Inheritance

When Alannah offered me the chance to direct Inheritance, what immediately struck me about the script after reading it over and over again were the themes of behavior being hereditary. The script left John’s motivation behind returning to the tapes open, but for me the reason seemed obvious; He felt a connection with his uncle (who he even shares a name with) and perhaps a similar obsession with Alice. Exploring this connection, and how it eats away at John as he tries to hide the truth of a man he never even knew, was my favorite aspect of creating Inheritance. That, and the opportunity to play around with discarded old VHS tapes. There is something haunting about old home movies. On top of seeing family and friends as their younger, less recognizable selves, the low fidelity of older media makes the past feel distant and hazy, as though these recordings are fading like the memories they attempt to preserve. Because of this, I knew there could be no faking it. We had to shoot on VHS and edit tape to tape, just as Johnny would.This decision naturally scared Alannah (and, though I would never admit it, myself as well). Finding a working VHS camcorder proved to be a challenge, and having a limited number of tapes felt like being thrown back to the dark ages, but the moment we watched dailies on an old CRT television, the entire room was frozen in unease. It not only had the eerie effect I wanted, but it sold the idea that this was old, discarded memories in a way shooting digitally never could. Stylistically, I was drawn to older horror films and psychological thrillers. I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of paranormal or haunted house movies, but I love films such as Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (and one could argue The Shining) where the supernatural isn’t made clear, and it’s left to the audience to decide if there were ghosts, or was it all in our central character’s head. To put us in John’s perspective, my cinematographer and I sought to make the house feel all encompassing and claustrophobic, choosing to shoot wider at every opportunity and framing John through arches, doorways, and halls to make him feel trapped. Our preference for wide angles helped convey the deterioration of John and Alex’s relationship as well, framing them in two shots as much as possible towards the beginning and then singles towards the end, and when they are together in a shot the distance created by the wide frame feels far greater. Whether or not John is actually haunted by his dead uncle is up to the audience, but there is no denying the ghosts of the past reveal themselves throughout the film. Though it is fun to question whether there are ghosts and what happens after the credits hit, the truth is we all have ghosts in our past, they just aren’t paranormal. What is ultimately important to me is what those ghosts represent and how they affect us. This is what I hope the audience takes away from Inheritance, as well as to be entertained, and perhaps disturbed a bit, if we’re lucky.