Sundance Film Festival 2023 – Navigating the Outsider Mythology with ‘My Animal’ Director Jacqueline Castel
Jacqueline Castel recently spoke with Script about how she and Jae Matthews initially connected in the NYC music scene to later becoming creative collaborators, using the camera to capture character development, and what she hopes audiences take away from watching this film.
Heather, an outcast teenage goalie, longs to play on the hockey team of her small northern town. She meets and falls in love with newcomer Jonny, an alluring but tormented figure skater. The girls’ relationship blossoms despite Heather’s struggles with her alcoholic mother, her hidden sexual orientation, and a familial curse that transforms her into a feral wolf under the full moon. Heather and Jonny’s secret tryst soon clashes against the conformity of their small community, exposing dangerous truths and igniting a passionate, violent night of personal transformation.
Beautifully haunting and visually poetic, My Animal director Jacqueline Castel gives us a fresh take on a horror love story along with screenwriter Jae Matthews spin on the classic werewolf tale. With its midnight premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, I'm certain we'll be seeing more from both filmmakers in the horror space.
This being Jacqueline's feature directorial debut at Sundance, it does come quite surprising that this is her first feature as a director, as she comes off as a seasoned pro - this could be thanks to having directed auteurs like John Carpenter and Jim Jarmusch, and notably, as a cinematographer - her specificity and attention to detail is not missed with how the camera interacts and reveals character depth.
Jacqueline Castel recently spoke with Script about how she and Jae Matthews initially connected in the NYC music scene to later becoming creative collaborators, using the camera to capture character development, and what she hopes audiences take away from watching this film.
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Sadie Dean: How did you link up with the writer Jae Matthews and what was your immediate connection and reaction to her script?
Jacqueline Castel: Yeah, so it's kind of a funny roundabout story. I had met Jae before, in the New York music scene with her band Boy Harsher. I went to a film festival in Macau, China, and I pitched a totally different project. And when I was there, my producer Michael Solomon was there a pitching another project and we both liked each other's projects, so we kind of kept in contact and he knew that I was along with being American that I was also Canadian, and he's a Canadian producer. So, he was kind of keeping me in the back of his mind for projects. He was passed along Jae's script via another producing friend of his and he liked it. And he said, ‘Hey, would you like to check this out?’ And so, I was like, ‘Oh, I'll check it out. I'll give it a read.’ And then I saw that it had been written by Jae and I was like, ‘This is so bizarre that,’ [laughs] ‘this is how I got the screenplay.’ And it seemed very roundabout, you know?
I sat down and I read it and I just really immediately connected with the world that Jae had crafted, really connected to the characters and their story. I really love and I'm attracted to outsider stories, outsider mythologies, and I really love this idea of exploring the werewolf genre in a really different way than I had seen it done before. And I thought that was really intriguing. I was just connected to it emotionally, really connected to the characters and there were a lot of synchronicities in my life. And when you read something, and you can start to see it and you feel it, that's just something you pay attention to you and you listen to it because that's not very common.
And then Jae and I then met up in New York and we talked about the project and we talked about the circumstances under which she had written it, which were very personal. And we decided to work together. We worked on crafting the film to get it ready for production for about a year, and then we started taking it out to cast and to financiers.
Sadie: Wow, what a roundabout way, it was all meant to be. There's this wonderful, beautiful dance you do visually portraying love and heartbreak through camera movement, and I feel like that attention to detail I would assume comes a lot from your background as a cinematographer. And I feel like there's also this nice little wink you give to horror audiences to the likes of John Carpenter with the use of music and musical cues, and maybe even some Joel Schumacher’s Lost Boys with the simplicity of this world. I'm curious about what that creative process was like with your DP Bryn McCashin and establishing that visual tone and also the symbolic use of the color red?
Jacqueline: Thank you for picking up on all that stuff. I really appreciate it. I've always had kind of a background in camera and I've always shot a lot of my own stuff. And so, I feel very connected to that in terms of how I tell stories, and the specific angles or the way that I get information or how we sort of show the world of the character in that way. When Bryn McCashin, my DP, and I started working together, I was attracted to his eye and just the kind of world he was creating. I felt that it was in alignment with my own and I thought that that was important because we were on really tight timelines, because I actually had a couple of other different DPs attached to the film and then they dropped out last minute for various reasons. I was very stressed because I was like, ‘Camera is the most important thing to me!’ And I had to find somebody very quickly and there are certain financial parameters where I had to hire a Canadian, but I mostly spent most of my life in the US, so most of my contacts in the world are there.
