The world of cinema tends to live in the extremes – either blockbuster action and sci-fi films or low-budget family dramas or comedies, with no in between. But Doors, an indie science fiction anthology produced by Bloody Disgusting, aims to break that mold.
Arriving in select theaters March 19 and on VOD March 23, the atmospheric thriller follows three different groups of humans who experience the global opening of “doors” that lead to other worlds. Each segment was crafted by an individual director, but together they tell a cohesive albeit mysterious tale of humanity confronted with a new reality.
Directors Saman Kesh, Dugan O’Neal and Jeff Desom spoke to Screen Rant about their unique approach to storytelling, their collaborative process, and the casting of talents such as Josh Peck (Drake & Josh), Lina Esco (S.W.A.T.) and Wilson Bethel (All Rise).
The concept of a sci-fi anthology, especially an atmospheric indie like Doors, is so interesting. What was the inspiration behind it, and how did you collaborate on it?
Saman Kesh: The first instance that I was involved, producers Chris White and Brad Miska were working on a sci-fi anthology. I think it was more horror when I first jumped into it, and after I explored my segment and worked on it, we decided we wanted to go more in that ethereal and meditative psychological space. We slowly but surely assembled the team. Dugan came in a year after, in 2017; the year after that, Jeff jumped in.
We wanted to create an anthology where the through line was the character, the quote-unquote bad guy or thing that we’re afraid of and don’t know about, using chronology. And that’s it; just allowing all the segments to exist on their own, as long as they keep the A-plot or macro plot moving through the segments.
Dugan O’Neal: It was a very unusual process, where the middle of the movie was filmed first, and then we concepted and shot the book ends. But that said, it was cool, because it gave a template for what the tone and the rules of the world were. Saman helped keep that on track, if there was any questions of what the door was.
And it was also still a process of figuring out what they were sometimes, and how they would react, or what the rules are. That’s the key to sci-fi, right? Establishing what the rules of this reality are.
He talked me into acting in his piece, and then I think he was planting seeds with the producers – and Kimberly Stuckwisch as well. The producers were definitely trying to push me into directing one of the pieces, but it was just a very organic process, at different times between the three of us.
How would you say that your directing styles differed once you were each filming your segments?
Jeff Desom: That’s a good question. Your style is something that’s very hard to put your finger on it. It’s just the way you do things, and that the result is your directing style. It came from Saman having more of the overview. He knew both of us, and he saw something in our styles that he thought would make a good match, or would create a diverse style.
Dugan O’Neal: I think it comes down to tastes and things that you’re inspired by. And like Jeff said, it’s how you do things.
For me, I come more from grounded sci-fi, and I have dabbled in that with various short films or music videos, But I do a lot of comedic stuff as well, so I think that was one thing that Saman thought would be interesting with actors in this space. How can we make it feel a little quirky? I always like things that are not trying to be funny but are still funny in weird ways. You can subvert tension or drama, or something scary, with something funny.
I guess that was one element, as far as my style. How I work with actors influenced how we did the third piece.
Saman Kesh: It’s weird, because I don’t think I thought about this, but instinctually I feel like both Jeff and Dugan share a really strong love for characters and the humans that inhabit their projects. There was no sense of nihilism, and I think that was really important.
There was a lot of people before we settled on the group of us, that I just felt were more nihilistic and a little bit nonchalant about life and existence. And I think that Jeff and Dugan really cared. Even when I was doing a pass at our draft, Dugan would sometimes call out something that just felt messed up for no reason, or something that was mean to characters and didn’t align with what we were saying.
Same with Jeff. He was very passionate during the casting process about who the characters were, and we just were very delicate with these metaphoric children. Even though I don’t feel like I articulated that to either of them, or maybe even to myself, it does make sense to me and embodies the whole thing. There is a care about these characters, even though messed up things happen to them.
Saman, you were in charge of overall creative direction. Were there rules you had to set down, either aesthetically speaking or in order to tie the three stories together after the fact?
Saman Kesh: Yeah, the process of shooting all three of these took course over three years, basically, and a lot of posts. With Dugan, there was a bible, and there was a bunch of things, but a lot of it changed. Because at that time, the anthology was slightly different, and there were different segments that didn’t end up coming to fruition. He was on board when there was half the movie that we were gonna set out to make, and then it evolved when Jeff came aboard.
I think Jeff had more of the full picture when he jumped aboard. With Dugan, we kind of just knew we would have this open area that we needed to tie up, but we needed to do it in a way that gave us little knob abilities to twist things left and right.
But I think, for me, sometimes I was the annoying guy that was like, “We’ve got to talk about this, we have to dub this this, this needs to be done, blah, blah, blah.” But then I also appreciated when the guys would sometimes go in and do that for me. Then it was nice to kind of be like, “Oh, I’m going to be the antithesis of what I was originally,” and then come in and be like, “Let’s just cut that out. Let’s not do that. We don’t need that.”
I think my job was to be that person but also, if we were going too far in one direction, be the opposite. I’d just allow the director segments to stand on their own. There was definitely no science, other than we just knew the door was a character, and we had to have it tonally shift based on the other characters, and the fact that there was a chronology of stuff happening. If we dropped any facts, those facts have to line up and call back to certain things – like the birds dying, or the process of going into the doors; just certain terminology.
I really enjoyed seeing several familiar faces in the cast, like Josh Peck, Lina Esco and Wilson Bethel. How did you cast the project and bring so many actors together?
Saman Kesh: I think all of us did it different ways. I’ll speak for mine for mine: Josh and I kind of linked up just before we started Doors, and Lena was also introduced in general meetings of getting to know the actors. This project was kind of moving forward, and so it worked out that way.
Dugan O’Neal: For us, we got lucky. First of all, at the time, I was on vacation with my wife and kids. We were visiting her family in Vermont, and it’s so beautiful there that I started finding all these locations, so we rewrote the script to shoot there. And then we’re like, “But now we need to get actors and convince them to come out.”
I was really lucky to get Kyp Malone, who I’ve known for a long time through TV on the Radio and some mutual friends. And then another friend, who’s not a traditional actor, was Bira Vanara. Kristina Lear happened to also be in Vermont; she’s an actor in LA, but she also was an hour away. Then it just so happens that Wilson Bethel, who’s a friend, was in New Hampshire.
I don’t know if the movie could have happened if those people weren’t there at that exact time, because I don’t know how we would have cast in this super small town. I guess we would have done it in New York and gotten them out there. But yeah, that was a lot of luck, and a lot of convincing people to do it.
Jeff Desom: It was very different for us. We cast and shot here in LA, so we had this huge pool of very talented kids to choose from. We saw so many, and the whole casting process was overwhelming from the sheer amount of talented people that streamed in. But it was also a great joy just to work with everyone, however, and try them out.
We tried a few different configurations and, as we were casting, Saman was also there as the co-writer to see how we could change the constellations a bit and how we could adapt parts for certain kids. When we found somebody that we really liked, but who wasn’t quite right for the part, we would change things about the part to make it fit for that actor.
Doors arrives in select theaters March 19 and on VOD platforms March 23.
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