There's Something Wrong With the Children Director Talks the Unsettling New Blumhouse Thriller

Throughout her history in movie making, filmmaker Roxanne Benjamin has had a had in a number of projects in various capacities, initially as a producer on projects like the V/H/S series before directing her own segments in films like Southbound and XX. After making her feature-film directing debut with Body at Brighton Rock, she worked on a number of TV series, from Creepshow to Riverdale to Nancy Drew, all of which incorporated genre storytelling elements, with her latest effort, There's Something Wrong with the Children, seeing her explore a doomed vacation between two families. There's Something Wrong with the Children lands On Demand and on Digital HD on January 17th. The film hits MGM+ on March 17th.

When Margaret (Alisha Wainwright) and Ben (Zach Gilford) take a weekend trip with longtime friends Ellie (Amanda Crew) and Thomas (Carlos Santos) and their two young children, Ben begins to suspect something supernatural is occurring when the kids behave strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight.

ComicBook.com caught up with Benjamin to talk developing the film, bigger mysteries, and future projects.

ComicBook.com: I'm assuming you were like me, and when you first saw the title of this movie, you were excited because you thought, "Okay, great, a sequel to There's Something About Mary." Then you read the script and realized it wasn't that, and actually it was a horror movie. What was it about this script, when it first came to you, when you were first talking with the writer, what was it about this project that really excited you? While you were reading it, what was the thing that you were most excited to bring to life, whether it be a theme or a specific sequence?

Roxanne Benjamin: It's funny you talk about the title because it was called something else when I first read it. When that title wasn't going to work anymore, because it was based on a location that wasn't a location we could shoot at, I fought for this title because I love long titles. The ridiculous, sentence-long titles that just tell you what the movie is are my favorite thing. 

One of the things that did draw me to the script was the fact that it felt almost like a dark comedy, and then it suddenly turns into a horror movie. You've got a lot of character stuff happening between these four adults before you even get into the horror elements. I felt like having this title for horror fans, it's like it tells you what the movie is going into it, and you're like, "Oh, I know what this is. I know what the vibe of this is going to be with this title." It almost gave me some leeway to play more with that character stuff for a longer period before it turns into a horror movie because you know it's coming. 

It's also the Final Destination thing of we know everybody's going to die, the fun part is how. You know you're in an evil-kid movie, you're going to get there, then it becomes like, "Oh, but what is it going to be, how are we going to get there, what's going to happen to them that makes them this way?" It gives you more, I don't know, I think a leash. It lets you off your leash a little bit to be able to look at some other themes and stuff before you get there and just turn into a third act of carnage. 

Of that script, or even just unexpectedly while you were shooting, was there a particular favorite scene or sequence to shoot or scene that was maybe vague or nebulous in the script, that once you got to set, you really got to experiment and take things in maybe a slightly different direction?

It's interesting. The DNA of the script is the same, but a lot of changes occurred in production just because of the realities of production and shooting with kids. You have so little time, and these kids are in every single scene. It's like every second they're on set, they have to be on camera, so it's trying to figure out how to block things so that you can shoot everything with them first and then use doubles after that, or be getting other people's coverage without them there because of the limitations of shooting with kids this young. 

A lot of the set pieces changed from what was in the script. I had to figure out, what can we do with the time that we have that gives us the most impact? You can't have them at night for more than a couple of hours, and there's not time to do a lot with that. How do you make it feel like the kids are still there when they're not?

Some of that is built on the script. There's a lot of the noises they're making out in the woods and stuff, so you don't have to necessarily see them. Also, I think it was really just coming up with stuff that they would be capable of doing, and playing the psychological aspects up with them and Zach throughout, that are creepy and weird, but not necessarily take up a lot of production time. Part of it is logistic, really.

The thing that was in the script that was one of my favorite things was the hide-and-seek sequence and putting that together before the ranger gets there. That was something I was really, really excited about shooting. That, and even just without the kids being there when they first realized they're gone, I almost immediately was like, "Oh, I have to shoot that in a series of steady-cam shots that are interwoven to feel almost like one shot." Just build the intensity of that over the course of the scene, was something that I saw right away, that was built into it, that I was like, "Oh, I can have a lot of fun with that."

You mentioned how much you love having this long title and something like Body of Brighton Rock, it's very explicit what that movie is, and the title answers, what is this movie about? 

I'm a very literal person.

