Carlos Prime [Celluloid 11.15.16] scifi horror



Marooned at a bus station by a vague and powerful storm, a handful of strangers find themselves in increasing peril as the night progresses. Magic? Scientific experiments? The unknown? All becomes clear eventually in this bizarre homage/parody.


Feel like watching the love child of a telenovela and an episode of "The Twilight Zone" with crazy amounts of facial hair? Look no further than The Similars. It's a weird homage to weird sorts of sci-fi, so if this any of those things are your alley - this movie is right up it.


While having bouts of confusing political and scientific scheming brewing in the background, the film blends a mixture of seemingly unrelated plots into a concoction of madness. You can't have an homage to 1960s sci-fi without some degree of admirably executed camp, and The Similars captures that ideally. I got to speak with director Isaac Ezban about the details of his film.


Interview has been paraphrased.


Quiet Earth: I saw a lot of old sci-fi vs. new sci-fi clashes in your film, how does that play into your modern take on the genre?

Isaac Ezban: The Similars was supposed to be a love letter to science fiction, and a love letter written with a lot of fashion. And the whole intention was to play on science fiction of the 1960s, to play with the time, when it was not just about special effects, but the psychology of the characters, and about reflecting on human emotions. In my first movie (The Incident), there was an emphasis on human identity and I wanted to play with that.





QE: There's a big part identity plays with this film. What was it like working on set with everyone having some sort of facial manipulation?

IE: It was crazy, because we took a long time to decide how to work on this because we didn't want to use CGI because we thought it would look a bit fake. But we actually did it all with prosthetics, we did a cast so they could look the same. And all the actors had a makeup process of four hours, every day. Because we shot in sequence, which is very strange for a movie.


QE: Having a child as the forefront of this movie with political overtones, was that something you wanted to convey - Youth vs. Old?

IE: Yes, the idea of a kid - it's like a message on how sometimes we age too fast for revolution or we're not who we think we are. That's the message of having a challenge in an homage to like "The Twilight Zone," the circumstances are much higher.


QE: What can we look forward to with your upcoming projects, or is that still top-secret? Can you tell us anything about Aztech?

IE: Yes, I'm shooting my first English-speaking film, and we've got a great crew on it, so I think it's going to be very exciting. I can tell you it's pop culture science-fiction. Even if it's not a screenplay I wrote, it's a subject I love, and we can always use sci-fi to reflect human emotion.


The Similars is available for rent on Cable VOD now and will be available on iTunes November 22nd.




Recommended Release: Camino

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