JT Mollner and Giovanni Ribisi on Crafting the Visuals and Characters of STRANGE DARLING

Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner in STRANGE DARLING | Photo Credit: Magenta Light Studios

By Shannon McGrew

In STRANGE DARLING, from writer/director JT Mollner and starring Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner, nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer's vicious murder spree.

For the release of STRANGE DARLING, Creepy Kingdom's Shannon McGrew spoke with writer/director JT Mollner and cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi. During their chat, they discussed everything from the film's striking visual style and color palette to the intense character development and the collaborative process that brought STRANGE DARLING to life.

I don't want to give too much away, but STRANGE DARLING completely defied my expectations. What inspired the concept behind this story?

JT Mollner: I had an image of a woman running through the woods in distress and bloodied, and it came very clearly and strongly to me. I could see the greens of the forest, the look on her face, and the music I wanted to play during the scene. I didn't know what else there was to it, but I knew she was the archetypal Laurie Strode character. I was interested in this character but didn't know what to do with her cause it felt like a trope. So, I thought, what if there's a way to find a different angle to explore the final girl? Is there a way to see her with more agency, more damage, or whatever to see her point of view differently?

So, after months of going on hikes and lying in bed between sleep and wake state, the story came to me in the order you see it. I remember walking in my neighborhood and figuring out where I wanted it to go. I was like, if that's where it goes, this could be really interesting. I ran back to my house, went inside, and told my wife, who also thought it was really good. Then I asked the professionals I work with who don't always think my writing is commercial enough. I also sent it to Giovanni very shortly after that. I was hoping that he'd give me feedback or maybe that he'd want to be involved in getting the movie made. It was really compelling to me to do something that wasn't about a specific message or point of view or anything. It was really about finding a way to create this rollercoaster ride that subverts expectations at every turn and making a very different statement than I did with my first film, Outlaws and Angels, which was the flip side of this. It was exciting for me.

Giovanni, STRANGE DARLING marks your debut as a cinematographer in a feature film. Can you talk about your transition from acting to cinematography and what drew you to make this film your first project?

Giovanni Ribisi: It was really based on JT taking a leap of faith. I am grateful for that. I had been shooting for 15 years and working with film and celluloid for half of that. That's how JT and I met and bonded over the medium of film. He had been over, and I had shown him some things I had shot. After reading [the script], I was desperate to be involved, and the conversation evolved into me shooting it and using this facility here to implement it. That's when Steven Schneider got involved, and I think it was a matter of months, a really fast timeline, for the film to get financed.

(L-R) JT Mollner and Giovanni Ribisi | Photo Credit: Magenta Light Studios

The film's visual style is incredibly striking, especially with the red and blue palette. How did you both approach crafting this project's visual style and tone?

JT Mollner: We were watching a lot of movies, and before even doing this movie together, I knew we were both turned on by a lot of the same things in the same era of films. In this stage, I know we were both interested in getting away from the norms of today, like flat, tertiary colors, and neon. We talked about primary color, movies like The Red Shoes, and even later movies like Cronenberg's Dead Ringers and David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

The movie starts in black and white, but it becomes hyper-real, and it's supposed to be like a fairytale. We talked about blood on the flower bed as our mission statement, these movies that were so beautiful on the surface but there's this darkness bubbling up and attempting to get through the entire movie, increasing tension. We wanted to do a film like that and wanted to make sure the colors were used in specific scenes for character and story, and using it to steep the audience in a certain emotion in different moments that they won't forget being put into and use those colors as weapons in a sense.

Giovanni Ribisi: In the convenience-oriented zeitgeist, we push buttons, take pills, or do things to make things go away or happen. That directly affects film, the economics of film, and the schedules of films. We showed this movie to somebody a couple of days ago who had made a movie decades ago, and they said, oh yeah, we had X amount of dollars, but we had a 40-day schedule, which was super tight. When he learned our schedule, he was like, wow! Because most films of this ilk are made in 18 days. I have a friend who is making a movie in 15 days right now. It's become commonplace that even if you will be shooting with film, you will do that.

What happens is you start to see that homogenizes a style in the way you shoot; you grab a camera, you put it on your shoulder, and it's a handheld film, and you're trying to find a position to make your movie, and you start to go through a whole week like that. We really wanted to put the camera in a specific place, precisely the one place that we felt it should be. At the end of the day, it's true that there is only one place to put a camera for any given scene or moment. It was a lot of planning; it was a logistical shot list as much as a creative shot list. It was such a joy to do that for the four or five months with JT because we were already making the movie once on paper before we went out to execute it.

What were your experiences working with Kyle Gallner and Willa Fitzgerald to bring this story to life?

JT Mollner: The movie doesn't work unless those two performances blow the roof off. They're both so different. Willa's character, The Lady, has more faces and is a flashier role, but Kyle's character, The Demon, is so internal. It calls for so much internalization and so much subtlety. If you watch him in a movie like Dinner in America and then watch him in this movie, it's a much more subtle and restrained performance, but he's great in both movies for different reasons. His range is insane, and so is Willas.

We initially met with lots of people and really spent time figuring out who would be right for these roles and vetted people. When I met with Willa after seeing her work and once I knew we could cast her, all she talked about, her and Kyle, was how much they loved their characters. They both found common ground with their characters. They found all the things to love. When we watch a movie, if we decide as viewers we don't like a character for a specific reason, that's okay. You're allowed not to like them, but the actors playing these characters better f**king love them, right? I wanted to find The Lady's humanity even below the damage; the same is true for The Demon. I wanted to find both of their humanity. I thought it would be a more interesting movie if there were humanity there, and both of them wanted to bring that to their characters, and they're both very defensive about their characters' points of view. They're such phenomenal actors, and it was a blast working with them.

STRANGE DARLING is now in theaters.