Pretend performative office conversations — particularly “How was your weekend?” — get the horror film remedy in Cam Banfield‘s debut brief known as precisely that. “How Was Your Weekend?,” which premiered on the SXSW Movie & TV Competition and subsequent heads to the San Francisco Movie Competition subsequent week, is an workplace area horror the place there isn’t a Innie or Outie. There may be solely your self, and should you didn’t have a great weekend, then the remainder of us can’t have a great week.
Nominated for the SXSW grand jury brief movie award, “How Was Your Weekend?” stars James Morosini (“It’s What’s Inside“) as Steven, a cubicle drone at an nameless, windowless company hovel someplace in a miserable pocket outdoors Los Angeles. He arrives on the workplace on a Monday morning after a nasty weekend of relationship troubles at residence, and his coworkers are all buzzing with the query, “How was your weekend?” And when he dares to say his wasn’t nice, the workplace inhabitants descends into surreal insanity.
“I can’t unsee the microaggressions within the horror of on a regular basis life in virtually every part I’m making an attempt to do and making an attempt to write down about,” stated Banfield in an IndieWire interview after SXSW over Zoom. (I used to be talking from a tiny cubicle at work; he was at his condominium in Santa Monica, residence from his workplace job lunch break to make the interview.) “What bought me so enthusiastic about this undertaking and making this brief is the way in which there’s by no means been office horror earlier than, outlined this manner, and the leap scares of workplace life and the discomfort of opening your self up on this ritualistic workplace atmosphere the place we’re all advised to clock in 9 to five, and it pushes in opposition to your individuality.”
Hailing initially from Texas, Banfield has a handful of small performing credit to his identify, however “How Was Your Weekend?” is his first movie as a author/director. “I used to be working at this job that I began to see issues that I couldn’t unsee,” stated Banfield of the experiences that led him to make the movie. For the reason that SXSW premiere, he’s signed with the expertise and manufacturing administration firm Nameless Content material and is at work on the characteristic script model of the brief.
“What if a man’s weekend was not good? ‘How about yours?’ ‘It was truly fucking horrible,’ and that opens up the hellscape beneath all people’s workplace,” he stated of his final pitch for the movie. “You open up the brief with this man in his automotive, however we’re like, oh wait, he’s extra like a prisoner, not a commuter. This can be a prisoner reporting for his every day sentence. You bought to show that work mode on, man. Shut off that private life.”
He described the SXSW brief as a “blatant proof of idea” — as many shorts are en path to turning into options — which implies “How Was Your Weekend?” gained’t as of but be obtainable to stream, and as an alternative will tour movie festivals.
“All people’s experiencing these items within the fashionable society we’re all in, the dearth of individuality, the hive thoughts, folks on their lunch breaks brain-rotting on their telephones, all trying on the similar collective factor,” Banfield stated. “It needs to be explored as a film. I’m deep in it on the script proper now to make it right into a characteristic. It’s going to be a real, contained fashionable horror thriller set across the central query of the brief movie.” (Composer Zack Robinson and cinematographer Matt Clegg ramp up the stress with recognizably horror-genre components that flip the mundane into the macabre.)
Banfield sees the connections to the favored office TV satire “Severance,” although he guarantees his characteristic “How Was Your Weekend?” will deal with workplace tradition from a singular angle that leans extra into conventional horror. “Sadly, in our story, you may’t have your recollections severed, and there’s no Innie and Outie,” he stated. “It’s important to take care of either side. That’s really the place every part lives: the private, bleeding into the work. In contrast to ‘Severance,’ It’s inevitable. Particularly when somebody opens up and is trustworthy.”
The life-imitating-art nature of the manufacturing additionally stays a haunting one for Banfield, who filmed the brief in summer time 2024 over two days in a “unhappy workplace” outdoors LAX with non-professional actors.
“We began to listen to tales on this weekend cohort … [one] had simply taken a go away of absence for despair from their very own job, they usually have been simply making an attempt this out. One other lady had been a vet for 30 years, and she or he actually needed to only strive one thing for herself for as soon as and bought forged on this and abruptly loves performing,” Banfield stated, including, “It’s a tragic workplace, man, and it was virtually haunting stepping into there and seeing the issues that the previous tenants [left]… There have been household wallet-sized photographs simply left within the submitting cupboards. It was surreal.”
“How Was Your Weekend?” performs SFFILM on Thursday, April 24.