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Wicked Horror alum Nat Brehmer wraps up Julie, his first directorial effort
Nat Brehmer’s upcoming film Julie isn’t just his first directorial outing — it’s the culmination of a two-decade journey.
“There was a lot of persistence just to get the movie made,” he told Wicked Horror. “Seeing each of these things that I’ve had in my head for so long come together was the ultimate dream.”
Brehmer co-directed the film alongside long-time collaborator Quinton Macari III. He wrote the first draft of Julie — beginning to end over the course of one weekend — roughly 20 years ago.
“It’s about a girl who realizes she’s the worst person in the world and it’s the best thing that ever happened to her,” he sums up the plot. “It’s a coming of age slasher but in that kind of really literal sense in that it’s about a girl who is blossoming into power and confidence and giving into this inner monstrosity which is great for her but terrible for everyone else.”
Female slasher protagonists aren’t unheard of in the genre, Brehmer noted. But Julie isn’t a horror film that makes excuses and caveats for its main character’s actions — i.e., there’s no copout last second revelation that she’s been possessed by some sinister force at the very end of the movie.
“Michael Myers, Chucky, those guys are allowed to be inherently evil but movies love to project an image of fragile, transcendent femininity,” he said. “And I just wanted Julie to not be that, the crux of Julie is what if Laurie Strode was Michael Myers?”
Brehmer said he wants audiences to root for and against the character in equal doses.
“I think it plays a lot with perspective and how we see the story by whose POV we’re seeing it from,” he added. “It’s really exciting to see what other characters kind of fall into that final girl role by default.”
Portraying the titular character in Julie is actress and musician Haley Gosserand. Among other roles, she’s played Lucy in the Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch.
Brehmer said he knew Gooserand was Julie within “one second” of her audition tape.
“I could not be happier with the cast,” Brehmer said. “We had a lot of people audition but we kind of had everybody who auditioned audition for every role. And that’s great to not only see who fits each part, but the range each actor can present.”
Jason Goes To High School
Julie also afforded Brehmer an opportunity to work with one of the most iconic names in horror — Kane Hodder, he of Friday the 13th fame.
“Actually getting to work with him was just the biggest honor imaginable,” he said. “I had a hand-written notepad in college of actors I envisioned for this movie and I had written down Kane’s name beside this character.”
You might be wondering if Brehmer ever geeked out onset with Mr. Jason Voorhees himself. The answer, of course, is a resounding yes.
“I brought up Project Metalbeast, which he did not believe had fans,” he said. “And he did not believe I was one of them.”
Brehmer discussed co-directing the film alongside Macari.
“I could not have ever gotten this made without Q,” he said. “He’s been supportive, he’s been a friend, he’s been right there beside me believing in this thing.”
Brehmer first met Macari the day after he graduate from film school.
“This script was already circulating around the school, to the point that one of the teachers put me in contact with Q,” he recalled. “As soon as we had a film under our belt together, that was immediately when we were like ‘Well, let’s make Julie now.’”
Brehmer described the two week shoot of Julie as a whirlwind.
“I felt like I was at Disneyland the entire time,” he said.
The very first day of filming he said his crew had to carry equipment an extra two blocks — because the street in front of the diner location was blocked off for a pro wrestling match pitting Santa Claus against the Krampus.
“I was like ‘this is exactly what I thought filmmaking would be,’” he said.
Living The Dream
Brehmer is no stranger to Wicked Horror readers. Over the years he’s written hundreds of articles for the site.
“I was there from the beginning,” he said. “I was writing for the site before it launched so that there would be a backlog of content — like, that’s how early on I was recruited.”
In addition to writing for Bloody Disgusting and Dread Central, he’s also published several books, including Puppet Master Complete and Reading the Boogeyman: Essays on Halloween. His next literary endeavor? The official novelization of the 1995 Stuart Gordon cult classic Castle Freak.
Brehmer wanted to be a filmmaker after watching the original Halloween from 1978 when he was “eight or nine years old.” But it was a very different kind of horror movie that proved to him that he could be a filmmaker.
“Curse of the Puppet Master, when I rented that I realized there was one shot where the puppets were just being held up by their ankles and I thought ‘oh, anybody could do this,’” he recollected.
He noted that there are some very obvious non-horror inspirations on Julie.
“I was raised on movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street but I was also raised on movies like Can’t Hardly Wait and She’s All That and Ten Things I Hate About You,” he said. “And both of those genres are co-existing in the film.”
Brehmer said Julie is very far along in the post-production process at the moment.
“I’ve seen a really near-complete version and I could not be happier with how its shaping up,” he said. “I absolutely cannot wait to move onto the next phase and how people are going to see the film.”
Brehmer said it’s still a little early to guesstimate a timetable for the film’s release.
“I don’t really want to say anything specific there yet,” he said. “The dream is always to get it in front of as many eyes as possible, however we come by that.”
Franchise Potential?
Making the film, he continued, was easily the most surreal experience of his life (so far, anyway.)
“It’s still sinking in,” he said. “I’ve told my wife, like, this has not been true of any other project I’ve been apart of, but you’re absolutely going to come home and find me watching this movie sometimes. Because I waited so long for it to exist.”
Julie may be Brehmer’s first movie. But don’t expect it to be his last.
For that matter, it may not even be his last Julie movie.
“Now that we have this, I want to keep doing this,” he said. “I have other scripts that have been talked about that we could see, but also I would love to do more with this character.”
Freddy. Jason. Chucky. Julie? If Brehmer has his way, his creation is bound to become the next big mononym in horror.
“I’ve had 20 years to think about what else could be done with Julie,” he said. “There are a lot of possibilities that I would love to explore if given the chance.”
