SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from “Sweet Revenge,” now streaming on YouTube.
“Sweet Revenge” might be the biggest short film of the year.
It brings back Jason Voorhees, the slasher icon at the bloody heart of the “Friday the 13th” franchise. The killer hasn’t been in an officially licensed film since 2009’s flashy Michael Bay-produced reboot. But under the leadership of Horror Inc. and Jason Universe, the hockey-masked killer is back in the just-released short film written and directed by Mike P. Nelson, who previously helmed the well-received 2021 “Wrong Turn” remake, as well as a “Silent Night, Deadly Night” reboot set for this winter.
Nelson answered burning questions about bringing Jason back from the dead, including how the short film might transition into a feature, how he was able to creatively integrate sponsor Angry Orchard and what a new Jason actor brought to the project.
How did your involvement in this project come about?
Judson Scott and Ryan Turek over at Atomic Monster and Blumhouse threw my name in the mix when Sheri Conn at Horror, Inc. was looking for some options for directors for the project. I got on the phone and we started talking and they said, “We’re looking for a take. Do you have any ideas?” I was like, “Absolutely.” I was in the middle of shooting another movie at the time, but I had to give it a shot. You can’t turn down Jason!
The idea percolated pretty fast. I love these movies, so how can I keep the vibe, especially of the first four, which are my favorites? How can I bring that feeling when you watch those movies for the first time? I wanted to do that again: Keep the mythology, keep where Jason comes from all intact. I didn’t want to restart anything, but what if we introduce a new character who maybe gives us a bit of insight into what Jason’s path might have been? I wrote the script and we put the thing together in pre-production, shot it in seven days, post was 3 1/2 weeks and it’s now coming out.
The Angry Orchard integration plays in unexpected ways in the film. How were you able to pull that off?
It wasn’t the determining factor for everything, but one of the things that I was trying to do was, “How do I incorporate a wink and a nod to the fact that this is Angry Orchard and that they were great support for the project? How can we do this without doing the usual: A bunch of young people are drinking Angry Orchard, getting drunk and then Jason comes and kills them?” With the main character being Eve, they meet this guy and he, of course, has an apple orchard. She takes a bite of the apple, which starts it all. Later, you have the apple slicer to the face.
To me, it was less about blatantly pushing product and more a feeling of being there, and letting Angry Orchard be the essence, as opposed to being the core, the thing right in the center of frame. I think from both sides, Jason was the forefront. Jason was the thing that we wanted to make sure to bring back and represent the best possible way. Then introduce a new character and see how that goes and how people respond.
You pay homage to the first “Friday the 13th” film in a scene with Jason jumping out of the water, and you have some subtle nods to the other films with wardrobe, score, etc. How did you determine the line between homage and new ideas?
The first thing was I wanted to make sure it was modern day. I didn’t want to do a period piece because I felt like … I don’t want to call it the easy way out, but that could have very easily been, “Yeah, we’re doing a period piece. We’re setting it in the ‘80s and we’re going to do Jason again.” To me, it was more about giving winks and nods and putting in Easter Eggs to some of the wardrobe, which is inspired by some of the other characters in the first movie: Annie’s shoes, the striped shirt with the denim for Dana. It’s just the visual overall tone and color and lighting and the way we placed the camera that was trying to create the old-school feeling.
The music too, which I gotta give a shout out to Matt Compton and Michelangelo Rodriguez, for giving such a great soundtrack to the movie and trying to capture the vibe that those movies had. It was important to make it feel its own, but also give that nod to those originals and say, “This is why we are here.” To me, those first four movies created a complete feeling of movies in the ‘80s. So if I could get something on that track, in that vibe, then we were good to go.
How did you decide on Schuyler White as the new Jason?
I think starting fresh — especially with a fresh idea like this — just made sense. I had worked with Skyler before on “Wrong Turn” and “V/H/S/85,” and we had such a great rapport. He’s a world-renowned stunt performer and coordinator with 16 world records for body burns. And with him being such a fan of the original franchise and knowing what he’s able to do physically, and he’s 6’5” — he was the perfect height. He wasn’t a 7-foot-tall, giant Jason, bodybuilder Jason. You could see that there was a real man to him, which I think was an important part of our Jason.
He would stunt coordinate and really help with our actors, some of whom were stunt performers as well. So that was also very helpful. But he was able to, in a safe way, push the bounds with him being Jason and a stunt person and coordinator playing with other stunt people who were actually actors. So we didn’t have to have a lot of switching out. He was honestly the whole package.
Have you thought about what a full-length version of this film would be like?
I have an idea of where I’d love for the story to go after this. It’s not really my hands, whether or not it’s where Horror Inc. and Jason Universe end up going with it. But if I was given the opportunity … Holy crap, dude. I would snatch it up in a heartbeat. One of the fun things I often play with is we’ve seen Jason on this revenge spree for so long now. What does it look like when he runs into somebody like him? Not Freddy Krueger, not a girl with psychic powers, but like somebody like him who’s come back. What does that look like and what kind of shenanigans and what kind of story unfolds because of that, between the both of them?
I think that’s how you keep all the mythology intact and you move the story forward, especially for Jason. You introduce a new character, but then Jason meets somebody that’s different. The story can go beyond just killing teens. Our character at the central story has gone through a transformation, and now she has to deal with it. Not only that, she’s got to deal with this other thing, this guy, this incredible force, this Jason. The story is limitless.
In the film, the kills themselves felt very retro Jason, like using the motor from the boat. But the gore felt more in line with modern slashers like “In a Violent Nature.” How did you determine the level of gore you wanted in order to hit the right tone?
You bring up a good point with something like “Violent Nature,” because I think at this point you need to almost match up with something like that. You need to show you mean business, and that’s a movie that you know they mean business. But what was also important to me was that you can look back to those old movies and, yes, there was blood, but they didn’t always show everything, or they would cut away fast. Even with the boat motor kill, we see a first couple of lacerations and then suddenly we cut to like somebody screaming, and then we’re over the shoulder of it, where it’s out of focus. We’re not fully seeing it in graphic detail right away. You see the actual thing grinding up the face, but the face is gone. It’s just this soup, basically, just enough to feed that gorehound.
That’s what those movies did so well. It was a balance. It was making sure that we could bring in the good modern gore for genre fans, while also getting the flavor of those original movies, and finding out when it was necessary to really show the graphic detail.
Regarding the title, it’s just “Sweet Revenge” — no “Jason” or “Friday the 13th” in there. Was that intentional on your end?
Honestly, it was what I called the script and that’s what we stuck with. It’s supposed to be something that not only can live on its own but can also live within the universe of “Friday the 13th.”
Have you been involved with the “Crystal Lake” prequel series at all?
No, I have not. Honestly, the most I saw was at Comic-Con when they gave a little sneak peek. I’ve seen just as much as anybody else.
Watch “Sweet Revenge” below.
