Home Interviews Actors and Directors MONOLITH: An Interview With Star Lily Sullivan And Director Matt Vesely!

MONOLITH: An Interview With Star Lily Sullivan And Director Matt Vesely!

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Synopsis

In the new sci-fi/horror film Monolith, while trying to salvage her career, a disgraced journalist (played by Evil Dead Rise’s new Scream Queen, Lily Sullivan) begins investigating a strange conspiracy theory. But as the trail leads uncomfortably close to home, she is left to grapple with the lies at the heart of her own story. 

Interview

Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower sat down with director Matt Vesely and star Lily Sullivan to discuss their new film, Monolith. They talk about shooting on a short schedule and small budget, building tension through restraint, and how it feels for Lily to be heralded as an up-and-coming ‘scream queen’ after her success in the smash hit Evil Dead Rise, among other topics.

(Edited for content and clarity)

Lily Sullivan:
Hi Glen. How are you?
Glen Dower:
Hi Lily and Matt. How are you, folks?
Lily Sullivan:

Good!

Matt Vesely:
Good. How are you?
Glen Dower:
I’m really good. Thank you so much for meeting me about Monolith, your new sci-fi, thriller chiller. What can audiences expect from this film?
Lily Sullivan:

Over to Matt!

Matt Vesely:
Well, lots of Lily Sullivan. Monolith is a science fiction film, I guess an alien invasion story with a kind of interesting new way of telling it. I think it’s a challenge for us as filmmakers to see if we could make a big kind of X-Files episode, but with one actor, is that possible? Can you do a story of that scope with one person sitting in one location and telling a lot through audio storytelling? And the kind of gradual unraveling of this singular character played by Lily Sullivan?
Lily Sullivan in a scene from "Monolith" (2024). Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
Lily Sullivan in a scene from “Monolith” (2024). Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.

And hopefully, it goes well. To give it a quick summary, it’s about a journalist who’s kind of disgraced and retreats to her family home to work on a kind of click-baiting podcast. She’s trying to resurrect her career, and she receives an email about a strange alien artifact that’s appeared around the globe. As she delves into this story, she starts to kind of lose herself inside of it and discover that maybe the story is turning on her. That’s the pitch!

Glen Dower:

There it is. Lily, when you received the script, were you surprised or was it part of the pitch to you, that you were solely onscreen 99% of the time, one way or another, just you?

Lily Sullivan:
Well, at first, funnily, when I read Lucy Campbell’s script, I was just absorbed by it. I didn’t even really think about the fact that I was the only person on screen. I was so into it, and it was such a page-turner and just really tight and well done. And then obviously ‘that part’ crept in. I’m like, okay, this scares me. This sounds challenging. And also having fifteen days to shoot and a micro-budget. But then once I met Matt and Lucy, it was just the ultimate challenge and the ultimate collaboration. It was just when you’re by yourself in front of the camera, it’s such a dance then between all departments, to kind of pull off this strip back, cutting all of the fat style of filmmaking.
Glen Dower:
I want to talk about some of the influences. I noticed some of the cinematography might have been influenced by movies like Arrival, and also some of the horror elements…I read how this movie’s been on the festival circuit for a couple of years now, including The Overlook, and I thought of course it did because I just saw some elements of The Shining in there too. We have a slow walk down the corridors, there’s a moment where we are just watching Lily staring out. Also with those moments, were there times you thought, let’s just throw a jump scare in here. Or did you deliberately hold back?
Matt Vesely:
I think it is about the slow-crawling feeling of tension, sort of building through the film. And, without spoiling anything, it does escalate in that third act in quite a big way. We do push into horror there, and we shot roughly chronologically when we got to that third week. We were like, oh, we’re making a horror movie now! All those genres influenced the film.
Director Matt Vesely. Photo courtesy of Jonathan VDK.

But I think you’re right about the restraint, it was an exercise in restraint in many ways, and there’s something very terrifying about that. But all those references you list of, yeah, those kind of creeping shots, there’s these kind of unmotivated camera moves that we do where the camera just pulls away from Lily or just moves. It’s got a mind of its own, and all those things were about creating a feeling of her being observed or watched or the sense that there’s another presence kind of manipulating you as a viewer. That was interesting.

It’s a story about a podcaster kind of manipulating a story for her ends, and we like the idea that the audience is being manipulated as well and we recognize, as filmmakers, that we are maybe playing a trick on you as well. Layering it through in those ways is interesting. I mean, all those influences are there.

