Halloween is here, so it’s the perfect time to put on a scary movie. Luckily, Shudder has you covered if you’re looking for a new post-apocalyptic creature feature. Following an award-winning festival run, the horror streamer recently acquired Revealer from director Luke Boyce and writers Tim Seeley and Mike Morici (whose names may be recognizable if you frequent your local comic shop).
Set in 1987 Chicago, the movie stars Caito Aase and Shaina Schrooten as a stripper named Angie and a bible-toting protester named Sally. As different as can be and essentially mortal enemies, they soon discover that they have to join forces to survive because the world is ending. And as they evade the various villainous demons that stand between them and safety, they learn that they’re actually not so different.
Ahead of All Hallow’s Eve, we had the chance to speak to Aase about all things Revealer. In our interview, we discussed her role in the film, the difficulties of shooting at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, the advantages of working with comic book writers, and how her burlesque career helped her during production. Plus, we touch on the important fact that sex work is real work.
Revealer is set in 1987, but a lot of the sociopolitical themes have unfortunately remained the same in our world since then. What were some of the advantages of making the story a period piece?
Caito Aase: I think that there is a big resurgence of eighties culture that’s coming up. You know, Stranger Things is a huge spearhead of that. Just like in the eighties, we were seeing a lot of the fifties and sixties coming into [pop culture]. Now we’re in 2022 and we’re seeing a lot of the eighties coming back. High-waisted jeans and weird shoes and things like that. History is cyclical, so we do have a sense of kind of what the ethos at the time of the eighties was and how that is still trending now, especially with a lot of the political things regarding the inner secrets of one of the characters that that was so frowned upon in the eighties and with Reaganism and things like that. It’s something that’s still really prevalent and it’s still really relevant to our culture today.
One of the things we wanted to aim for was the nod to the eighties. We wanted to have it have that warm neon glow kind of feeling to it without being like, “Oh, look, there’s a Guns N’ Roses reference. Hey, how about that?” You know, like without like the wink wink, nudge nudge because it’s campy enough as it is, especially being set in ’87. It’s high camp, but it also kind of gave us this really cool sandbox world to play in. I play a lot of TTRPGs and like building a sandbox universe that you can really immerse yourself in. It actually gave us a lot of freedom.
As an actor, how did the time period influence your performance in the story?
CA: Well, first and foremost, my character Angie is a punk, and punk was like very, very intense at that time. It was a political revolution. It wasn’t just like an aesthetics thing. And she is very much an outlier. She is kind of this “scourge of society.” But there’s that opening scene that she has with Sally where she’s talking about what a stain she is to humanity and all this stuff. An actor, [this role] allowed me to play into this idea that she does have a chip on her shoulder, but there’s a good reason why. And it wasn’t just like an “it’s not a phase, mom” thing. She really fights for everything that she has in her life and I was able to connect to the stronger side of my personality. [Due] to being written by Tim Seeley and Mike Morici, she is a comic book hero and it gave me that opportunity to play that.
Angie had a lot of really punchy, comic book-esque lines that were a lot of fun. For example, “cooze bruise” is a phrase that your character says and I cannot get it out of my head. Do you have a favorite of those punchy lines?
CA: [Laughs] That one is really high on my list. Reading that scene, I was scream laughing. And getting to work with Shaina [Schrooten], who is actually very opposite of who she plays as Sally. She’s just very warm and down to earth and very loving and accepting and present and [it was great] to just play in this eight by eight box with her and getting to throw these quippy one-liners.
Also, huge credit to [director Luke Boyce] that I got a lot of space to play within those lines, like slipping into an English accent at one point. There was just a lot of bite that I was able to put into it. That had so much to do with the writing and the ability to play within the words that Seely and Morici really gave us.
Because of your work as a burlesque performer, this movie seems like the perfect storm of a project for you to put your talent on display. In fact, your chair work has become kind of a signature of your acts. Did you choreograph that dance sequence early on in the movie?
CA: I sure did. I choreographed it from top to tail. One of the things that I really love doing when it comes to creating new characters is building a playlist around music that may have been popular [for them]. Especially with 1987, there was a lot to pull from that I felt would inform the character choices. So I was listening to like a lot of Nine Inch Nails, which is not the norm for me, but there were definitely some earlier Nine Inch Nails that I was pulling. I had sent Luke a video of my Beetlejuice act, and he was like, “Whoa, we need to use your chair work. Like, can we use your chair work?” I said, “Yeah, absolutely, let’s do it.”
