We caught up with director Jon Wright ahead of the films UK release.
I thought it was escapist fun in a good way!
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And that aside, Im Irish by birth.
Which in Richards case was very good.
He must have put a lot of work into that?
I think thats the highest praise you’re free to get.
Some of the Irish crew on the movie even thought he was Irish!
So I think thats good enough.
Its not going to distract you from the movie.
Had you worked with any of the cast and crew beforeGrabbers?
Yeah, Id worked with a lot of the crew before.
I brought on people that I loved.
Speaking of the bad weather, a lot of the film is set in the rain.
Was that difficult to film?
It seems like maybe setting scenes in the rain is a bad idea…
It was a terrible idea!
I mean, rain is a real technical nightmare but it looks fantastic.
So for get rain on camera, it has to be massively heavy, like stair rods.
I wouldnt revisit it lightly.
It looks really cool though, I can understand why people do it; its very atmospheric.
It does look great.
Youd hope so, really, wouldnt you?
It isnt for some directors, though, is it?
There are a lot of directors who are most interested in the acting, or the storytelling.
We tried to invoke the spirit of a lot of old movies, likeJawsandTremorsandAlienandGremlins.
We used lenses that are quite old in conjunction with a new camera.
It is a very warm film, on the whole.
Bizarrely, we always thought of it as a Christmas movie.
We almost did setGrabbersat Christmas, but it felt like that was just one concept too many.
The grabbers themselves are really weird, totally alien-looking things.
How did you come up with that particular design?
It was a collaborative process.
and then of course we put it on peoples faces.
The homages are sincerely meant to films we really love but theyre done in a really wrong way.
we have our heroine using the c-word.
Everythings a bit wrong.
Youve called John Landis the patron saint ofGrabbers.
Just because, looking back at the 80s, hes amongst the filmmakers that I absolutely love!
Do you see yourself as a genre filmmaker?
Those are the films that I love.
And the things that got me excited as a boy were sci-fi and horror and fantasy.
When I was younger that was more of a stigma its like whats happened with computers.
There wasnt when I was a kid, it just meant you got bullied.
So whats your next movie going to be?
And I thought, good, thats what I want it to be.
I dreamt the first two minutes of the film and woke up and thought, well, thats good.
Its another Christmas Day movie its relentlessly, unashamedly escapist, a sci-fi adventure.
Finally, whats your favourite Jason Statham movie?
Snatch, I suppose.
Jon Wright, thank you very much!
