Kate Siegel on Increasing Her V/H/S Horror Quick Right into a Characteristic

Kate Siegel is well-known to horror followers for her dynamic array of performances inside the style—typically working along with her husband and inventive companion, Mike Flanagan. Their initiatives collectively embrace (deep breath) Oculus, Hush (which Siegel co-wrote), Ouija: Origin of Evil, and Gerald’s Sport, in addition to Netflix sequence The Haunting of Hill Home, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the Home of Usher. Now you can add V/H/S/Beyond to that checklist—with a little bit of a task reversal, since Flanagan wrote it and Siegel directed, making her debut behind the digicam.

Their V/H/S/Past section is titled “The Stowaway;” it’s the final entry within the movie aside from the conclusion of the body story. An unsettling mix of first-contact wonderment and physique horror, it follows the awkward but decided Halley (Alanah Pearce) as she roams a lonely pocket of California’s Mojave Desert, intent on capturing proof of UFO exercise within the space. We received’t spoil the place her journey leads, however within the build-up to its memorably ghastly climax, “Stowaway” creates a nuanced portrait of somebody who’s clearly reeling from latest trauma in her life, and who’s hoping to search out some new objective in her extraterrestrial explorations.

Speaking to Variety, Siegel stated she’d bounce on the probability to broaden Halley’s story: “I might like to make this a function. There’s a big feature-length story in it that I’d love to inform.”

And there’s precedent for that; thus far, two function movies have been made that broaden on their V/H/S origins: 2016’s SiREN, drawn from “Beginner Evening” in 2012’s V/H/S, and 2022’s Children vs. Aliens, from “Slumber Social gathering Alien Abduction” in 2013’s V/H/S/2.

Although it appears like she had a blast making “Stowaway,” saying “I discover it very thrilling to have a brand new technique to inform a narrative,” Siegel isn’t strolling away from performing to pursue directing full-time. “I’m not giving up performing—I’m simply being slightly extra choosy now as a result of I’ve one thing that takes all of me that I really feel like doing,” she instructed the commerce. “I’ll all the time reply the decision for a terrific story, whether or not that’s as a director or a producer or an actress.”

As for working with Flanagan, past the truth that they’re married, she is drawn to his “honesty and respect,” even when he’s telling her one thing she won’t need to hear (or vice versa): “He’ll give me the constructive criticism I want, or I’ll give him the criticism he wants … if you’re making tens of millions and tens of millions of decisions, the stuff that will get via is probably the most trustworthy and direct.”

You may stream V/H/S/Past on Shudder now.

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