You Should Have Left: Kevin Bacon's Trippy Horror Experiences

Universal and Blumhouse surprised movie fans less than a month ago when the announcement of You Should Have Left coming available on demand on June 19 dropped with a trailer for the film. The thriller based on Daniel Kehlmann's book by the same title stars Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried as a couple working through some relationship obstacles which simultaneously finds themselves trapped in a haunting, isolated location from which they might now be able to escape. The film offers plenty of trippy and scary moments and a taste of these scenes is revealed in the trailer when Bacon's Theo is seen on screen with himself. The movie called for Bacon's character to interact with another form of his character, a context we won't dive into as a means to avoid spoilers, but a technical achievement which Bacon opened up about in an exclusive interview.

"We usually have a stand-in that I can focus on and actually talk to," Bacon explained to ComicBook.com. "I don't think that anything that's in the movie, I don't think there's any actual images that end up being somebody other than me." As the film goes on, the story aims to increasingly rattle audiences as the character's doubled presence becomes more and more haunting.

"You know, I started making movies, and started making scary moves, at a time when actually accomplishing that would be incredibly difficult and costly from a special-effects standpoint," Bacon explained. "And nowadays it's a pretty easy cut-and-paste kind of thing to do. But it is a challenge to talk to yourself and work with yourself, for sure. I think that one of the reasons why I like this genre is that there are acting challenges that exist, because 75% of the movie is gonna be you scared, and tempering those degrees of fear, and making sure that you're not repeating the same kind of, you know, even looks on your face over and over again, is part of the work."

To say anything more about those sequences would be treading into spoiler territory. However, Bacon did also have a secondary unique experience while making You Should Have Left, experiencing a lovely demon slime bomb of sorts late in the film. The actor certainly had to get his hands dirty on this one.

"That's part of making these kinds of movies, is things are slimy, and gross, and uncomfortable, and you're in situations where, I mean, that's part of the fun," he explains. "I'm one of those people that I've seen so many different things happen, and been in so many different situations on movie sets, but I am not jaded about the magic of the smoke and mirrors. I still really love it. I love to watch how we're all gonna get together and figure out something that's in the script, and how to actually physically do it. You know, it was always kinda great. And to see the different jobs that people on crews have, in the way that they problem-solve is something that I really admire."

The full interview can be seen in the video above! To get better understanding of Bacon's efforts and slimy affairs on set, fans will have to check out You Should Have Left as it is available at home on demand on Friday, June 19.