Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige has made some of the smartest financial decisions in Hollywood history, but when he didn’t make a new “Blade,” he absolutely failed. (Just ask star Mahershala Ali.)
Luckily, Indian director Samjad has directed a film that will cheer fans of the battle-ready half-vampire Wesley Snipes, who became popular on the big screen. Samjad’s new film “Half”, co-written with Praveen Viswanath, has a simple concept: Twin brothers (Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj) are robbed and left for dead on a highway, but being half-vampires, they recover and vow to take terrible revenge on the gang that attacked them. While Very Tri Yulisman, the fight coordinator of “The Raid 2” and “The Night Comes for Us”, directs the creative, funny and bone-crunching action, the film turns into a blood and gore fantasy from this point on.
Samjad enjoys “Blade” but had a different vision in mind for his film.
“How about we take a classic vampire action thriller and do it in a completely raw, grounded way, without a single slow-motion shot?” he says. “This basic idea felt much fresher and visually exciting to me.”
“Half” became a powder keg for audiences, resulting in high-energy screenings at the TIFF Midnight Madness premiere and Fantastic Fest. It’s a brawler where the action is shot crisply, clearly, and mostly during daylight hours. While the fights feel modern, the film is more reminiscent of classic fare.
“We tried to make the film look like it was shot the old way, with an old camera, with old equipment and hard work,” says Samjad. “I guess we have to work really hard to get a special shot, don’t we? Now we can achieve it with robotic cameras and special equipment. Everything is obvious. But in the old days it had to be done with manual hands, panning and zooming. Because I love camera technique, we used a lot of zoom lenses. We tried to get 80s and 90s style films.”
Despite the moving quality it creates, when Samjad describes the “Half” shot it is clear that it is a miracle.
“We were shooting in the middle of the desert,” he says. “It would be a very sunny day and the temperature would rise up to 56 Celsius (132.8 Fahrenheit). We could barely stand in the sun. But suddenly everything would change and the clouds would move in and in 10 to 15 minutes it would start raining and flood everything. We set up a small shop near the highway and checked the weather forecast online while we were shooting and everything was perfect. But suddenly a hailstorm took away the entire set, including our tripods. Every shot We encountered this when we did it.
Weather conditions were not the only challenge, as a real war broke out during production.
“10 days of shooting is over,” he says. “On the 11th day there was a war, the war between India and Pakistan. We had to return to our home in Keralam. [a state in southwestern India]. We were stranded in the middle of the desert and we suddenly went to our rooms and were evacuated from there, but there was no vehicle and we could see the missiles and everything going into the sky. We were in a dangerous situation and somehow we made it back home with the help of our production. “After the war ended, we went to the same place and started shooting again two months later.”
Despite the challenges, Samjad says he’s excited to play with the vampire mythology and has the freedom to do so because of his heroes’ half-vampire status.
“There is a healing factor for both, just like normal vampires have a healing factor,” he says. “Because they’re half-vampire, we did something special for them. We can do anything. That’s the power of half-vampires. They can be our half-vampire.” anything. If there is sunlight when they heal, the healing will not occur. Healing occurs if there is no sunlight or if there is shade. Normal vampires burn when exposed to the sun, right? However, half-vampires do not burn, but their healing factor is useless. That’s the idea. We researched vampires and there are vampire stories from ancient times in India. There were old black and white movies from the 70s and 80s. We have vampires, but with different names. “So we took some elements from the European side and mixed everything up.”
“Half” will debut at the upcoming Sitges Film Festival and is still seeking distribution in the United States.