The Pact 2, the follow up to the much appreciated feature film debut of writer/ director Nicholas McCarthy, continues the story of The Judas Killer. This time writer/director duo Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath are at the helm and Grey’s Anatomy favorite Camilla Luddington in the lead. Luddington stars as June, a young woman struggling to keep her very complicated life together. Having screened the film, I can say that she is easily the best part of the movie, playing a complex and solemn young woman who is a rarity to find in most horror movies. Nerdist had the opportunity to speak with Luddington about working with Hallam and Horvath, the horror genre and continuing the legacy of the first film.
When I ask Camilla Luddington, best known for her sexy and bubbly turns in Californiacation and Grey’s Anatomy, if she was familiar with The Pact before she signed onto the follow up to the Nicholas McCarthy sleeper, the answer was not only an enthusiastic “yes,” but that Luddington is a huge horror fan in her own right. The actress explained, “What happened was, well first of all, I’m a huge horror movie fan. I’ve grown up watching Halloween, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and even more random movies like the French horror movie Martyrs, so my agents and my managers always knew that I had always wanted to do a horror movie. They called me saying that there was a sequel to this movie and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do a sequel, that’s not for me,’ and they said, Well, why don’t you just take a look at the first movie and see if you like it and then call us back.’ And I did watch the first movie and I was such a fan and so intrigued as to where they would take the second story and continue it, that I met with the directors and it kind of went from there. So, I definitely saw the first movie and was a fan of, not just the cinematics and the story and the atmosphere but also Caity Lotz too. I just sort of loved what she did in that role and so that’s how the ball kind of got rolling on the movie.”
Luddington, who is almost unrecognizable as June, explained what attracted her to this character in particular, by saying, “I think that one thing I wanted to be careful about is that I think in a lot of horror movies there’s always the girl who is kind of the bimbo making all the wrong choices, you know? She’s running up the stairs instead of going out the door. What interested me in particular about this character was, honestly, how complicated she is. She’s not glamorous, she’s living a very difficult life, she has a very complicated relationship with not only her boyfriend, but her mother [too] and you see her channeling that through her art and she’s kind of withdrawn. I mean, even in her relationship she does love her boyfriend but she just very interesting to me. She’s tortured, in a way, even before we find out her entire backstory. When I took on the character I definitely had a lot of questions for the directors and we spent about four days actually sitting down and going through things in the script because anything that she did, like if she did run up the stairs, I wanted to know why she wasn’t running out the front door, there had to be a reason for me. So, she was a great character, it was very appealing for me to play her.”
When I mention having spoken with McCarthy recently and discussing the idea of a sequel to his film that was moving along without him, Luddington was quick to sing the praises of the original film and the team who took over the franchise. She told us, “I absolutely loved what he [McCarthy] did. I was sad when I heard he wasn’t doing the second, I was wary of who would be directing the second, but when I met Patrick [Horvath] and Dallas [Hallam], they are also massive, massive horror movie fans and they were so passionate about the project and the script that they really sold me on it. Any questions, I had they really had an answer for, and they really seemed to have a clear understanding between them of the vision of the film… I just loved that they were both working together for this really wonderful sole idea for this film. It was great and I really enjoyed the process of it with them.”
The Pact 2, written and directed by Dallas Hallam and Patrick Horvath and starring Camilla Luddington, Scott Michael Foster, Patrick Fischler, Haley Hudson and Caity Lotz, is in select theaters and available on VOD now!
Image: IFC Midnight
