david j. moore chats with Bound to Vengeance director Jose Manuel Cravioto…
A hybrid action thriller/horror slasher, Jose Manuel Cravioto’s Bound to Vengeance follows young Eve (played by Tina Ivlev) as she wakes up tied and bound in a dingy basement, with her captor (played by genre veteran Richard Tyson) looming over her, but in a split second, she turns the tables and she frees herself, taking her captor with her on a night-long odyssey to free others like her. Her journey is fraught with unexpected perils and mistakes as she sometimes kills the wrong people on her quest, but as she’s “bound to vengeance,” her trek through the underbelly of the night yields results hard-earned. Here in an exclusive interview with Flickering Myth, director Cravioto discusses his involvement with the film.
david j. moore: What attracted you to the script for Bound to Vengeance?
Jose Manuel Cravioto: When I started reading the first pages of the script, there were a lot of things happening even at the very beginning. I was attracted to the possibilities of the visual aesthetics of those first scenes. I liked it right away.
djm: I don’t know how to categorize Bound to Vengeance. It’s like a horror movie wrapped up in an action thriller package. What do you think?
JMC: (Laughing.) It’s every genre you mentioned. It’s a melting pot with everything. For me, it’s a horror movie. I’ve always been associated with films that are hard to define. It’s genre objective. I like genres where you mix everything. I really loved Cabin in the Woods. Maybe it’s not a good example to compare this with, but I really enjoy when directors and screenwriters try different things like that. Maybe this is more radical.
djm: The themes of Bound to Vengeance are very prevalent right now in other films and in the media. Films like Taken sensationalize abducting women and having a hero come and right every wrong, but you’ve done something unusual with that subgenre by showing a young woman escape her captivity at the beginning of the film and going from there. She strikes back, but there’s a twist in the film where she’s striking back at the wrong people. How were able to put your own spin on that particular subject?
JMC: That concept is very important. Usually the lead character would escape on page 50 or 60, but we start our movie with our lead character escaping. That spoke to me. That was the invitation for me. This was an invitation for everyone to follow her. That was the originality of our story. We worked very hard on this. When we first edited the film, she escaped the movie about 25 minutes into it. We edited it again to make it happen sooner because we wanted it to explode with this radical pacing.
djm: I’m curious if you ever saw the French film Martyrs because Bound to Vengeance reminded me slightly of it.
JMC: Yeah, yeah, sure. I think you can compare this with that. The main inspiration to me was a bunch of French horror films from the early 2000’s, things like Inside, and Frontiers, and High Tension. The atmosphere and the tension from those films really inspired me for this movie. I wanted to shoot a mix of American horror movies from the 70’s and French films from the early 2000’s.
djm: Talk about working with Richard Tyson, who is your name star in this movie.
JMC: It was a great experience. I knew him from films from the 80’s and 90’s. He went to the first casting session, and I recognized him. I said, “Why is he doing casting for this? He is very famous!” I also thought he would be great in this, and that’s why I chose him. He’s very intense, but he was awesome. He really enjoyed it when he was covered in blood while we were filming. We drug him around all over in the middle of the night while he was covered in gallons of blood. It was an amazing experience working with him.
djm: Say something about working with your lead actress Tina Ivlev.
JMC: Oh, she’s awesome! She’s got a great future. She’s young and talented. She was very committed and intuitive. I really loved working with her. Just see her in Bound to Vengeance.
djm: What would you say to anybody who’s on the fence about seeing this film?
JMC: If you want to have a very intense experience that’s full of action and blood with a great atmosphere, see it. It’s a great example of a mixing of genres, and I think you’re really going to enjoy the experience!
Bound to Vengeance is now playing in select theaters and on VOD.
Many thanks to Jose Manuel Cravioto for taking the time for this interview.
david j. moore is a contributing writer to Fangoria, FilmFax, Lunchmeat and VideoScope Magazines. His book WORLD GONE WILD: A SURVIVOR’S GUIDE TO POST-APOCALYPTIC MOVIES was published last year.
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