[Editorial] Interview with Rodrigo Gudiño director of The Breach (2023)

Rodrigo Gudiño is no stranger to horror business. In 1997, he launched Rue Morgue, a leading horror and entertainment resource that has since expanded to include Rue Morgue Magazine, Rue Morgue Digital, as well as a horror expo and TV channel. He has directed multiple shorts as well as writing and directing his first feature-length film, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh in 2012. His second feature, The Breach, premiered last year at Montreal’s Fantastic Fest and is now available on digital through Raven Banner Entertainment and he took a few minutes to speak to us about how The Breach came to be.  

Leyla Hamedi: The Breach is based on the book by Nick Cutter, also known as Craig Davidson, who I believe also adapted it for the screen. Could you talk a bit about how it came into your possession? Did you read the book first and have a vision of what it could become as a film? 

Rodrigo Gudiño: The way it came about was very interesting actually. It was the pandemic year, 2020, and like everyone else I was home. I was here in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico but the whole world was closed up, nothing was going on and I got a call from Mike Paszt from Raven Banner [Entertainment] and he said, “Hey we have this script, we want to shoot it and were wondering if you’d look at it, if you were interested.” And one of the thoughts in my head, because I’d been sitting at home the whole time was, please don’t let this script suck hah, I wanted badly to do something. Thankfully when the script arrived, it was something I connected with and I had some suggestions that luckily for me, Mike and the writers of the original script, Craig Davidson and Ian Weir, were open to. Now at that time the book had not been released. The book I believe was called Gone Upriver; I believe when I received the script that was the name as well. So, I made some change; I added the Lovecraft element and some other things and called it The Breach and then later on when the book came out it was also called that so I’m not too sure what went on there-

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LH: Some cross inspiration perhaps.

RG: Yes, some back and forth there! As of yet, I have not read the book, but I really should. But when I got the script, it was really that we had a certain amount of time before shooting and then there was casting and designing so it was a hectic period.   

LH: Do you take a hand in all those other aspects of the production, too? I know in your first feature the score was done by Mercan Dede and I have to shout him out as a fellow Turk like myself so yay, but I know Slash who is also a producer on this film was the composer. Did you have an idea of how you wanted the movie to sound and from there feel as well and in particular seek out that element?

RG: Yes. Yeah! All the movies I’ve made I have a bit of a mini crisis because I can see the movie clearly but when it comes to hearing the movie it becomes a little more difficult. I remember when I did my last movie I thought of [Mercan Dede] because my wife was playing a piece of music by Peter Murphy called “Dust” and I said that’s a good sound and she said “Well, why don’t you look up these people” and I literally looked through the credits and found his name and saw that he was in Montreal where we were at the time. With this one it was similar in some ways. Slash came out at some point, and he was preparing for his Guns’n’Roses tour and I didn’t expect that he would have time to do something but he said he would and did and that was really cool. We discussed back and forth what we wanted for different scenes, what kind of opening, and what kind of contributions he could make. But there’s also a little Turkish element in this film as well.

LH: The credits song! I recognized it too!

RG: Yeah, the credits song! It’s a band called She Past Away and that’s a coincidence because I was thinking how’s the best way to wrap up this movie and I wanted something that was kind of festive you know? Not serious, like yeah, we saw a horror movie and it’s cool but I like the fact that he sings in Turkish because on this side of the world no one really knows what he’s saying so it kind of felt to me like a very eccentric way of ending the movie. I liked it. 

LH: So, not to be too much of a spoiler but I have to ask about the “creature design” let’s call it of the figures at the end of the movie. I love the special effects and just how red and oozy they were, like a callback to classic Italian horror almost even if they were not traditional zombies. I don’t want to call them zombies even if they did do a bit of lurching. Did you have also have a vision of how you wanted them to look and their design? 

RG: Absolutely, I worked with our effects designer, our head designer’s name is Daniel Baker, a very accomplished guy. It’s funny because he was like what do you want these guys to look like and we were trying to come up with something with a bit of a twist, something a bit unique. I got stuck on this idea that this creature, this entity, was trying to come through this machine and trying to incarnate in people and so we had a bunch of sketches and ideas. At one point I was telling Daniel what if we imagined that we put a person in a blender and just pressed pulse a couple times? Don’t blend them just press pulse a few times and then what would that look like? He came up with this and I thought it was great because with the different faces and different parts just showed this creature trying to come into this world and using a human body to do so but isn’t getting it right. So that’s how that happened. And there was only four of those on set and so we used plates and stuff to make it look like a lot more and I wanted them to move a certain way, more like butoh dancers but that ended up being too far out of the realm of what we could on the shooting days. But I think they turned out well, I like how they turned out!

LH: Your previous full-length feature was more of a possession, haunting story while this one is bit more science-fiction thriller. Is it your aim to play with different genres all under the overarching horror theme and do you think that’s what you’ll aim for in your future work as well? 

RG: Yeah maybe! I was working on a western for a long time. But it’s hard to do a horror western. And there was another vehicle that was sort of a Mexican police procedural with monsters and then there’s another…yes, it’s not so much sub-genres as just different things. I like psychological horror films a lot, so I have a couple projects that I’m working on that are a bit more along those lines. So, we’ll see what comes up! 

Want to know more about the film? You can read Leyla Hamedi’s The Breach (2023) film review now!

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