Control Freak, starring Kelly Marie Tran, dives deep into the personal and vulnerable dark parts of the soul.
In the latest addition to WorthenBrook’s slate of horror films coming to Hulu, Control Freak follows Val (Kelly Marie Tran), a motivational speaker with a chronic itch that, at first glance, seems like merely a stress-related tick. Despite the niggly feelings of doubt and self-criticism rearing themselves, Val is supported by her husband, Robbie (Miles Robbins), even when she pushes him away time and time again. Things come to a head when the secrets Val has kept denying come rushing to the surface, threatening to destroy everything she’s worked so hard to build.
In writer/director Shal Ngo‘s feature film Control Freak, what starts as an examination of insecurity and dark inner voices evolves into something more when pulling inspiration from his familial roots. Through Kelly Marie Tran’s performance as Val, her experiences dissect the long-term impacts of generational trauma and the ways in which it can manifest and impact both the individual and their loved ones with a supernatural twist.
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We spoke to Kelly Marie Tran, Miles Robbins, and Shal Ngo about the importance of vulnerability in relationships, the personal nature of the story for both Tran and Ngo, and how these inner demons were manifested practically for Control Freak.
But Why Tho: Kelly and Miles, what originally drew you to the script and story of Control Freak?
KELLY MARIE TRAN: The general generational trauma aspect of it and being able to explore that in the horror genre was very exciting to me.
MILES ROBBINS: And I was very excited to do the same in a supporting role where I got to be an assist to Kelly’s brilliance in the film. It’s important to have help when you’re dealing with something that significant.
But Why Tho: Even though Control Freak discusses a lot about generational trauma, one of the standout parts for me was the relationship between your two characters and the conversations it opens up about trust and what we hide from our partners. Can you talk a little bit about exploring those elements within your characters while contending with this invisible, unseen harbinger looming over things?
MILES ROBBINS: I think that part of the tragedy of the relationship can be summarized by a famous quote by a really influential philosopher: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you’re gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen?” I believe that that comes into play a lot with Kelly and me in the film, where I think that my character is looking for the trust to have a family and to be able to be a support system for his partner when she’s going through a difficult time. I think she is struggling to allow him to do so.
Part of that is the result of his ignorance about what her experience is and his inability to understand that definitively, as much as he might try. To me, it was something about how we need to help each other help each other. We need to understand each other, and the only way to do that is to love and help yourself before you can do that for somebody else. But Kelly, how would you see it?
KELLY MARIE TRAN: I agree with what you said. It’s such a hard situation to be in when your partner doesn’t share anything with you and is trying to essentially hide this huge thing that’s happening to them from you. So, I feel like Val was not doing Robbie any favors. Even if Robbie didn’t understand where her generational trauma was coming from, she was not helping him understand in any way. She was very much too afraid to be vulnerable in the ways that I think in a healthy relationship, people are vulnerable.
Honestly, it made me think a lot about how vulnerable I want to be in my personal relationships. Because, yeah, I agree with Miles, you can’t love anyone else if you don’t love yourself, and you gotta learn how to learn how to be vulnerable and face the demons, so to speak.
But Why Tho: For you, Shal, in terms of adapting your original short film into a longer-form feature film, what was that process like, and what did you learn in terms of adapting it into a much larger piece?
SHAL NGO: They always tell you in film school, sort of an iteration on the “write what you know” [concept]. I started from the short, and I had done a lot of research into what this really is like in terms of what happens to your brain and these different systems inside of you. I was coming from more, I think it’s even in the short, just this idea of your mind being this very complex machine, and what happens when something in that machine just goes wrong and you don’t know how to fix that.
The first version of the script tended to be much more technical and, I guess, neuroscience-y. I’m not that smart, so it wasn’t that intelligent, but it was a version of something that was a little bit less accessible.
I think where it really clicked in was once I was able to bring a little bit more of myself into it, more of people I knew, people in my family, people that were struggling with these different things. Once there was like a layer of space, I could get into it. Personally, I think that’s where it really started to blossom and to turn into something that could both be like bats*** crazy, but also emotionally accessible. That was the ticket for me. My grandpa was a Buddhist monk who was also a soldier. That was real. So, stuff like that. Just pulling those different things kind of helped the reality come together.
But Why Tho: Speaking of bats*** crazy, I was wondering in terms of building out the practical suit for the Sanshi, what was your inspiration? Because, if I remember correctly, it’s like three worms from the Taoist principle.
SHAL NGO: Totally, yeah. It’s sort of a made-up thing in a lot of ways. It comes from a real place. The parasites that suck on the different parts of your essences, and then all the different cultures have these different versions of this monster. Some of them are [manifested] in a monster that just keeps eating and can never be satiated. But they all have this sort of like hunger to them, in a way, and some sort of obsessive behavior. So that’s where it started.
Then it went through a lot of [changes]. At first, I wanted the monster to be purely AI. That was the first idea to create a monster in the movie that was just constantly changing into different things. I was playing with some different techniques at the time and talking to some friends of mine who work in that field, [and asking] how could you make the first AI monster, which is really funny, because it completely turned around and then ended up being something that’s mostly practical, with the guy in a suit with different limbs.
But that was a super fun process, figuring out exactly what the monster was going to be, how it worked. At one time, there was even more of a puppeteer for action. There’s something fun about creating those things. Anytime when you’re making a movie, once the practical applications come to and once you actually have to build it, it’s like, how is this actually going to look? Is it going to look cool? There are a lot of things that I thought would look a lot cooler earlier on where, once we got that far into it, I was like, oh no, that doesn’t quite work.
I’m really happy with where we landed with it because it sounded like, even when you were describing it, it’s somewhat hard to describe exactly what it is in the movie. And that was definitely one of the intentions from the start. Like, how many arms does this thing have? Where is its mouth? How do we just twist this thing so you don’t ever really get a full idea of what it even looks like?
Viewers have a chance to perceive the Sanshi and follow Val and Miles on their journey into darkness. Control Freak is now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
