IAN PRYOR engages visiting American director Chris Sivertson on his breakout feature film, The Lost, a contentious psychological thriller of small town murders.


MY PLAN was brilliant. At least until it fell apart. Talk to American director Chris Sivertson about The Lost, his controversial portrait of a murderous sociopath, then turn our conversation into an examination of the moral complexities of putting horror and violence on screen.

Then I tried to watch Sivertson’s movie. The scene of the crime was the house of a friend who has a generously-sized pull-down screen, amazing speakers, and lots of horror movies on the shelves. Only our sample DVD of The Lost went on permanent pause just half an hour in, at the scene where young sociopath Ray Pye (Marc Senter) starts trying to charm his way into the good books of the new woman working at his mother’s hotel. The DVD seemed determined to spend all evening analyzing this scene in the slowest possible motion.

A few days later, replacement DVD at the ready, I contacted my friend again. Inexplicably he no longer felt so keen to spend another two hours watching a greasy-haired upstart intimidating his friends, murdering people and smiling about it. I was now well aware that my interview with the man behind all this horror was only a day away. Then I began to hear the bass-beat of a loud party pumping through my floor from the next flat. Call me a shirker, call me an anally retentive fan of watching films properly, but maybe the universe was telling me something. Maybe I was meant to whimp out and ask Sivertson the not-so-difficult questions afterall. I could sneak up on him with the tough ones later, after witnessing The Lost on the big screen at the film festival, like everyone else.

Though The Lost is 32-year-old Sivertson’s first film as sole director, it is far from his first experiment with cinema. Having won a place on the prestigious filmmaking course at the University of Southern California in 1993, Sivertson spent extended time between classes interning for legendary low-budget producer Roger Corman. There he did script work and some second unit directing, and learnt that chaos is a key part of filmmaking.

Sivertson’s interest in horror had been reignited very early in the course, after befriending fellow USC student and horror fan Lucky McKee. That interest has continued through their collaborations on a number of independent films, including no-budget zombie picture All Cheerleaders Die, which they co-directed using one of the first commercially-available mini-DVD cameras, plus Sivertson helping edit McKee’s award-winning May. In turn, McKee is one of the producers of The Lost. To date, the only project directed by Chris Sivertson that is devoid of a strong horror element is The Best of Robbers, a low-budget satire of reality crime shows which may well be released in segments, via the internet.

Sivertson’s invitation to the Kiwi festival screenings of The Lost could not have been better timed. While his adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel is yet to see mainstream release in the United States, Sivertson’s follow-up movie I Know Who Killed Me releases on 1500 screens across his homeland, a few days after The Lost’s Wellington showings. “If I was in LA this week, all I would be thinking is “what’s the release going to be like,” Sivertson told me. “It’s the perfect time to get away.” I Know Who Killed Me stars Lindsay Lohan as a woman who narrowly escapes from the clutches of a serial killer, then wakes up in hospital and claims to be somebody else.

Having only just got off the plane from a rushed visit to Auckland, Sivertson handled my questions in a spirit of both openness and calm, even after my opening gambit of spinning the tape recorder onto the concrete and losing a battery down the storm-drain.


I read that George Lucas decided to enroll for the cinema course at the University of Southern California not only because the university had such an amazing reputation, but because he was told it was one of the easiest courses to get into. How does one go about getting on the course these days? How hard is it?

Getting into USC for general ed. is easy. But the film school is pretty competitive. I don’t know how many they accept now, but when I applied they just accepted 30 people, and then each semester they would accept 10 or so more. You really don’t get any preferential treatment if you’ve made tonnes of films on your own, because they’d rather see some other signs of creativity. They’d rather you submit writing samples, or other creative works. They figure that you can transfer that creativity onto film.

When you read Jack Ketchum’s book, what made you think The Lost was the stuff of a good movie?

