Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige has made some of the shrewdest financial decisions in Hollywood history, but he sure dropped the bag when he didn’t make a new “Blade.” (Just ask would-be star Mahershala Ali.)
Luckily, Indian auteur Samjad has directed a film that will bring joy to fans of the battle-ready half-vampire Wesley Snipes popularized on the big screen. Samjad’s new movie “Half,” which he co-wrote with Praveen Viswanath, has a simple concept: Twin siblings (Ranjith Sajeev and Aiswarya Raj) are robbed and left for dead on a highway, but as they are half-vampires, they recover and vow to take gruesome revenge on the gang that attacked them. From there, the film is a fantasia of blood and gore, as “The Raid 2” and “The Night Comes for Us” fight coordinator Very Tri Yulisman orchestrates creative, funny and bone-crunching action.
Samjad enjoys “Blade,” but had a different vision in mind for his film.
“What if we take a classic vampire action thriller and execute it in a completely raw, grounded way without a single frame of slow motion?” he says. “That core idea felt so much fresher and visually exciting to me.”
“Half” has been a powder keg for audiences, resulting in high-energy screenings at its TIFF Midnight Madness debut and at Fantastic Fest. It’s a brawler where the action is clear, crisp and often shot in the daytime. And while the fights feel modern, the film evokes more classic fare.
“We tried to make the film look like it was shot on an old camera in the olden way, with the old equipment and hard work,” Samjad says. “I think we have to work really hard to get one special shot, right? Now we can achieve it through robotic cams and specialized equipment. Everything is there. But in the olden days, it had to be done through manual hands and panning and zooming. We used lots of zoom lenses because I like the technique with the camera. We tried to achieve the ’80s- and ’90s-type of movie.”
Despite the zippy feature it created, when Samjad describes the “Half” shoot, it’s clear it was a miracle it got made.
“We were shooting in the middle of a desert,” he says. “It would be a very sunny day, and the heat would go up to 56 Celsius (132.8 Fahrenheit). We can barely stand in the sun. But suddenly everything will change, and clouds will come in, and in 10 to 15 minutes, rain will start and flood everywhere. We put a small shop set near a highway, and when we were shooting, we checked the weather on the internet, and everything was perfect. But suddenly a hailstorm took away all the set, including our tripods, including everything. We faced this every time we shot.”
Weather wasn’t the only challenge, as a literal war broke out during production.
“10 days of shooting were finished,” he says. “On the 11th day, there was a war going on, the India and Pakistan war. We had to go back to our home in Keralam [a state in southwestern India]. We were stuck in the middle of the desert, and we suddenly went to our rooms and were evacuated from there, but there was no vehicle, and we could see the missiles and everything going in the sky. We were in a dangerous situation, and somehow with our production’s help, we came back to our home. After the war finished, we went back to the same place and started shooting again after two months.”
Despite the challenges, Samjad says he was thrilled to play with vampire mythology and had the freedom to do so due to his protagonists’ half-vampire status.
“There is a healing factor for both of them, as normal vampires have the healing factor,” he says. “As they are half-vampires, we have done something special for them. We can do anything. That’s the power of half-vampires. Our half-vampire could be anything. When they heal, if there is sunlight, the healing will not happen. If there is no sunlight or there is a shadow, healing happens. Normal vampires, when they are exposed to the sun, will burn, right? But half-vampires will not burn, but the healing factor will not work. That’s the idea. We researched vampires, and in India, there are vampire stories from olden days. There were ’70s, ’80s, old black-and-white movies. We have vampires, but in different names. So we took some elements from the European side and mixed up everything.”
“Half” is set to play at the upcoming Sitges Film Festival and is still seeking U.S. distribution.
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