Whereas There's Something Wrong with the Children, it's not like they have tummyaches or anything like that. Maybe there's a little bit more going on, but I like that the movie only tells you what you need to know about what that something is. Whether it be you personally or whether it be the script, is there a concrete or more explicit mythology that we just don't see, or for you is it, "No, I just want to bring to life exactly what needs to be known, and it's up to the audience to fill in those blanks,"?

To me, it's up to the audience to fill in those blanks. That's probably obvious from Brighton Rock, as well. The script definitely had a much more defined mythology, particularly in the ending. The ending was completely different, and I wanted an ending that stuck more to the character and what the character was going through, rather than being a wrap-up of what actually was going on. I am very much a fan of, you just need to sprinkle in enough for it to work for the fun of the movie versus ... I hate the f-cking scenes that are like, "Oh, this is what's going on. It's this mystery of this thing, or in 1786, blah, blah, blah, at this place, and that's why." It seems a lot of f-cked up sh-t happens in the world, and we don't know why, and we don't have an explanation for it, and we're just flooded with the results of that thing.

In part, it's that, but also the way this movie is structured, and the way the script was structured, no one's trying to solve anything. No one's trying to fix the kids. They don't find out something's wrong with the kids, then they're like, "Oh, how do we make it not wrong?" The whole movie is trying to convince everyone else that there is a problem, and then once it's like, "Oh, sh-t, dude, you're right, there's a problem," it's too late. Now we're just on the train. There isn't really anything built into the movie that makes it make sense to have those scenes of like, "Oh, it's this." Anything that you could really put in there would be such a throwaway. It would feel almost like you just chucked it in there as an executive note or something.

Kudos to Blumhouse for letting me pull out as much as I did of that mythology and make it just more about nature, and even just the thematic idea of a birth canal. The evils of children, and how this appears to the childless couple who is not interested in that, and everyone around them telling them they should be. That was more what I wanted to play with, was just this almost frustration of Alicia, by the end of the day, not wanting to be on this same train that all of her friends seem to be on. Those questions that keep getting asked once you get to a certain age of, "Well, when are you going to have kids? Everybody else is having kids, when are you going to join us? You don't know until you're a mother," that kind of thing, that I just want to flip the table.

All of the horror movies, too, that usually get sent to me that are about motherhood and about maternal blah, blah, blah, and Rosemary's Baby knockoffs and pregnancy and all this sh-t, and it's like, I just want to see those characters who just don't want that to be part of their life. That, I think, is a big part of all of the things I pushed in the story, of that being the question and the frustration and being a part of the elements of the horror throughout for both protagonists. 

You mentioned Blumhouse, and I think the thing that I love about your career is I never know what you are going to do next. Other people, they have a trajectory that you can chart a little bit more, but yours, anytime I find out, "Wait, now she's on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, or now she's doing this totally original movie." Blumhouse has a lot of resources, so now that you've partnered with Blumhouse, if they came to you with a blank check, you're like, "Yep, I know exactly what I'm doing with this blank check," whether it's an original project, or I know how much you love Night of the Comet and how you wanted to do that at one point, but is there a project that you are still just waiting for the right time, right place, right legality, everything to clear, that you're hoping to make?

The two things that I've always wanted to make are things that are either in the process of being made or were made, and that's The Craft and The Lost Boys. I feel like that's built into a lot of the stuff that I make. Most of my movies until now have been about the relationships of women, basically, at the heart of them. I always try to push those in the things that I make. I always want to do a version of The Lost Boys that focuses on girls. The Craft, obviously, was very seminal for me growing up, and some version of a movie like that is something that I've always, always wanted to do. If they ever want to do another reboot of The Craft, I'm all over that shit.

Speaking of TV and your work on TV, I know Riverdale's coming to an end and Sabrina ended. Is there anything we could do, maybe you can put in a word, to get a Cheryl Blossom and Sabrina spin-off TV series, or do you have a particular favorite character that you worked on either of those shows that you actually would love to develop their own spinoff?

It's funny because both of those are Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa] shows. I also did his Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. I've done three shows with Roberto now. He's great, and he's such a horror fan, so I'm always interested in the stuff that he is pulling out, and the horror homages that he's making in his stuff. Man, that's a tough one. I love those actors, though. I'd definitely work with those actors in some horror stuff if they were interested.

There's Something Wrong with the Children lands On Demand and on Digital HD on January 17th. The film hits MGM+ on March 17th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.