A Wounded Fawn is a new horror movie that recently premiered on Shudder. Directed by Travis Stevens, it concerns a local museum curator, Meredith Tanning (Sarah Lind), who’s dipping her toe back into the dating pool, only to end up the target of a charming serial killer (Josh Ruben). The two end up in a remote cabin where a psychedelic game of cat and mouse ensues.
Discussing the film with Dread Central, Ruben said he tried to do a couple of different things when it came to playing a serial killer. He wanted to play him as warm, weirdly charming, “and hopefully sexy, as someone who never considered [himself] really honed into that quality.” He then went on to talk about if that was a central part of the character’s M.O.
During the same interview, Lind also talked about what was happening with her character. Lind thought that Meredith had been through hell and came through her trials resolved. So she thought she was ready for this date and went on it. However, Lind also said that Meredith’s arc alludes to more than it’s experienced or witnessed.
“I think it’s his sensuality… or at least, I wanted that to be a challenge for me as someone who plays goofballs and goblins and has made a whole career out of that. What would it be like if I actually just tried to switch on that part of myself? And then everything else is just the action. Rather than playing it, it’s just ‘here’s a charming person who’s a little bit of a show-off and a little bit of snob, but ultimately keeping the anchor of the romanticism.’”
The actors were also asked if improv was part of the process or if the film was fully scripted. Ruben said it was fully scripted, with any improv on his end merely coming from taking longer moments and playing with how much space to fill up. Like, “what if I just threw a swing out here just to see what it would do?”
“Sometimes, until you learn a lesson, you keep reliving the same mistakes, but I think she had actually resolved it to some extent. I mean, obviously, she ended up in this terrible situation, but I don’t think it was her, not foolhardiness, but not having learned her lesson prior.”
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“Just part of this whole thing, the fun of it, especially not being a filmmaker, in this sense, just being performers. What can you play with, still within the realm of the formula Travis has set up in the community and environment?”
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Ruben and Lind were also asked what horror movie traumatized them the most growing up:
Lind went on to explain that, weirdly, the scene of a man peeling his own face off after seeing his partially eaten chicken leg infested with maggots didn’t really scare her. However, the tree that eats the younger brother, the clown doll, the TV, and Zelda Rubenstein are what frightened her. At the mention of that last one, Ruben said that he had another Zelda moment.
“It was Poltergeist. It wasn’t the first spooky movie, but it was the scariest thing I’d seen, and I think I saw it in grade one or something. My brother and I had a TV in our bedroom, and I think I wept for days. I was terrified, and then as soon as I stopped crying, I watched it again and again and again and again.”
Lind also said that she and her family live in a haunted house. They would plant things, and they would immediately die. Stuff would disappear. Lind heard voices. One time, when Lind was going through the kitchen, she heard a noise and found all the chairs were thrown across the room. No one in her family talked about it until after they moved out.
“I have another Zelda moment, which is the sister in Pet Sematary. That’s another scary Zelda. That changed my life for the better, I guess. But at the moment, total peepee screams. I think it might have been a tie between that and the violence of seeing Kathy Bates mallet James’ little toesies [in Misery].”