The Shining is one of my favorite movies. Arrival. We talked about another Denis Villeneuve film called Enemy, which is a very small kind of claustrophobic film, which I love. So that was all there. And there’s a Michael Hanneke film called Cache that I love, which is again, about restraint. Hanneke presents horrifying things in a very kind of plain way. He just sort of sets the camera and then just lets things happen and there’s something very terrifying about the banality of horror.

Glen Dower:
Lily, your character, we get some bits and pieces about her background. A privileged childhood, we know she’s a disgraced journalist. Did you design a whole backstory for her, or simply go with what was on the page?
Lily Sullivan:
It’s funny because there was no name in the script as well, just The Interviewer, but Matt made me at the beginning do an exercise of the apology. What that would’ve been, being publicly outed like that and not corroborating her sources. So it was really fun, it was an exercise that Matt gave me to make me do my homework at the very beginning, and then it ended up being a part of the film. So that was a part of the process. Also, Matt interviewed a young woman, who is an investigative journalist, Georgina Savage, and has a podcast herself, which is very interesting, Invisible Hand. It’s a great listen. But yeah, I mean, backstory-wise, it’s so funny.

This was probably the least I’ve done in a sense of just this state and place that she’s in, how little we kind of explore these intimate relationships. It’s just this level of isolation, the way she chooses to connect than the way she chooses to kind of cut herself off. I found myself sitting more in her energetic space, this place of desperation and need for her professional life to be salvaged. It was just more than ever before. I think, as well, being alone and not having to relate so hard with actors and talking about background.

I found myself more in this state of ‘ick’ and feeling a lack of self-worth and narcissistic tendencies. It’s bizarre, like the whole experience of shooting it in fifteen days and shooting it in chronological order. And because Lucy’s writing and Matt’s direction was just so specific, she was doing this before, and this relationship to that has made her, there was so much activity and doing and going, and it was just always just coming from wherever that was coming from. Just trying to find that specificity as opposed to carrying the baggage. Also in denial in regards to family.

Glen Dower:
You guys both mentioned that Monolith is shot in sequence, I did notice around the hour mark, that we see that she just looks exhausted and is being fuelled by nicotine and caffeine. Do you think shooting in sequence has the kind of effect on her that the characters have mentioned? Also, obviously, your performance of Lily is helped by the sequential aspect of that, and you just see her go downhill, and then we have the Act Three reveals. Really, well done. But now, is it a relief that the film’s going to get to an audience?
Matt Vesely:

Yes, it was more about an independent film. It has got a lot of value from hitting up the festival circuit. So we did festivals for about a year, so I think it says we’re a 2022 film on IMDB. We only screened once in ‘22, right at the end it was at the Adelaide Film Festival, which is our local festival that helped finance the film. So we had a local premier there. And then our international premiere was South by Southwest last year in March in Austin. And then you just do a year of doing the festival circuit.

So I got to go to South Korea and I went to Spain, and there’s so much value for us to get to meet people and connect with other filmmakers. It’s just a really rewarding part of an indie film finding its audience. So it seems like a long time or it’s had trouble, but it’s just actually just part of the journey of a film like this and working out when you want to release it. So this was always the plan. We weren’t stymied by Covid or anything like that. We came out in Australia in October, which was exciting coming out at home. And then to come to America, I’ll be over there next week. It’s super exciting and it’s just such a big genre audience there, the biggest one in the world. So it’s cool to tap into that for sure.

Lily Sullivan in a scene from “Monolith” (2024). Photo courtesy of Well Go USA.
Glen Dower:

And finally, Lily, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a certain modern horror classic that we at Cinema Scholars Towers all love and adore. Can you just tell us how it feels now, to be the new Scream Queen on the block, as the chainsaw-wielding heroine of Evil Dead Rise?

Lily Sullivan:
I mean, doing Evil Dead before Monolith, it’s just, I don’t know, the playfulness, the collaboration of departments to pull off gags, the wildness of light and childlike nature when you’re in an Evil Dead film is just so amazing. And then to go on to Monolith after it and just have this toolbox of like, ‘Oh, I can deeply humiliate myself and do the most ridiculous things and feel zero embarrassment is nice!’ But yeah, I mean, I just want broomsticks and chainsaws all the time now. I feel like something is missing when my heart doesn’t beat under 180 beats per minute, I don’t know. Amazing and very exciting that the universe is moving forward as well, which is great!
Glen Dower:
Can’t wait to see more. Thank you so much for your time, and best of luck with the release of Monolith. It’s been a pleasure, guys.
Lily Sullivan:
Thanks!
Matt Vesely:
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Monolith, starring Lily Sullivan and directed by Matt Vesely will be in theatres and streaming digitally on February 16, 2024. Pre-order now by clicking here.

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