Slice of Life: Marcus Dunstan Carves Out a New Niche with #AMFAD “All My Friends Are Dead”

From the blood-soaked halls of the Saw franchise to the gut-wrenching thrills of The Collector, Marcus Dunstan has been cutting his teeth on horror for years. But now, he’s ready to show us his funny bone in his latest scream-fest, #AMFAD: All My Friends are Dead. (His first co-written feature, Feast, was pretty funny too!)

This time, Dunstan is taking a stab at the lighter side of slaughter. The plot of #AMFAD follows a group of friends who find themselves dead in their tracks when their ride to a music festival breaks down. Forced to hole up in an AirBnB, they try to raise their spirits, only to have them—and their bodies—picked apart one by one by the notorious Seven Deadly Sins Killer, or SDSK. Talk about a party foul! Don’t worry, gore-hounds. #AMFAD still has plenty of Dunstan’s signature splatter. The deaths are dark, dastardly, and devilishly inventive. There’s even a “death by dick” scene that’s sure to leave audiences both shocked and cock-eyed. But amidst the carnage, there’s a bubblegum pop vibe that’ll have you grinning from ear to severed ear.

We sat down with Marcus for a killer conversation about his new flick. Check out a “deleted scene” on video from our interview below, then sink your teeth into the whole bloody affair after the jump.

Marcus Dunstan Interview: #AMFAD “All My Friends Are Dead”

Staci Layne Wilson / Red River Horror: “All My Friends Are Dead” takes place during a music festival… though, spoiler alert, the characters really don’t make it that far. But still, the music for the film had to be spot-on, right?

Marcus Dunstan: Yeah, to jump right into the importance of music and score with #AMFAD, we have an actor who I’ve collaborated with four times. Her name is Michaella Russell. Michaella hails from South Africa, where she started in daytime soap and was also a CNN correspondent, host, and whatnot. Well, the budget and ambition for this were disproportionate, like any movie. Michaella took it upon herself to produce and co-write 33 original songs. Even the song in our trailer was created by this wonderful group over in South Africa. By group, I mean different artists for different tones, because we wanted to reach for a sound that felt like it was coming through a crackling radio in the forties. And then another thing that felt like it was about ten minutes from now, in more of a hip-hop. There’s yet another version where it had to kind of blend in with shoegaze with a bit more of a club pulse as the inner lives of our surviving cast begin to boil. I love it. I love the sonics of it.

RRH: I’m wondering what inspired the story and what the audience’s reaction has been.

MD: We just had our world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. We sold them out for three days. And the nice thing is, you sell out your first one, they give you a bigger theater. You sell out that one, you get an even bigger theater. And what was so cool was, the first night, I had my words written out, and I was all shaking. It was like the premiere night is, ‘oh gosh, this is our baby. It’s its first recital.’ And everybody there consisted of a lot of our cast, our wonderful cast. I want to give them all a moment of a shout out. They had driven themselves in, had flown themselves in, were staying in motels nearby, and [so on]. We were hoping to see a silver screen. We were hoping for the chance that Andy Hodgson’s beautiful cinematography would be projected that big. And you can make a great movie, and the studio might be like, “No, delete… we’re going to put this on your phone,” but we get into theaters August 2nd! We are coming to theaters, and we’ll be on demand. So you can have us wherever you want us.

But I tell you, I leaned into it because we had a chance at theaters. I wanted these images and I wanted these colors to be big and compete, and I wanted the collective experience that had inspired me to take a shot at this because I’d never done a murder mystery before. And Patrick [Melton] and I didn’t write this. We’re executive producers on it and I’m the director, but this is a screenplay by Josh Sims and Jessica Sarah Flaum. I was only given the opportunity to read it because there was another director on it, Kevin Greutert. And Kevin was developing, developing, but then Saw X came along, so of course he had to shoot that, and hey man, look what he did with that. So there was a vacancy, as this production was still coming together. I’m grateful he nominated me to jump in. I auditioned for it and was selected, and then I had to do my best. So I read this screenplay and thought, ‘Okay, I feel like I’m eavesdropping on people, that I can recognize that I’ve kind of seen some stops along the way. Like, there’s a scene with a squirrel here. How the hell are we going to pull that off? And I didn’t see that plot twist coming. Like, wow, that’s new. I’ve seen a lot of stuff. And then, oh, boy, there’s a heart. Okay, I want in. Let’s go.’

RRH: It’s unusual for you to direct something that you didn’t write. What was the difference in that? Or did you have some input on any script rewrites or changes on the fly?

