Reżyser filmu Shadow Strays: Brutalna przemoc w filmach szanuje prawdziwą przemoc

With his blood-soaked tales of force and vengeance like The Night Comes for Us and Headshot, Timo Tjahjanto earned a reputation as 1 of the world’s goriest action directors. But he doesn’t see himself that way.

Tjahjanto began his filmmaking career making slasher movies as half of the Mo brothers, teaming up with his longtime friend Kimo Stamboel. Since the end of their formal partnership, the Mo brothers have mostly worked on their own projects, with Stamboel working in the horror genre and Tjahjanto primarily (but not exclusively) making violent action movies.

Tjahjanto took the action planet by storm with 2018’s The Night Comes for Us, a brutal thriller led by 2 of Indonesian cinema’s foremost martial arts stars, Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim. The movie occasionally gets labeled as “action horror,” in spite of its reasonably conventional crime-thriller narrative, due to how unflinchingly Tjahjanto depicts extreme, bone-breaking, blood-soaked violence. The stylish, carnage-filled fight sequences left a mark on action cinema another directors are inactive scrambling to match.

His fresh movie, The Shadow Strays, premiered at the Toronto global movie Festival in September, and yet dropped on Netflix on Oct. 17. It follows a teenage soldier who is being trained as a associate of an elite group of top-secret assassins called the Shadows. erstwhile a mission goes wrong, she’s sidelined by the Shadows and gets entangled in a dispute between her young neighbour and local gangsters. Like most Tjahjanto projects, the movie features respective decapitations and “gallons” of blood. (The manager estimated 85% of the blood was applicable — like many splatter fans, the man loves squibs.) It’s besides one of 2024’s best action movies.

But Tjahjanto doesn’t consider himself a peculiarly gory filmmaker — he sees his movies as a way to be honest about real-world consequences of violence. A self-described “indulgent” filmmaker, Tjahjanto — wearing a 9 Inch Nails shirt and feeling “exhausted and relieved” after late wrapping filming on the upcoming Nobody 2 — spoke with Polygon about his approach to gore in action, his cinematic influences, and sticking with applicable blood erstwhile the remainder of the manufacture is moving to CG effects.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

Polygon: I think of you as 1 of the gorier action directors working today. Do you see yourself that way?

Timo Tjahjanto: I don’t know. I don’t truly think so. Granted, I haven’t seen them — not due to the fact that I don’t want to see them, but just due to the timing of it all and the accessibility of it all — but I’ve heard there are films like Kill and Project Wolf Hunting that seem to be doing rather OK in that department. From what small clips I’ve seen, they seem to be way bloodier.

I think there was a phase in my life — erstwhile I just started as a filmmaker, I did this small movie with Kimo [Stamboel], my friend. It’s called Macabre, 1 of the first Indonesian slasher films. And I think at the time, our goal was like, Let’s be the goriest Indonesian flick ever. But weirdly, after The Night Comes for Us and everything, I just don’t feel like I was necessarily aiming for gore. I think it’s just that there needs to be a certain, weirdly enough, respect to force and what it can do to the human body. I feel like we have to, in any way, hold ourselves accountable as filmmakers to show just how traumatizing force can be.

We live in a violent world. If you see what’s on the internet, what’s on formerly known as Twitter, X, just the accessibility of violent content — people from quite a few parts of America, for example, there’s quite a few people getting riled up and start beating each another up for nothing. Not that I’m saying America is the only violent place. I think the planet mostly has become a much more violent place, or much more exposed to the media. It’s weird erstwhile people see my films like, Holy shit, that’s so gory and violent! I’m like, Man, have you seen the real world? It’s so fucking crazy out there that I feel like sometimes my movie is simply a PG version of it.

I’m glad you brought up the respect for violence, due to the fact that 1 of the reasons I’m drawn to your approach to gore in action is due to the fact that it feels more honest. If you’re not showing that level of destruction, you’re sanitizing the violence, and not being honest with the viewer about the actual effects of what’s happening.

