Just in time to add some extra horror to the world, director David Koepp’s latest psychological thriller “You Should Have Left” starring Kevin Bacon is out on-demand now.
A Blumhouse Productions film, the story follows Theo Conroy, played by Kevin Bacon, and Susanna Conroy, played by Amanda Seyfried, as they navigate the rough waters of marriage and past demons. Wanting to escape the stressors of life, the couple pack their bags and set off with daughter Ella, played by Avery Essex, to a vacation house in Wales.
Straying away from the traditional old creaky haunted house film, the movie’s plot takes place in a modern-looking minimalistic house in the countryside. Once the family sets foot inside, they grow unable to escape feelings of unease about the house itself. Meanwhile, Kevin Bacon’s character Theo is unable to escape his own mind.
“I think horror is a fascinating place for an actor to go,” Bacon said. ”Chances are, if you’re the lead, really 70 percent of it or 80 percent, you’re going to be scared. So now you have to figure out how to not bore people with your scared looks.”
Throughout his longtime acting career and familiarity with horror, he’s had experience in perfecting these very looks. Having acted in past thrillers including “Friday the 13th,” “Hollow Man” and “Stir of Echoes,” also directed by David Koepp, Bacon has seen the evolution of the genre of horror itself through the years.
“I think there’s more pressure, maybe, on horror movies now to be a little bit more elevated and to have a little bit more to say possibly about the world or about people or about the human condition,” he said.
Battling unnerving jealousy and insecurity within his marriage to much younger Susanna, Bacon’s character spirals into a frenzy of self doubt that crescendos to a peak when forced to confront feelings about a previous marriage. Trying to move forward while being constrained by the past, Theo toils with the idea of self accountability.
“I think that’s really one of the questions we’re raising,” he said. “The rich and powerful men of this world – time and time again we see an abuse of that power.”
In preparing for this role, just like any, Bacon didn’t draw heavily from the work of others or his work in the past.
“I have a theory, which is I try to use myself and lose myself,” he said. “When I’m on a set, I don’t want to feel like I’m Kevin. Kevin to me is not interesting; The characters I play are interesting.”
Rather, Bacon began his preparation for this role by sitting down with Koepp to develop Theo’s backstory – the what’s and why’s of his fictional life.
“I kind of feel like, a lot of times with characters, you can’t ask too many questions,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll just sit down and take a couple hours in the afternoon and write just dumn s**t down, like ‘He likes pizza but he doesn’t like hamburgers,’ ‘He would write with a pen but not with a pencil.’ They’re all just an aspect of building a character.”
Nick Wibert, a 19-year-old UF statistics junior and president of the University Film Society, said psychological horror is one of his favorite genres to explore.
“I saw that it was a Blumhouse Productions movie, which was enough to spark my interest,” Wibert said. “Even whenever I don’t end up liking one of their movies it’s at least something interesting or different.”
Bacon said he is less drawn to the formulaic “slasher” qualities of the horror genre, but rather the psychological and character-driven thrillers are what he’s most attracted to as both a viewer and actor.
“As an actor, I like challenges and I also like parts and roles that are life or death,” he said. “That’s what scary movies are – it’s flight or fright.”
Contact Chloe Greenberg at cgreenberg@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @_chloegreenberg.
Ella Conroy (Avery Essex) and Theo Conroy (Kevin Bacon) in "You Should Have Left," written and directed by David Koepp.
