‘Bleed With Me’: Montreal filmmaker Amelia Moses on her slow-burning psychological thriller [Fantasia]

Montreal-based filmmaker Amelia Moses makes her feature full-length debut with Bleed With Me, a micro-budget psychological thriller about female friendship, anxiety, and paranoia, making its worldwide debut during the virtual Fantasia Film Festival.

Rowan (Lee Marshall) agrees to tag along to a cabin in the woods during winter with her friend Emily (Lauren Beatty) and Emily’s boyfriend Brendan (Aris Tyros). Awkward and shy, Rowan does her best to open up to Emily and Brendan while at the isolated cabin and be a good guest, but she is plagued by vivid dreams and wakes up with cuts on her arm. She comes to the horrifying conclusion that Emily is stealing her blood from her while she sleeps. Is Rowan consumed with paranoia and harming herself? Or is she trapped in the wilderness with someone out to bleed her dry?

Moses makes the most of the predominately single-location, with lush production value and a tangible sense of the physical and mental isolation Rowan has to contend with. Touching on themes of self-harm and obsession, Bleed With Me is an eerie and effective thriller that seems tailor-made for our current solitary existence under COVID, and the psychological ramifications that can produce.

We spoke with Moses about what inspired her enigmatic feature, the difficulties of shooting in a cabin in the dead of winter, working on a micro-budget, and more. Bleed With Me has one final showing during the virtual Fantasia Film Festival on Tuesday, September 1 at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available here.

Bad Feeling Magazine: What was the initial inspiration for Bleed With Me?

Amelia Moses: Well I really liked the idea of exploring the dynamic between a couple and a single person so it kind of grew from there. I knew I wanted to tell the film from one character’s perspective and limit their perspective so they kind of become an unreliable narrator. The main conflict of the story changed around a few times but I eventually landed on the bloodletting because it felt like a new, more subdued take on the vampire myth and was an act that was distributing, yet weirdly intimate.

What made this the right project for your feature debut?

It’s a very self-contained film so I knew that would help budget-wise. It was unlikely I’d be given a lot of money to make my first feature so it had to be do-able on a micro-budget.

I think the small scale of the film was also a good fit for a first project because it allowed me to learn and play within a relatively simple story (minimal characters and locations). It wasn’t too ambitious as a first film so I felt confident I could do something interesting with it.

What was the process like to bring this to the screen? How did you arrange for funding?

The plan was always to get funding through Telefilm’s ‘Talent to Watch’ program. It’s designed for micro-budget projects and first-time feature filmmakers so it was a good fit. It was my first film and I hadn’t made many shorts so I knew my options would be pretty limited. We applied for the first time in 2017 and didn’t get the funding but then re-applied in 2018 and were selected. In a lot of ways, I’m really glad we weren’t selected in 2017 because I was able to take the time to develop the project more and get it to a much more solid place, which in turn made for a better film.

What was shooting at the cabin like? Did it help to be mostly rooted in one location, or was that more of a challenge?

Kind of both really! The location we shot at was very isolated and creepy which I think helped get the cast and crew into the mood of the film. It also helped with the schedule a lot because we were able to keep changing things depending on the needs of the production. It wasn’t like most shoots where you have like 3 days in one location and the pressure is on to get all those scenes. We had a bit more flexibility by staying in one place the entire shoot.

Some of the creative challenges were how to keep the cabin looking interesting and fresh. It was a small place and we probably shot in every corner and direction trying to avoid the imagery feeling repetitive. On top of that, it was a very logistically challenging location. We arrived on the first day and the well had frozen so there was no running water. Since we shot near the end of winter there was a lot of pile-up of snow and ice so climbing the small hill up to the cabin was tricky and we had to pull up the gear in sleds with a winch. We had a power outage our first day of shooting and then one night had to stop shooting halfway through because of a storm. But it was all worth it in the end!

Did working with such a small cast allow for more rehearsals or any improvisation?

Yes, it definitely allowed for more prep time with the actors which was great. I think it also allowed me to give proper time and care to each one of them and their characters. One thing we did that was really useful was spend a full day on location with just me, the DP, and the actors, where we blocked out all the scenes in the film. I think it helped them get to know the space more as well as finesse the blocking in advance rather than on the day, which helped with our tight schedule.

Were there any particular films you used as touchstones either tonally, stylistically, or thematically?

One of the films that influenced me very early on in the writing process was Baghead by the Duplass Brothers. I like how that film just takes the time to “hangout” with the characters and get to know them and their interpersonal dynamics. Even though my film is far from a mumblecore movie, there’s still some remnants left over, like some of the long dialogue scenes and the handheld camerawork.

A film that has been a big inspiration to me since I saw it at Fantasia in 2016 is Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation. I drew from that film visually a lot because it also follows the perspective of one character; someone who is experiencing a level of paranoia. I took a lot from it structurally as well because it really takes its time to build up that tension and then the climax of the movie is actually quite short.

Finally, we used Lars Von Trier’s Anti-Christ as a visual reference point. I like that film because it’s a cabin-in-the-woods film where the threat is internal rather than external and the horror comes from the characters themselves.

The film keeps the audience guessing about what’s happening with Rowan, and her state of mind in general; was it a struggle to decide how much to show and how much to leave open-ended?

It was definitely a balancing act both in the scriptwriting stage and then in the edit too. I think the main thing we had to figure out in the edit was how antagonistic to make Emily. We didn’t want it to be over the top but still wanted an air of “offness” to her, while also keeping the audience guessing.

What are the release plans for the film after Fantasia?

We’re hoping to continue our festival run, we have few fests lined up already. And we will eventually have an online release and hopefully a small theatrical run (depending on the state of the world).

What are you working on next?

Currently, I am in post on my second feature Bloodthirsty, a werewolf thriller about a queer indie-pop singer. It was written by Wendy Hill-Tout and Canadian singer Lowell and stars Lauren Beatty (who plays Emily in Bleed With Me).

I’m also in development on a horror-comedy TV series written by Laura Di Girolamo (co-founder of the Bloody Mary Film Festival in Toronto) and produced by Lee Marshall. It follows Chris, a mind-reading misfit, as she teams up with her ex to fight a mysterious tentacled-monster that crashes their high school reunion in cottage country.

Bleed With Me screens one final time at the digital Fantasia Film Festival on Tuesday, September 1, at 3:00 pm. Tickets are available here.