I was really struck by how well drawn the characters were. The movie takes place in a small American town, and it just felt extremely believable. Because the characters in the novel were so strong, I thought it would just be a really good opportunity to make a thriller with some strong performances. I was really interested in trying to pull off a low-budget movie that had some really believable acting. So ultimately it was the characters that really drew me in. And then also the book ended with such a bang. It was so disturbing at the end. When I read it, it made me really uncomfortable. And that made me think a lot, because a lot of the great horror movies that I grew up watching would cross the line sometimes, go into taboo territory. And I thought the book The Lost did that, but I never thought it was just exploitation for exploitation’s sake. So that really attracted me; to tackle a piece of material that would push the boundaries a bit.

The small-town thing is part of what you’ve brought to The Lost (Growing up, Sivertson spent time living in towns in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Northern California). Did you find that the feeling of the book conveyed some of those towns you’d lived in?

Yeah, because there’s one thing that’s a constant in small American towns – young kids with nothing to do. Kids are going to find something to do one way or another. And usually it’s harmless stuff. But occasionally out of that boredom can come some dark behaviour, which is what The Lost is all about. (Main character) Ray doesn’t really have any goals in his life, other than to have sex with as many girls as possible, and to make himself look as cool as possible. It’s almost like he has sex not for enjoyment, but to have conquests, to gain power.

Do you think it was harder to adapt the book, or harder to find the funding to make it?

Finding the funding (laughter). Funding an independent movie is a high risk investment to begin with, because percentage wise, so few independent movies get their money back. And when you add in the fact that it’s not exactly a mainstream film, it was a long process of trying to get investors interested. One aspect that was really helpful was the fact it was based on a novel, so I could show people the book. It’s already something that’s been packaged and advertised, and has a built-in audience.

Do you describe The Lost as a horror movie or a thriller?

I call it a psychological thriller with horror aspects. It kind of starts off as a horror movie, then turns into more of a thriller, and then really ends as a horror movie.

I read somewhere that many high-achieving people – business leaders, actors, all kinds of examples – can be sociopaths. That some say that the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths is sociopaths rarely get caught or cross the line, that they’re more about manipulation than murder. (The interviewer then hastens to clarify that the above view is just one among many.)

Yeah. Ray Pye, the main character in The Lost, he reminds me of a politician – because he’s so obsessed with appearance, and he lies every chance he gets, even if he doesn’t need to. It’s almost as if he lies to practice. And that’s a really interesting character-type for me. Even in the film business there’s definitely sociopathic people in their business practices, who basically have no qualms about screwing people over as long as it benefits them.

There are points in the movie where I wanted to go over the top a bit. I’m a big fan of Scarface. I kind of wanted to have Ray be like (Al Pacino’s character) Tony Montana, where sometimes he’s more subtle and believable, and other times he’s this larger-than-life character. I wanted a balance between the realism, and the more operatic approach.

It’s interesting you say that, because some of the reviews do seem a little contradictory in the way they describe the film. Some of them have used words like ‘lurid’ and that it’s edging into the exploitative, and other reviewers are saying that it’s actually quite realistic and low-key. It’s a strange combination to be coming through in the reviews.

Yeah it is. And I think both of those aspects are in the movie. I think different people, depending on which approach they like better or dislike more, emphasize one over the other. But consciously I was trying to mix the tones, which was an experiment. I wasn’t sure it would work.

How well do you personally think it has worked?

I think it makes it interesting... (Sivertson briefly loses his way for a rare time in the interview.) I wanted people to kind of get comfortable with Ray, then all of a sudden realize he’s not predictable, that they don’t really know where he’s coming from. So I think that mixture of tones reinforces that uneasy edginess I wanted him to have. Marc Senter, the guy who plays Ray – some people have said it’s an amazing performance. Others watch it, and think it’s over the top. Again, it’s like how different people pick up on different tones in the movie.

Your follow-up film I Know Who Killed Me happened pretty fast.

I got the job in September, and it comes out next week. Which shows one thing, what a real budget can do. Especially after working on The Lost for so long, it was a good change of pace. I’ve already done a bunch of press for it. But because the star is Lindsay Lohan, that’s all the press over there care about, which is fine with me. The role is really different than anything she’d ever done before. It’s a lot darker.