[Editorial] Interview with The Unknowable (2022) Filmmaker Zachary Donohue

The Unknowable (2022) is a new found footage episodic film from Zacharay Donohue, who brought us The Den in 2013. I had the pleasure of chatting with Zach about his new original film, available on YouTube now!

Ariel: The Unknowable is a unique story and it blends several aspects of horror storytelling. When did you first have the idea for this film, and how did it evolve over time?

Zach: For a while, I had been wanting to do a gritty true crime doc that felt like the horror version of a Maysles Brothers documentary - no talking heads, no chyrons, no bells and whistles, just creepy old footage and an ominous narration tying it all together. But I didn’t know where to begin.

Then during the pandemic, I wanted to explore the idea of repurposing modern-day news footage and telling a story that recontextualizes things we recognize and presenting them as completely strange and unexpected. But again, I was having trouble trying to crack a way into that, and didn’t know how to go about obtaining the rights to everything… 

It wasn’t until last year that I realized I could marry both ideas — and essentially repurpose clips from hundreds of random films in the public domain — and then use that old footage from the past to weave a narrative around a few key moments I filmed with my friends in the present. 

After editing the first chapter and placing my own voice over the rough assembly, I realized I had a creepy, haunted aesthetic to work with that felt like Unsolved Mysteries (1987-2002) meets Twilight Zone (1959-1964)/Outer Limits (1963-1965). From there, the process became a cycle of writing, shooting, digging for clips, editing, rewriting, reshooting, digging for more clips, rewriting, re-editing, etc… I tried to let the old footage lead me to cool and unexpected places, while still following a simple story structure that I made sure would somehow all tie together in the end.

I would describe your film as a faux true crime/mystery documentary. Who or what inspired and influenced you in making this story? (I can guess at a few…David Lynch, Unsolved Mysteries, The Ring (2002)…)

The tape from The Ring (2002) has always been nightmare fuel for me! David Lynch for sure was a major northstar too. Eraserhead (1977) aesthetically speaking, and Mulholland Drive (2001) is tonally so creepy and unsettling to me... But also, what I love about Mulholland Drive is that it has so many bizarre moments in between the creepy ones that teeter on absurdity and outlandish comedy, where you just have to laugh at how bizarre the situation is.

The goal with The Unknowable was to find absurdity in some of the creepy pulpiness and see how far we could push it. If we could get a laugh without breaking too much of the tone, that was a nice bonus. 

But perhaps the biggest inspiration was Chris Marker’s 28-minute film La Jetée (1962). I saw this in film school, and it really stuck with me. It’s black and white, told mainly in still photographs, with a chilling voice over – and the effect is absolutely hypnotic and entrancing. It plays like a haunted childhood memory of a pivotal moment in history that soon shifts into heavy sci-fi territory and the dawn of WW3. It’s brilliant. Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995) was loosely based on it.

In terms of voice-over narration (which also plays a major part in The Unknowable), the talented voice-actor Sean Burgos knocked it out of the park for us and went above and beyond. For his narration, I wanted something that drew inspiration from Rod Serling, Robert Stack, and John Larroquette’s unforgettably chilling opening to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), while also being something entirely new and his own.

One of my favorite aspects of the film is the way editing and repetition are used to tell the story. Had you always planned for the story to be told in this way?

I knew early on that in order for the audience to keep track of all the bizarre plot points and intricate-sounding character names, I’d need to rely on repetition. So one thing I thought would help the audience follow along would be to divide this into relatively digestible chapters, and then have a brief ten-second recap at the beginning of each chapter. Sort of like how in a book with multiple intercutting storylines, the author will sometimes take a sentence or two to remind you where we are and what’s going on.  

In terms of repetition, I also thought it would be humorous to treat these mini-recaps like they’re a “cumulative song” ala the “12 days of Christmas” Christmas carol. There’s a humor in the additive nature of listing everything that’s happened very matter-of-factly— especially when what’s happened is VERY outlandish and bizarre. So, I really wanted the last few chapters to have lots of quick recycled shots from all the prior episodes, but to also have a narration over it that was an extremely deadpan, long-winded run-on sentence… I thought that would be funny.

The Unknowable’s story unfolds over several different locations - it’s the very opposite of a lot of indie horror we have been seeing lately, with a few people in a house. How did you approach making this film with so many locations and sets?

What’s ironic is that every subsequent script I’ve written since my indie movie The Den (2013) has actually been set in one location… And for this, working with basically no budget — I wound up telling a story that spans various settings, countries, and even solar systems and dimensions!

In terms of all the locations you’re pointing out, I think the public domain footage and the narration is definitely helping to fill in the gap for the audience’s imagination and is enhancing the sense of scope. But there were a handful of amazing locations we did actually travel to to make this! 

I wanted to make something with my close friends and family, so me and my wife Sarah (who played Mabel) and our two close friends Chris and Ally Voss (Thaddeus and Fanny Wilcox), went on two separate trips together over the course of last year (Joshua Tree and Mexico City). And while we were there, I told them to bring some old wardrobe and I’d supply them with some creepy masks I had designed by John Wrightson over the years (the black mask that is Thaddeus’s helmet was initially commissioned to be in The Den, but was ultimately too sci-fi feeling) and we shot some stuff with my 16 mm Bolex and iPhone. So, we actually filmed on location in the J-Tree desert as well as the ancient ruins of Teotihuacán. A lot of other locations we grabbed across LA (Paramount Ranch, Fryman canyon, and Griffith Park where the old train museum is). 

The lore built in the 40-minute runtime is rich and expansive. Is it possible we may get more stories from this world?

Thank you so much for saying that, and absolutely! There’s a few avenues I’m exploring — whether it’s making a second “season” that follows a whole new group of characters, but that lives in the same universe, so to speak, or another loftier, more ambitious option would be to try and put together a feature. I’ve already begun filming some things and compiling potential footage to use — so long as there’s a rich abundance of public domain footage to pull from (Metropolis (1927) just became public domain!) there’s a definite possibility and a desire on my end to keep telling more stories in this vein.

Thank you so much, Zach, for taking the time to chat to Ghouls Magazine! We look forward to whatever you do next!

RELATED ARTICLES

---

---

EXPLORE

---

MORE ARTICLES

---

---