Waking Nightmare Director Steve Craig On Mothers, Daughters & His Feature Debut

Steve Craig: It’s pretty wild. It was a low-budget production that we really wanted to push as far as we could in terms of what we could pull off stylistically. There were a lot of challenging moments and a lot of hurdles. But at the same time, it was a concept and a process that allowed me to experiment a lot with different styles and different inspirations. It’s really what I was looking to be my first film, so it really turned out well for me.

Steve Craig: Brian Farmer came to me with the script. We had worked together prior to this, and he wanted me to sort of bring my flavor to it. It’s a script that allowed me to blend different styles. It incorporates comedy, drama, and slasher in a nuanced way, especially nuanced in terms of the slasher element. I don’t know that I’d call it a slasher film, but I think that, in some ways, it follows the structure of a killer killing one-off characters. This killer is unaware that she’s killing people, so I thought that was a pretty interesting idea. She’s sort of the everyday girl that’s in a crazy world with lots of toxicity that she would probably prefer to escape but can’t. By following her into the madness of it all, I saw a lot of opportunities for me to experiment visually and otherwise.

Steve Craig: I’ve been a horror fan for a really long time. One of the things I love about the horror genre is that I think that it does allow for a lot of experimentation and trying different things out. We’re seeing that become even more mainstream with A24 horror films. There are different things about horror that I love that I’ve seen in horror films. Obviously, horror is so varied as a genre.

But I would say that sort of visceral thrill and brutality, which I think that this film pulls off. There is a little bit of shock, which I think is okay. I think shock can be underrated. But also, that psychological twisting of the knife that’s digging its claws into your inner psyche. I like to think we pulled that off with the performances in this movie. I think it’s a good blend to have psychological horror and just visceral brutality.

Steve Craig: That’s a great question. I think of Jordan as a relatable character. If she had it her way, she would just be normal and live a normal life with friends, but she grows up in a very toxic environment as we find out more and more. Her family life is stifling, and the relationship with her mother is overbearing. She lives in a neighborhood where there seems to be a lot of toxicity present, and she attempts to escape. In the beginning, we learned that she was off to college and almost out of that life but ended up right back in. You have a normal everyday girl just trying to be accepted or find some stability, but just living in a world of madness. I think of her as your regular girl next door, who’s just trying to make sense of everything that’s happening.

Steve Craig: I like to think there’s some room for interpretation in regard to how far gone she actually is or how stable she is mentally. But she’s also just the victim of her circumstances. She’s doing the best she can with the cards she was dealt.

Steve Craig: We worked with Shelley prior to this. We worked with her a couple of times. I really trust her as a performer. She’s very technical and can turn her performance on and off in a split second. It’s amazing to watch. When Diane read the script, I knew she was extremely excited about doing the character, and we were excited about having her. To a large extent, it was a collaboration. It was giving them an opportunity to put their skills into a performance that they wouldn’t normally be cast for.

I think that, in some ways, Shelly wasn’t your normal horror movie leading lady, but I think that lent itself to the unique experience overall. We trusted the performers. I think with Diane, she would get revved up and just be unhinged, and you see it in some of the scenes. She’s just completely off the walls. When that happens, you just step back and let her do her thing and trust their processes as they’re trusting ours.

Steve Craig: I want to say we filmed over the course of a year, but it may be more than that. Things would happen, there were scheduling conflicts, and, like I said, there were a lot of hurdles to jump over. There would be little days here or there, but it wasn’t many days either. We would have days when we had to film 15 pages in one day, and that was a challenge. The cast was very much on board with all of those challenges, and that’s what I was really grateful for. If you watch the film, you have an idea of what Shelley went through as an actress—how often she’s on the floor or getting choked out. She’s going through a lot of physically demanding performances. There was never a moment where she just wasn’t on point, and she wasn’t a positive influence on everyone on set.

I was really grateful to have Diane. She pretty much stepped out of retirement to do it. She just had this spirit that I imagine would go all the way back to the 80s. She was so excited to be acting and just wanted to get the job done no matter what it took. When you’re doing low budget, sometimes you have to figure out what the rules are. Am I allowed to smoke a cigarette in here? Are we allowed to get blood on the floor? Her mentality was always like, “We just have to do whatever we have to do to get this movie done.” I feel that way, too, a lot of times. It was really cool to have that ambition and watch them do their craft. Everyone was really cool to work with on this movie.

Steve Craig: Brian and I are on opposite ends of the country. He directs things over there, and I’ve been directing commercials and videos over here in California. I have a short film that I’m working on, as well as a feature that I’d like to do. It’s similarly exploring the realms of horror. I consider it a combination of the movie Saw and the movie Dogtooth. That’s something I’d really like to do. But the real world dictates that I have to focus on my business too. Doing the commercials is something I really enjoy as well.