It’s been a horrific year for Australian actress Lily Sullivan – and she wouldn’t want it any other way!
After surviving the bloody carnage of Evil Dead Rise earlier in 2023, the Queensland-born starlet is capping off the year with another horror entrant, Monolith, but to say it’s far removed from the “groovy” gore of Evil Dead would be an understatement.
Telling the story of a disgraced journalist who turns to podcasting to salvage her career, before uncovering a strange artefact that she believes is evidence of an alien conspiracy, Monolith is an isolated thriller that puts Sullivan as the sole performer on screen – something Peter Gray touched on when he spoke to her in the lead up to the film’s release this week.
In between sharing birthday wishes, drinking invitations, and joking about what you could get away with on camera thanks to the wonderous technology of noise cancelling Zoom set-ups, Peter and Lily discussed the film’s technicality, shooting in chronological order, and how anxious she became shooting such a singular production.
This movie makes me want to ask a million questions. It did my head in, in the best way possible. I find that horror is a genre that can play with a variety as to what is “scary” to someone. I think the lack of something physically there can often be scarier. How was it for you working in such an isolated setting?
Yeah, because it’s all audio-based and I had the headphones in, they were noise cancelling, and it very much induced this sort of anxious state, which is an interesting thing to carbonate for 12 hours a day on camera. And to find that energetic anxiety in the body, which is tense, you have to listen intently to (your body), because the language of another person has been removed. You have nothing to react to or no other eye contact. It was really wild to have this deep anxiety from it. I ended up in this almost-echo chamber of myself and my imagination, because you’re listening and someone else is painting the picture of the story that they’re telling and answering. It was just a very bizarre, anxiety-induced form of meditation. It was really abstract.
Which is exactly what you want mediation to be. Something that freaks you out!
Totally! And also being on set, and the house almost being the other lead (character), at one point I had the offer to stay on set and to live in the house, and the film crew would just arrive….I didn’t know, I just knew I shouldn’t stay there. I need to go to a little cottage in the hills of Adelaide and light a fire, and rock myself to sleep (laughs).
I was going to ask about that house, because it is very much its own character. When your character goes outside it’s almost like we, as the audience, get to breathe with you, because you’re just so contained. How was it shooting on location as compared to a set? The fact that you didn’t decide to stay there obviously speaks to the fact that you needed to remove yourself from the intensity of this performance. I can’t imagine what’s it like to not have someone else to work off. It made me think with the people you’re talking to, are you talking to them live? And did you ever meet the person on the other end?
So, basically, it was Ansuya (Nathan), this great actor and writer, and she was part of the process of the whole shoot. She would be in another room at the other end of the house in the giant walk-in wardrobe, because her sound would bleed into the boom, so she was at the other end of the house on the phone playing all these characters. Our budget didn’t (allow) the luxury of having people dial in. So it was just me. It was quite an intimate experience, just the two of us. She’d whisper into my headset and be, like, “You’re enough. You got this.”
That’s very nice of her to whisper that sort of stuff. She could have gone the other way to freak you out and whispered something like, “No one listens to you”…
(Laughs) “You’ll never amount to anything. You’re a narcissist. You’re the only person on screen, it’s a terrible idea.”
And looking at that, I mean you are the only person on screen, but you do essentially act opposite yourself. I guess now you can really do anything. “Put me opposite the biggest narcissist there is and I’ll be able to handle it. I’ve worked opposite myself!”
(Laughs) I can sit in myself really comfortably. But I can do it! It was so crazy shooting stuff like the creation of the other self, this other entity. I thought of it like a newborn or a body that hasn’t quite developed all of its muscle and tissue. We did it in a one hand shot (too). It was so creative and fun, just a playground of workshopping what you can do with a budget. We weren’t going to have any CGI or special effect. I said, “What about my neck? I’ll put it forward like a turtle and crack it back, like one vertebrae at a time?” (Director Matt Vesely) was like, “That’s disgusting. You should do that!”
The one hand shot was where I’d walk up the hallway, and then I would come back and get (my) double, and I would sit down, reflect on what I just saw, and the double would literally then come in and I would jump up as they turn the camera around to reveal the entity sitting there. I ran around the camera and tried to relax all my muscles and would pull the weirdest face, just so I could look like I wasn’t fully developed. This was all in the span of about 4 and a half seconds.
Does shooting in chronological order help with that aspect?
Of just descending into madness? Totally. Yeah, it was so great to shoot in chronological order. The last two films I have done now have been in order, which is wild, because some films I’ve done you start at the last scene. It’s crazy. You don’t even know what the journey us, so it really makes working easier as well. You don’t have to keep reflecting. You know where (you character’s) at. You’re able to freefall more, and not have to refer to your notes so much. You get to be really present.
Obviously you are fully immersed in that horror space now. Do you find it a genre you want to keep exploring? Having spoken to you twice, you are the loveliest person, so let’s get you in a comedy!…
(Laughs) Totally. I want my grid to just feel ambiguous and gear shift, and I want to grow and challenge and change. It’s really nice to feel familiar with the genre now and I’ve created such a toolbox in ways of creating and carbonating this immense fight or flight mode. It’s been really amazing. Whenever I do anything else, I’ll enter it through that. But I really do love horror. I love thrillers. It’s (always) such a fiery collaboration, because you’re trying to pull off suspense and gags, and, for me, it’s really fun to work with other creative. It’s almost like acting comes a little bit later.
Talking about creating that atmosphere earlier, this is a film that doesn’t have a lot of levity to it, but were you able to still find a certain amount of fun when filming? Or was this one of those situations where you stayed in character?
Yeah, even just memorising the lines, I’d go home and I would just be sitting there, going over the next days worth of how many pages of dialogue and interviews, and I would be sitting there just very heavy and very overwhelmed. Not having another actor in front you too… and it was a tight schedule, so once we started there was no coming up for air. It was harder to have fun, for sure. But the producers were just this soft, beautiful group of generous creative, and it felt super supportive. There were moments I called (them) crying, saying how I couldn’t remember my lines. And they were, like, “You’re the only actor. We’ve been waiting for you to crack!”
I always find that though. It’s the people that create horror or really terrifying content that are always the loveliest people. It’s almost like they are sick of being nice all the time that they just want to slit someone’s throat open…on screen.
Yeah, it’s why I love working in this genre. You just get to do things and act out things and entertain concepts that either can never happen or won’t happen. You get off on the idea that you want it to be real in this world. I’m all about creating and working on projects where I can play in that space.
And with Monolith having previewed at SXSW earlier in the year and the critical reaction being so positive, have you had any conversations or seen any theories or interpretations as to what the film is about?
That’s such an interesting question. I wish someone had, but at SXSW it was more just people clapping to the idea of what can be made on a shoestring (budget) if you apply yourself and don’t squeeze a film into the budget, but build the film from the budget. That’s what is so beautiful about (SXSW), it’s such a hub for creatives. (Monolith) is like a $500,000 budget, and you wonder what you can do with this high conceptual piece. It was more about the realm and editing a film in a 6 month period.
Monolith is screening in select Australian theatres from October 26th, 2023.
