Lin Shaye has been hard at work in the film industry since the 70s. Crisscrossing between film and television as well as genres, she has a wide variety of roles under her belt. The latest of these is ABATTOIR, a haunted house horror film premiering this Friday, December 9th. Last week we had the chance to sit down for a short conversation with Lin about the movie and her experience in film.
Could you tell us a little bit about Abattoir and your role in the film?
It’s about an alternative haunted house, something you wouldn’t expect. It’s made up of basically crime scenes that are cut out of the houses that they happened in. It’s a mystery in the sense that the detective and the woman—a young woman, she’s a journalist who is named Julia, played by Jessica Lowndes—they are investigating a crime and they can’t find the place it happened in. And there’s also a relationship to them personally, which you find out a little bit later. So it starts out as a real mystery. And it has sort of a film noir, kind of gumshoe feel to it which I think is really great because it sort of sets you off, takes you out of your own presence into sort of another world of another time, another time frame.
I noticed that as the film progressed, it kind of starts as one thing and ends as another. And with some of the costuming and the set pieces—it’s set, I guess, technically in the present day but it has a kind of floaty-ness to it in terms of when it happens. It feels a little unhinged in time.
Yes, and I think unhinged is a great way to describe it because there are some unhinged people in this, of which Allie may be one—the character I get to play. Like you said it spans time frames a little bit. Which is almost like a flicker of a film. You’re sort of in one time frame then you’re transported somewhere else a little bit. And Allie is sort of many decades and has been through, as we discover, she’s the secret teller of the film. She’s the one that shows up in the mystery that starts to happen, and I love that about the character. I thought the way it was written was really wonderful. She’s kind of the one peeking out from behind the door seeing everything and then able to express, you know, what has been happening and what is about to happen even. I think that she answers certainly the purpose of the storyteller. And there was a moment during one of the rewrites, the film went through several rewrites, they took the poetry out of her language. They had her telling the same content and the same information but they took the poetry of her speech.
So it was a little bit more obscured?
Yeah, it was obscured. But it’s also really visual, it’s really poetic. There’s little passages in there—I wish I had the script in front of me because I can’t remember the dialogue exactly, but there were passages where she talks about the 20s and time gone by and they were beautiful and they also set up a certain atmosphere for the film that I felt was really important. And Darren agreed with me so we were able to put them back in which I was really happy about.
I really enjoyed your character. When we meet her she’s this paradoxical, almost David Lynch type character who is this kind, offbeat, small town homemaker who also drinks and swears and is really blunt and abrasive when she needs to be. And I loved it and thought it was a great performance. How did you go about piecing that together? What drew you to the character, into that particular delivery of the character?
I found most of it or a great deal of it on the set. One thing I’ve realized as an actor is you can sit in your living room doing your lines, or however you do it, and you come up with all these ideas and then you get on set and you didn’t count on the fact that you were actually looking at another person. Or that suddenly you’re in a room that’s got a fireplace and there’s whiskey on the table. And I think you begin to, what you must do is not let go completely the work you’ve done by yourself because that’s your interior instinct about what the character is, your beginning instinct. You have to be able to marry that with the details of what’s around you literally when you get there. So a lot of it happens at the moment, and that’s the way it has to be—in the moment.
You internalize what you think it should be, and then you react to everything that’s brought to you once you get on set.
Exactly. And you can’t let go of one or the other. You can’t live where you were when you were in your living room, and you can’t also just live in the drink you’re taking off the table.
With this film, how did you come to the script? And had you worked with anybody who was on this film before, or was it a new script, new story, new cast?
The cast was new to me. Darren and I have known each other for a long time through, well, we met originally kind of through James Wan. You know, I’m completely blanking. I can’t remember if I’ve worked with Darren before or not.
I tried to look it up. I think you both did a segment on Tales of Halloween, but you didn’t do the same segment.
Yeah, but you know the thing is I feel like I’ve worked with Darren for a long time which is a great way to work with somebody. I’d known Darren through James Wan and Leigh Whannell and the horror community, and I adore him. He’s just a wonderful guy who’s very enigmatic in certain ways and very spontaneous in many ways, and surprises himself, I think, in many respects which is awesome. And so I was really excited to work with him. He told me about the script, and we used to joke about it. He started cAllieng it Allie-toir. So the first version I read I loved the character, and then—I don’t know how many people know this—the production was setup to go twice and shut down twice. I think the first time they didn’t have all their financing. The second time they were in New Orleans ready to start shooting. They had everything set up—oh, another person I had worked with before is Jennifer Spence who did the production design. But anyway, when they got to New Orleans one of the producers passed away. They had to shut down production. So a couple year went by.
It’s been an uphill battle it sounds like.
Totally. Totally. I kept saying, “When is it gonna happen?” And Darren kept saying, “it’s gonna happen. We’re gonna do it.”I said, “I really want to play this character.” Finally, there was the final version and they said, “yes, we have an actual go date and this is when we’re doing it.” And I’m glad that—they took out some of the poetry of Allie in the final draft and I asked Darren if he could put it back in because I felt it was a strong part of her personality and he did. And now you see what we did and I’m thrilled with the film. I think it’s really different and interesting and leads you kind of without you knowing where you’re going. It manipulates you to a certain place emotionally which I think is always wonderful for any entertainment, to just let it take us away. And this one does.