“It feels like it’s almost three movies in one,” Taccone says. “It’s sort of a suspense drama, then it becomes more of a home invasion movie, then it becomes an action movie.”
According to the movie’s writers, the duo known as BriTANick, that escalation and diversity of tone was a blessing, not a burden.
“I think what’s so fun about adapting it is that the story structure is excellent,” Nick Kocher says. “It basically remained intact. The way that we’ve been describing it is we got an empty house that we got to decorate. We changed stuff up with the characters, the motivations, and the dialogue. And got to inject our humor into it. It was really fun and easier than having to come up with structure all by yourself.”
“Structure’s the hardest thing to write,” Brian McElhaney adds. “This movie just worked and we just got to take it, make it our own thing and add our comedy to it. It was actually a really great writing process, which isn’t always the case.”
The end result is a movie that Taccone says he is happy he bent his “no remakes” rule to make.
“I’m just so proud to have made a remake that I feel like has teeth. I feel like American remakes don’t always have the teeth of the original. It’s dark, it’s fucked up, and it’s more gory than the original, weirdly enough.”
