Welcome to the bloody-minded world of identical twin Canadian film-makers Jen and Sylvia Soska, whose debut feature, the delightfully named no-fi grindhouse joy Dead Hooker in a Trunk– "it's like Tarantino or Rodriguez remade Weekend at Bernie's" – is getting them noticed in all the right places. They let TARA BRADYinto their gory world
‘THAT’S WHAT I was going to say!” Jen Soska can’t quite hold a straight face when she scolds her sister Sylvia. Both girls erupt into laughter.
If you didn’t know the Soskas were identical twins, the way they finish each other’s sentences might give them away. Smart, prepossessing and proudly Canadian, it’s easy to see how the siblings have kick-started an orgy of internet activity.
A quick scout around online horror shrines and geeky cinephile message boards provides ample demonstration of the Soskas’ current standing as the movieverse’s brand new mondo sweethearts.
They are sweet, too. Giggly, polite and ever so grateful, they appear genuinely awed by the awards and plaudits that have lately come their way.
“It’s been absolutely phenomenal,” says Jen. “The horror community have really gotten behind the us and have been spreading the word. I can never thank those people enough.” The same community can be relied upon to recognise kindred spirits when they see them. And the Soska Sisters are horror fans from way back.
At primary school in north Vancouver, they developed a taste for Stephen King novels. Aged nine, they made an executive decision.
“When Jen and I were little we lived in the horror movie section of the video store,” Sylvia recalls. “We haunted that place. We were two little girls in our matching dresses looking at the back of the grossest video boxes and freaking out customers.
"So we went to mom and said, 'We really, really like horror movies and we really, really want to watch them.' She was already an avid fan so she said okay and started us off with Poltergeist."
Tucking the twins into bed later, mom explained how none of it was real and that the girls had nothing to fear from Poltergeist's terrifying animated rag doll.
“Her account of the film-making process changed our lives,” says Sylvia. “She told us the monsters aren’t real, they’re the work of prosthetic artists and special-effects people working with the intention to scare you. And we were like – so all these people are working to scare us? And this is their job? For us that was the revelation. That was the moment when we realised that the truth is so more exciting than the movies.”
The girls soon immersed themselves in bottom-shelf titles and Z-movie classics. “We watched a lot of shitty movies,” laughs Sylvia. “Because if the box is good the movie’s got to be good, right? When you’re young you don’t have that snootiness. You don’t think, ‘I better go see the new Lars von Trier film.’ You think, ‘The new Lars von Trier film has mutilation in it. That looks cool’.”
Determined to find work in the sector they loved, the Soskas trained in martial arts and signed up for film school. They excelled at the intensive module in stunt work, but were otherwise disenchanted with film academia.
"Whenever film school got us down – which was a lot – we walked over to the movie theatre across the street and watched grindhouse," recalls Sylvia. "So when it came time to make our graduation film, Jen turned to me and said, ' Dead Hooker in a Trunk. That's what we'll call it.' So I said, 'What's it about?' And she said, 'I don't know, but you'll help me think of stuff'." Once finished, the twins' fake grindhouse trailer for Dead Hooker in a Trunkinspired walkouts at a campus screening. At that moment, the Soskas knew it was time to expand their short into a demented low-budget feature.
“We had to do it,” says Sylvia. “When you’re identical twins, even when you’re there to do stunt work you keep getting offered twin roles that are almost always of a sexual nature. After a while you look at your resumé and think, ‘I don’t want to be Hot Aryan or Bikini Zombie Twin at Party for the rest of my life’. So we maxed out our credit cards and called in some favours.”
Dead Hooker in a Trunk, a surreal no-fi road movie with a killer title, brings together snarling Badass (Sylvia Soska), retiring Geek (Jen Soska), a Jesus freak, a stoner rock star and the titular corpse for a whole lot of fighting and ocular trauma. As the living cast struggle to dispose of the body, there's a Cowboy Pimp on their trail and occasional interventions from a taxi driven by God.
"It's like Tarantino or Rodriguez remade Weekend at Bernie's," says Jen proudly.
For the Soska Sisters, who wrote, directed, starred and performed the movie's stunts, it was only right and proper that El Mariachi's Carlos Gallardo played the most powerful being in the universe. The star of director Robert Rodriguez's famous $7,000 budget debut was not only a major inspiration, he also proved an invaluable project adviser.
"We would never have known how to make a movie if it wasn't for Robert Rodriguez and his 10-minute film school segments on YouTube," says Sylvia. "The book Rebel Without a Clue, in which talks about how he made El Mariachi, is like a bible for us. We'd joke about it on set. Oh no. Everything is going wrong. What does the book tell us to do? And what does Carlos think? What would Robert do? It's amazing what you can do with a little creativity. You can make shit loads of fun special effects on any budget."
For all the shock value of the film's title and its many colourful uses for swear words, Dead Hooker in a Trunk's authenticity and energy has won fans in unexpected places. In addition to several awards and a gushing blurb ("fucking awesome") from Eli Roth, the Soska Sisters' local church has provided assistance both during the shoot and afterwards.
“We shot scenes in the church itself, and the end scenes are shot in the home of a lady parishioner,” says Sylvia. “So we actually showed the film to the congregation of the church. They were a very good audience.
“My father was so nervous about it. He was like, ‘Some people – not everyone, mind – but some people might not like it.
“And at the end of the movie I had this huge flock of conservative churchgoers waiting for me. And they were like, ‘Are you the girl who directed this? We just loved it.’ That was awesome. You definitely can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Next month the Soskas start shooting their second feature, American Mary. The twisted tale of a medical student who gets sucked into the world of illegal surgeries will star Ginger Snaps' Katharine Isabelle and Watchmen's Leah Gibson in what Jen describes as "a regular coming-of-age story". Unsurprisingly, an online teaser has already racked up a huge number of clicks.
“I feel like when you watch Hooker in a Trunk and American Mary you know everything there is to know about me and Jen,” says Sylvia. “We’re nerds. We watch video games and martial arts movies. And we love some seriously weird movies.”
I wonder if Sylvia, a keen amateur arachnologist who, between making movies and practising kung fu, breeds some of Canada’s largest tarantulas, knows how she and Jen got this way? “I don’t know,” she laughs. “We’ve just always had a really macabre sense of humour. When you’re identical twins you stand out in elementary school and secondary school anyway. When everyone already thinks you’re weird its best to have fun with it.”
- Dead Hooker in a Trunkis released on DVD on Monday