MD: Absolutely. And those were just by necessity of adapting to resources and time. I mean, there were moments and certain aesthetics that were crafted for what we did have in abundance by being in Vancouver with Kirk Shaw and Stephanie Rennie, who are these are two amazing producers. We didn’t have a budget line item for a full set of lenses. Kirk just happened to give someone a shot way back early in their career that had a Burns and Sawyer outlet, and we had a lens flown up for our one big set for our big scary stuff, a 15 millimeter lens. The price point was more than three days of shooting to get this lens otherwise. But Kirk brought it in. It was delivered. So, Kirk Shaw, thank you. Bless you. And Stephanie Rennie… The reason we had a stage to build that set on is because her family was giving it to us. Her mom offered her house for a location. So it was that. When I mentioned Michaella’s doing songs, it’s like everybody was putting on every hat. So, yeah, I just helped adapt to the resources in that sense. And then day to day, by shooting in order, our cast could be nimble with tone. If there was an acerbic, good, humorous line, it was ‘Great, let’s try it.’ But we will protect the intent of the words. And then, ‘Wait. How do we throw the audience off kilter again to drop their guard?’ So the scare has a chance to get in, so the violence has a chance to come in, because there is a hidden referee in #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. It’s this diabolical mind watching over the events. If the characters were left alone, it might just be a typical road trip movie where some hearts break, they come back together, and maybe they discover their true selves after projecting fake personas through their phones. But the killer has a different perspective. They’re thinking, ‘No, I know who these people really are. They don’t deserve to make it to the end of their lives, so I’m going to stop them.’

RRH: There is a body count, of course, but most people know you from the Saw film franchise, the ones that you wrote, and your Collector franchise. They’re quite gory films. How would you say that #AMFAD stacks up against those?

MD: Well, this one is scary. The alchemy is different because there’s a lot of humor laced in it. This very much starts in the bubblegum world. We tee it up with a bit of history. So 20 years ago, the very year that Feast came out, our story begins with something awful. An absolute maniac, a totally vacant soul, who demolished these people in this horrific way 20 years ago. Well, wouldn’t you know, it’s 2024 now, and these kids are going to kind of the same festival, which is coming back. What if that maniac was still out there? And what if, what if, what if. So we were able to have fun with ‘history and twistery’ in that way. And then when it came time for the kills, I I had something unique in that there’s a ‘seven deadly sins’ aesthetic, and in looking at it, there was an artistic interpretation of them that was done in stained glass. And each sin was given a very distinct color. So I’ll use Jennifer Ens as an example, who plays the character Mona, and she would be ‘pride.’ So once pride happens, that informs a bit more about the character. The color purple was huge, in that no matter what she’s wearing, through many outfit changes, it’s always shaded in purple. And then by the time that character may be getting close to the killer, wouldn’t you know, the confident lighting of Andy Hodgson starts to go lavender, starts to go purple. So I knew there was a language developing without any of the dialogue that, ‘okay, now I know the visual.’ And so lust when it’s red, and that was just wonderful. Finding the color for sloth was the toughest one because it is bland. How do you make gray light? How do you create the light and color of nothing? And we figured that out by proxy of putting it next to all the other bowls. So there was this kind of a milk amongst all the bowl, all the saturation.

When it comes to violence, now that we’ve established the style, I didn’t want to depict something that feels savage, cruel, and depressing, especially not right next to sincere, gentle character development. We’re not aiming for trauma here; we’re going for velocity and entertainment. We’re trying to achieve this with our cast and our amazing editor, Andrew Coutts. If you ever have a twisty, turning story to tell, Andrew is your guy. It all came together like the concept of social media, constantly vying for our attention in milliseconds. They do it with pops of color, sound, something vital that makes you think, ‘Did I hear that? What was that?’

We wanted to give that same sugar rush to the eyes and brain throughout the film. So instead of revolting the audience, we aimed to intrigue them, make them lean in. Even with lurid elements, we asked ourselves, ‘Can we make this more beautiful?’ I wanted to achieve an NC-17 level of shock, from the dialogue all the way through to what might happen to our characters. The title itself hints at the mayhem to come. So, if all my friends are dead, well… spoiler alert, some people might meet some darkly funny ends.

RRH: This has been a really great year for horror so far with the new Omen movie, Longlegs, and MaXXXine… so many choices for people right now. How would you describe your ideal audience for #AMFAD? And why should people see it in addition to all the other terrific horror out there?

MD: Please see our trailer. Simply watch our trailer because it conveys the tone that is delivered in spades. What I liked was that I was going into this knowing of the product in competition. There’s nothing like Longlegs. There’s nothing like MaXXXine. And there’s nothing like The Omen… except the other Omens! [Laughs] I love that.

And so… there’s nothing like us. And where we will surprise you is, yep, you can expect some gore, you can expect some kills, but we will shock you with some humor, and I hope that you give us a shot so we can surprise you with heart. And please do not stop when the movie ends because we’ve got surprises in the credits. We’ve got more twists than a pretzel, and we do not stop entertaining until that final image flickers out.