That’s what I always effort to do. I think the human body is weirdly fragile and resilient at the same time. If any of your bones have been broken, or if you’ve always had a deep cut, it’s so weird how biology reacts to it all.

But beyond that, gore can besides add stakes to a scene, it can add excitement, it can add humor. How do you balance those elements?

Well, that’s the thing. I think at a certain level, force has to become funny. And I learned this from, or I copied this from, the large Takashi Miike. I think he’s always walking that line, realizing that the planet is simply a crazy, fucked-up place, and 1 way you can deal with it is by utilizing quite a few humor. If you watch something like Ichi the Killer, for example, that thing is dark, man. In Takashi Miike’s world, everything is fair and square. Women, men, we are both capable of violence, and we are both capable of being the victim. And I effort to do that in my films.

One example I think is interesting is The large 4, which has a tonal difference from your another movies.

Well, I think just due to the fact that it’s gory doesn’t necessarily mean it should be a feel-bad movie. I think that works rather well. Bad Boys can be a feel-good experience, and it has its moments of violence. And gore, especially if you’re talking about Bad Boys II — Michael Bay truly pushes the limit to what kinetic force can be. And I always feel like, you can make a little violent movie and it becomes a much gloomier film, but you can besides make a much more splattery and “head getting blown off by a shotgun” movie, and it inactive in the end has a heartwarming quality to it. Look at Shaun of the Dead, 1 of my favorites. And that thing is the eventual feel-good film… depending on how you look at it.

You brought up Macabre earlier. Do you think your horror roots have an impact in terms of your perception of gore in action?

Kind of, yes. But having said that, I think it’s besides childishness. Look, part of the beauty in horror is, you don’t necessarily request to be gory in terms of the approach to thrills. And as much as I would love to say, “Oh, I’m very well-versed in horror,” I think right now I’m only well-versed in a circumstantial kind of horror, which is 1 that is frequently violent. I think quite a few that comes from me increasing up on Friday the 13th and Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Texas Chain Saw Massacre has specified a immense impact on me in terms of how I look at violence, which is relentless.

I most likely watch it possibly erstwhile or twice a year. It never ceases to amaze me. erstwhile you’re in your teens and you watch it, you think it’s the bloodiest movie ever. And then erstwhile you watch it again after you’ve grown up, there’s barely any blood in it. It is pure panic and it’s pure viscerality without actually showing you anything. And there lies the genius of Tobe Hooper making this film. So yeah, I’m just a small bit little disciplined than people like Tobe Hooper.

I loved what you had to say to any critics of The Shadow Strays about how filmmaking is an indulgent act, and I truly appreciate that you see it that way, that making art is something that you do for yourself, and the hope is that another people are on board with you.

I think that’s the thing. I don’t mean that to attack a critique: I think erstwhile I saw the critique, I was like, Oh, well, I agree with quite a few it. I think honestly, I’m the kind of filmmaker who always goes for character first and plotting later. So that’s why my plots tend to be simplistic. And I do admit that I feel, well, most stories have been told. For me, it’s better to trust on the humanity of the characters and hope that the audience can hold onto that.

But erstwhile people say, “Hey, besides much self-indulgence can be besides much of a good thing,” I feel like, Well, no. due to the fact that here I am given adequate freedom, thankfully, by Netflix to do almost everything that I want to do, and I think I gotta kind of indulge in it alternatively than restrain myself, even though I am inactive restraining myself. If I went full indulgence, I think you’d see quite a few kinkier crap in it, and all these sick kind of violent images that I have. I always feel like, a movie-watching experience, you should be able to give everything you’ve got to the audience. It’s not like a series, it’s not like The Boys, where you might neglect in the first episode or second episode, but you can make it up in the eighth episode.

