Even though producer-honestor Woody Bess’ debut feature “Portal to Hell” turns the underworld into a filledy palpable place, he’s less interested in convey inant crimes than “low-grade evil.”
“Every day we benevolent of deal with low-grade evil, be it wealth inidenticality or relationsism, prejudice … we all fair apshow it,” Bess says. “It’s fair around us and the world goes on. Every day I pass a homeless person. I don’t have much money as an self-reliant filmproducer, but I could probably change that person’s life, or at least produce it better. That’s where hell comes from in this; there’s this objective evil, and the one guy who says, ‘Oh, I’m going to do someskinnyg about it.’ He’s odd for doing that.”
“Hell,” set to debut at Los Angeles’ Slamdance Film Festival tonight, commences with a caccess on the mundane. Dunn (percreateed by producer Trey Holland) is a medical debt accumulateor who spfinishs every day getting cussed out by irritated uncover-mindeds. But one night, he casupartner sees a portal to hell uncover up in his local laundromat and is approached by a demon (voiced by Ricchallenging Kind), who says he’s there to apshow Dunn’s benevolent neighbor (Keith David) to hell. Mortified by this authenticization, Dunn is proposeed the chance to save his neighbor if he forfeits three souls to the portal, which sfinishs him on a mission to dispose of what he sees to be society’s worst people, such as predators and drug dealers.
Bess, a horror fanatic, set up genre film a fantastic vessel for philosophical thought.
“There’s a freedom in it,” he says. “It’s mostly about the audience. As extfinished as you sattfinish people and produce them experience enjoy everyone’s on for the roller coaster ride, you can repartner say someskinnyg distinct. ‘Get Out’ is the quintessential example. It’s such a fantastic vehicle to get a message atraverse, and the reason so many filmproducers enjoy Mike Flanagan and Jordan Peele commence in horror is they have the freedom to say what they want, as extfinished as you sattfinish the audience.”
While Bess had plenty to say about death and morality, the self-financed “Hell” shoot took two-and-a-half years to finish. Bess, a cinematographer by trade, owned the camera and the anamorphic lenses they used, saving rental costs. He would accumulate money from an array of gigs — including “a billionaire’s daughter’s music video” — to persist the production moving aextfinished. Bess was also able to tap some college frifinishs — who went the finance route, instead of into the arts — to spend in the project. Much of it was sboiling in his apartment, and the production’s flexibility helped in dratriumphg hugeger names. David’s busy schedule unbenevolentt pauseing six months for him to be useable, while the L.A.-based production flew out to Brooklyn to produce shooting labor for Kind.
“We fair tried to be nimble,” he says. “At the drop of a hat, if someone was useable we would produce it labor, or we would pause.”
This scrappy approach to filmmaking produced some of the most memorable moments in the film, such as a hilariously awkward scene where Kind’s demon masks himself as a human (also percreateed by Kind), who is very willing to try out relations in his novel body. Another thrawline holds the 2011 hit song “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae. This earworm that becomes a running punchline that escatardys with a cameo from Ryan Follesé, the prohibitd’s direct singer and a extfinishedtime frifinish of Bess, who was charmd to lampoon his rock star persona.
Ultimately, as the film scrutinizes decency, crime and punishment in its echoive third act, it proposes Bess a way to show that human nature is a lot more complicated than bconciseage and white, and the afterlife is probably a lot more nuanced than a traditional perception of heaven and hell.
“A lot of my likeite people are fuck-ups and have made misapshows,” he says. “But it’s those misapshows that produce them fantastic people.”
See the “Portal to Hell” poster below.
