The filmmaking trio collectively known as RKSS (François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell) have not one but two features making their rounds in the festival circuit: mean slasher Wake Up (our review) and charming horror-comedy We Are Zombies (our review).
We Are Zombies, an adaptation of Jerry Frissen and Guy Davis’ comic book series “The Zombies That Ate the World,” follows three slackers whose money schemes land them in trouble with an evil corporation that kidnaps their grandma. The catch? This particular world is overrun by zombies, though they’re not the insatiable brain-eaters you’d expect.
Alexander Nachi (“Clash”), Megan Peta Hill (“Riverdale”), and Derek Johns (“Moonfall”) star as Karl, Maggie, and Freddy, respectively, in We Are Zombies.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with RKSS after their Fantastic Fest screenings of both Wake Up and We Are Zombies, where they talked about the back-to-back productions.
Yoann-Karl Whissell tells Bloody Disgusting how they put themselves into their comic book adaptation, We Are Zombies.
“We wrote the adaptation from the comic book, but we did use a lot of the comic book in it. We infused a ton of ourselves into it. The three characters are a trio. I love pro wrestling, so I felt like this needed to have pro wrestling. Pro wrestling. I’m wearing a pro wrestling shirt right now,” Yoann-Karl Whissell points to his shirt, different from the Danhausen t-shirt he wore at the festival’s screening.”
“I think the first question we got at Fantasia at the world premiere was like, ‘Are they you? You’re them, right?’” Whissell says.
“Eh, kind of,” François Simard answers.
“Exactly,” Yoann-Karl Whissell continues. “There’s a lot of us. We’ve played D&D, we’re geeks. We play video games, and Maggie is the brains of the operation. Anouk is the brains of the operation. She’s by far the smartest of the three of us. I remember when we went to incorporate, so that we’d become a company and everything, the person behind the desk told us, ‘Okay, there can only be one president of the company. You need to make a decision; you need to talk about it.’ And we went, ‘No, it’s her.’”
Simmard candidly adds, “If I can, that’s a big difference from the comic book because the characters in the comic book are very, I don’t know, hard to like. They’re very bad people. So, one thing that we changed from the comic book, we wanted them to be much more likable, so that’s why we put a bit about ourselves.”
It’s not just the characters that RKSS needed to address with their adaptation, but the world itself.
Anouk Whissell tells Bloody Disgusting, “It’s a really ambitious universe, as well, to put onscreen. The one from the comic book, it’s in the future. We still kept that future, but we made it more grounded. So, it’s kind of a weird ’90s future.”
“Yeah, in the comic book, there’s flying cars. We don’t have a budget for flying cars,” Yoann-Karl Whissell cracks.
“Even having tons of extras painted with zombie faces. We wanted to bring these small gags in the background just to make the world work and make it real,” Anouk Whissell explains of bringing the world to life on screen. “But yeah, the comic book is really rich for the whole universe it builds. I recommend reading it. It’s really nice as a comic book, but it was nice to adapt it and bring it to something that would be more visible on screen.”
While RKSS had their work cut out for them in making two overlapping features, it allowed them to flex different creative muscles, especially when it came to their love of gore.
“Wake Up was the one where they were like, ‘Pull back on the gore,’ but in a zombie movie, you’re expected to do the gore. Where you like, ‘Let’s play with this, especially for comedy’s sake, but it’s a zombie movie, so let’s funnel a lot of the gore there,’” Anouk Whissell explains.
Yoann-Karl Whissell adds, “And we wanted a lot more gore at the end. But again, it’s a question of budget and time. Just like Turbo Kid, we cut half of the gore we wanted to do. It’s the same thing with the zombie one, but at least there are good kills.”
“Somebody one day should give us a Marvel-type check to make a horror movie,” Simmard says.
Just imagine the possibilities of a big budget gore fest in the hands of RKSS. Yes. Please.