Sung Kang has been a fan favorite for years for his work in the Fast and the Furious franchise. Now, he’s dipping his foot in the directorial pool. Bringing to life the tropes of the 80s horror films like Friday the 13th and American Werewolf in London, Kang brings us Shaky Shivers about two young friends named Lucy (Brooke Markham) and Karen (Vyvy Nguyen) who work at the local ice cream shop. While they have friends who have gone on to use their money and power to be insufferable, Lucy and Karen are stuck working for Bob (Herschel Sparber).
It’s kooky, weird, and the kind of horror comedy that pokes fun at the genre it’s celebrating in a perfect way with hilarity and charm that makes you extremely excited to go on the journey with Karen and Lucy as they use a book of spell to try and stop Lucy from being a werewolf. Talking to Sung Kang about the film was exciting because it was his directorial debut and so outside of my own excitement for his work, I got to talk to him about his influences for the movie.
“I wanted to definitely infuse the fun and the innocence of movies that I loved growing up. I don’t know if you would would necessarily call The Goonies a horror movie, but there were creatures in it,” he said. “And there were prosthetic effects but there was never a moment where I was scared, there was suspense, but I was never scared out of my seat. You knew who the bad guys and the good kids were. But there’s this innocence and sincerity that I really appreciate about The Goonies, and so I wanted that in Shaky Shivers. And then also I wanted to pay homage to films like American Werewolf in London, like the werewolf transformation that Lucy goes through is our homage to Rick Baker and those artisans that made that scene work out in that film.”
Kang went on to talk about other inspirations like the attitude of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise and how the film’s came to life back in the 80s. “I would say I leaned really on those two films. And I tried to extract like their spirits. It was easy to do because the writers are children of the eighties, Gabe is a little older than me, the gentleman who made all the creatures. So they understood the film language that I was talking about and then also like Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, that was one of his first films. And that was spirit of like the can-do attitude about just make it happen. Like they don’t have any money. But all in my head, we don’t have the money to do this, but let’s figure out anyway, you know? And if we all put our brains together, something creative will come out of it and just have a can-do attitude. And then that movie’s hilarious too. It’s so like ridiculous. They don’t take themselves seriously and that was a spirit that I definitely wanted to have a part of Shaky Shivers.”
You can see our full interview here:
Shaky Shivers will hit theaters on September 21st!
(featured image: Luka Productions International)