So, it was like this kind of a dizzying thing where I was like, I need to find somebody that I just gel with and I connect with and I really felt that that was one of the most important elements - this is a person who's going to be with you and really be by your side, and really connects with what you're trying to do. And I felt that way with Bryn. And we just jumped in. [laughs]
We had two months total to prep and so it was just like this wildfire of, ‘OK, this is the sort of philosophy behind the camera movement,’ it all kind of comes from the actual DNA of the project; who the character is, how they see the world, what is the perspective? And what does that really, again, like highly subjective presence you're trying to create for the audience, so you feel like you're in Heather's world, and how do you craft your camera movements around that? That was something we talked about a lot was how to get to that place.
And then along with just the elements of like the stylized moments versus the less stylized moments, how to marry those two worlds so that you have this sense of this kind of oppressive kind of reality that Heather is faced with, and then there's sort of hyper imaginative realms that were like these worlds of pure emotional states.
The color red was a really important one because that was a color we always wanted to establish to kind of creep into the scenes as these heightened feelings were being explored. And that's even just something that I did on a small level even with like Jonny's hair, throughout the course of the movie, Jonny's hair has more pink extensions as she's falling in love. Every sort of element of the story, I was trying to reinforce this idea that they were getting closer and closer together. And that might just be from a brake light that we see behind the heart-to-heart scene and really pushing on that red so it felt like that was the uniting presence between the two characters. I was always trying to think about that and then how that red transforms, you know, just like how these characters transform and just a symbol of the passion within Heather.
Sadie: That attention to detail is so well done in this and it has intent for being there. The beauty of horror films and it seems like this is something you're drawn to as a storyteller, but there's this really great layer in that you can add in subtext with deeper meaning and themes that could be taboo and so forth, but it’s such a great way to deliver theme and information. At the end of the day, once you show it at Sundance, and you get it out to the world, what do you hope audiences walk away with or think about after watching your movie?
Jacqueline: Well, I think that it's going to be specific for people on a one-on-one level, but really my goal as a filmmaker is to reach people. I think that we're, especially coming out of a pandemic, I feel like people are really disconnected from each other. And I feel like as a filmmaker, as a creative, I'm trying to reach people and I want them to feel something, and I want them to feel connected to other people, and for us to feel more connected as a community of human beings on this earth. Right? And I think that's why I love this sort of subjective perspective in filmmaking, you can transport into a completely different person and connect with that person. And I think that's what can be a really uniting presence in filmmaking and a way just to experience different worldviews, and positions and connect people in that way.
So really, if it's a movie that people see and they have conversations with the people they went to the movie with, and they have dialogue, if it brings people together in some way, I think that's the ultimate goal. And that can go in any different direction; people can be connected to it from the love story, and they can be connected to the queer aspects of the story, they can be connected to the family dynamics - I think there's a lot there for people to explore. And I want them to just come at it with their own personal experience and connect with it.
My Animal is now in Theaters and will be available On Digital on September 15th.
My Animal premiered at Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2023, at the Ray Theatre, as part of Sundance's Midnight screening lineup.
Find additional in-person and online screenings here.
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Sadie Dean is the Editor of Script Magazine and writes the screenwriting column, Take Two, for Writer’s Digest print magazine. She is also the co-host of the Reckless Creatives podcast. Sadie is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, and received her Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute. She has been serving the screenwriting community for nearly a decade by providing resources, contests, consulting, events, and education for writers across the globe. Sadie is an accomplished writer herself, in which she has been optioned, written on spec, and has had her work produced. Additionally, she was a 2nd rounder in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and has been nominated for The Humanitas Prize for a TV spec with her writing partner. Sadie has also served as a Script Supervisor on projects for WB, TBS and AwesomenessTV, as well as many independent productions. She has also produced music videos, short films and a feature documentary. Sadie is also a proud member of Women in Film.
Follow Sadie and her musings on Twitter @SadieKDean
