scene was me remembering speaking to my father about my addiction way back when. That was a scene Katie and I spent a lot of time on. Discussing and sharing myself to create that anchor point for her to then build out from in both directions coming into that scene and then through the rest of the movie.
KC: I couldn’t have done this without Jon because what he shared about his past, he was somebody I could go to. He was able to explain to me what he went through. That helped me, obviously, with my character, but also the Catholic element to this, too. I did a lot of research and he doesn’t practice anymore, but he was Catholic, so he was able to guide me and explain it to me if I had questions or was uncertain about things.
As long as I can make sense of it in my head and be as authentic to the character as possible, that’s what was really important to me. Authenticity and not coming across gimmicky at all.
I imagine there are pros and cons to a single-setting film. Can you talk about the production side of things, but also, as an actor, if you get to really know this space and that frees you up to take more risks with your performance?
JK: I was there for weeks early on and essentially, the train cars were an empty shell. With a movie like this where you’re in one spot the whole time, your goal is to not remind the audience they’re in one spot or make them feel like they’re in the same room the whole time.
Austin F. Schmidt, my DP, and I spent a lot of time figuring out blocking, camera angles, layouts, and designs for the train cars to keep it feeling fresh. Keep the camera moving and keep the audience engrossed in the story and not aware of the fact that they’re in one spot.
I’ve done a lot of contained movies in my career, and I always fall back on Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. How do you keep a whole movie in a boat interesting? I studied that a lot as I got into my career.
The fun of it is that you’re in one spot, so you get to know your place and you get a whole lot more time filming because you’re not moving constantly, having to set things back up. We lit the whole set ready to go. We had everything on controllers, so we were never having to wait on lighting. We could really push things around and just keep shooting. That was a big benefit.
The con is when we’ve got 22 people in a train car. I’ve got a little monitor with my script supervisor sitting on top of me, my camera operator in my face, and we’re all huddled in the corner to get that wide shot in the camera.
Was it a series of train cars?
JK: It was two train cars. Basically, we had the first-class car, which was also the bar car, we had the coach car, and then we had the conductor’s car. We would shoot everything in each class car, get all those scenes, then move to another car while they were resetting. Constantly, throughout the production, we were jumping back and forth, back and forth, as each train car was reset to whatever specific one we needed. And yelling at people to be quiet a lot.
KC: In terms of how that works for me as an actor, I’m claustrophobic in general, so that sort of lended to the story. The set feeling claustrophobic helped add suspense and tension. It was chaotic to shoot, but it needed to be.
As an actor, when you step into the space and you step into your wardrobe, it really is like a transformation happens. I liked that it was contained and it was the same set so I knew what I was stepping into every day.
In your director’s statement, Jon, you said this isn’t the last of Sister Lu. The film ends hinting at things going in a certain direction, but I’m curious if you were to switch the mode of transportation for a sequel for Sister Lu, what would you want to put her on next?
JK: Speed Submarine or a Submarine Demon. It became a joke on set because literally we could have just taken the train car sets, covered the windows, and we could have been on a submarine. It’s become our joke that we need to do Submarine Demon. I think it would be kind of appropriate in the whole spectrum of things.
I feel like that would be worse for claustrophobia, Katie.
KC: Yeah, exactly!