I just feel like, Well, I have this many hours, and I just want to give my audience the crap that they want. Look at RRR — that movie is self-indulgent as fuck, and it’s 1 of the best films always made in the world. I just feel there’s a time for self-restraint, but action is 1 of those genres where you just request to keep on pulling the trigger. Someday I’ll be a better author and I’ll most likely do better plotting, but for now, I’m inactive learning.

The depiction of blood and gore has changed over time, with fresh technology leading quite a few productions to decision distant from applicable blood and squibs and over to VFX blood. What’s your doctrine on that?

It’s weird. I saw that there was a critique [of The Shadow Strays] that says, Oh, the usage of CGI blood. Weirdly, Shadow Strays is like 85% applicable blood. I think that it’s just due to the technology that I use, which is simply quite a few blood tubing and all that stuff. It does look excessive to the point that you think it’s actually CGI. I pride myself in taking quite a few time for The Shadow Strays. Things can get long in the shooting process, just due to the fact that placing all those squibs and blood tubes takes time.

That’s what I always hear, is how much it expands the budget and your time just from cleaning up between takes.

Exactly. And costumes, and all those small things. Fortunately, making films in Indonesia, I can kind of afford it. So I actually indulge the fuck out of making all those things. Watching The Shadow Strays so many times through editing, I had the suspicion people are going to think this is actually CGI blood, even though it’s actually meticulous condom usage and timed blood tubes and all that stuff. I’m a proponent of utilizing as many squibs as possible. I know that’s cumbersome. But actors respond better to it. They react, they feel the pain. They feel like, Oh shit, blood’s truly spurting out of me. And that always helps.

There are any enhancements, just due to the fact that sometimes the blood doesn’t redirect the way it should. But man, we were having fun. There were always gallons of blood behind the camera where we pump it up there. Especially for the first series — that full nipponese series is me being inspired by Takeshi Kitano’s Zatoichi, but he was utilizing CGI blood. I was thinking, I want to be like Kitano, erstwhile he just completely goes batshit with blood, but I’m going to effort to usage applicable blood tubes. So that’s what we did, man.

You’ve mentioned Kitano, you’ve mentioned Miike, you’ve mentioned Tobe Hooper. Are there any another large figures for you erstwhile it comes to depicting force on screen and their usage of gore?

Martin Scorsese. erstwhile he’s shooting violence, it’s almost like he sometimes reverts back to being a young filmmaker. And I think he always has that spirit of being a young filmmaker. That’s the beauty of him. He can be 89 and he inactive shoots like a 35-year-old Sam Peckinpah on coke and LSD. 1 of the best violent scenes that I think is frequently overlooked is actually in The Departed, erstwhile Jack Nicholson and Ray Winstone got ambushed. Just like this fucking crash zoom lands and [there’s] fucking blood and [mimics the blood spraying everywhere] and all that shit. And I was like, Man, that’s fucking beautiful! I want to bargain that shit. But I inactive don’t have adequate skill to do it. Someday!

Do you have a favourite place of gore in The Shadow Strays?

Aurora [Ribero], who plays 13, I always said to her, “You are skilled, but you are besides clumsy. That’s the full point of your character. You have quite a few endurance due to the fact that you are young,” as she is truly in real life, “but you are frequently clumsy in your fighting. But erstwhile we hand you a sharp-edge weapon, you go berserk.” Whenever she’s given any weapon of sharp edge, be it a kitchen knife, be it a fucking screwdriver, she just goes crazy. I always loved that.

By the end of shooting, she became so good at it. It’s so fucking cool. She never had any martial arts experience, and whenever she does the stabbing, it’s almost like individual who’s been surviving in prison for 30 years and is simply a master shanker. She’s so good. And there’s a full series later in the film, erstwhile she fights a certain individual and she just uses a screwdriver to go crazy — I think that’s 1 of my favorites, just due to how ridiculous it looked with the blood and everything, and just how well it makes sense, due to the fact that at this point she doesn’t have anything to lose. She’s just going crazy, and I love that.

The Shadow Strays is on Netflix now.