We were going back and forth and I was like, “This is the vibe I’m thinking.” We’re trying to land on a song that would just work to create this like choreography segment, thinking that we’ll have a song that I’ll dance to, and then we’ll put something else over it [in post]. Because it was written as a montage, Luke suggested the band Gunship, [whose song] I ultimately ended up having in the movie. They’re a band out of the U.K. and they do this very cool, synthy, eighties vibe. A lot of their stuff is influenced by video games and comic books. I started listening to Gunship and I found “Dark All Day,” which is actually a tribute to Lost Boys, which is Tim Seely’s favorite horror movie. This is the track I would love to dance to.
My first day, like the first preliminary camera test day, I was there with Luke and our DP, Rob Stern. We were in this studio and we taped off an eight-by-eight box just to see what the movement of it would look like. I had the song and I was choreographing late at night in my hotel room since we were all cloistered away in our quarantine hotel rooms. So I choreographed it, I brought it in, and we mapped it out. But when we got to move into the booth, that was the very first thing that I shot as Angie. That was my intro to Angie.
We went through that whole scene seven times. It’s a five-and-a-half-minute song and it was the middle of August. It was very warm. [laughs]
Since the writers of this movie, Tim Seeley and Mike Morici, work in comic books regularly, they’ve decided to keep the story going thanks to a Revealer comic book featuring Angie, Sally, and other characters from the film. Based on the end credits credit sequence, it seems like there are a lot more stories to tell. But do you think comic books are the future of Revealer, or could we see your character again onscreen?
CA: Oh, my God. I really hope that there’s a world in which we can see Sally and Angie again on a screen. To work with Shaina again would just be like a dream come true, because she truly is one of the best actors I’ve ever gotten to work with.
I’ll say that the comic books are framed from the perspective of four of the characters. So I have a storyline, Sally has a storyline, and then there are two other characters who have storylines. All of them are written by different people and all of the art is done by different people, so it’s like this kind of cool collaboration of artists who get to work on it. We definitely have a future for Revealer in comic books, and I’m hoping that we can kind of take over the world.
With the Revealer cinematic universe.
CA: Yes! That would be so cool.
Is it wild that you’re in a comic book?
CA: That blew my mind. I was like, “Oh yeah, feature film. Great. This is awesome. Oh, how cool. Oh, comic book writers? Comic book writers!” I had known Tim’s work previously, so getting to be a comic book character is like pretty wild.
Can we expect the Caito Aase action figure to be coming soon?
CA: Wouldn’t that be funny? I wonder if that’s something that could happen.
I mean, you never know with tie-ins and merchandise, right?
CA: Right! What if I become a Funko Pop? That would totally happen. Amazing.
Let’s put that out in the universe, right? That would be nice.
CA: I’m a collectible. I’ve decided.
Speaking of tie-ins, you mentioned that you’re an avid tabletop gamer. And at one point, Sally mentions Dungeons & Dragons while talking about one of the characters in the movie. Do you think that Revealer could work as a tabletop game similar to like Kieran Gillan and Stephanie Hans’ comic series Die?
CA: Oh my God, that is a great question. I love this question. I think it absolutely could work and, as a game master myself, it would be really fun to build a universe around Revealer, especially when we get to act two of the film and all the perils that they’re in because it’s truly like it’s got some major dungeon dive feels to it. But yeah, I think it totally could translate as a TTRPG.
One of the things that is so great about Revealer being set in 1987 is the concept of “What if the satanic panic really happened?” What if everything that everyone was saying about everyone who plays Dungeons and Dragons [is true and] they’re all Satanists and things like that? What if it actually came true and what does that world look like? So yeah, I think it could lend itself very easily to a tabletop game universe.
Earlier, you also mentioned the quarantine rooms. Revealer was filmed at the peak of the ongoing pandemic. In addition to the logistical challenges, there must have been creative challenges as well, particularly the urgency of writing the script in only eight days. Do you think that this period in our history that forced filmmakers to tell more intimate, restructured stories is better creatively in the long run?
CA: I don’t know that there’s necessarily a yes or no answer to that. I do think that necessity is the mother of invention. There were a lot of things that we had to do in terms of keeping ourselves and each other safe. Yes, [this film has] a demon apocalypse. Yes, it’s set in the eighties. It’s very fun. It’s very high camp. But more than anything, it’s a really zoomed-in perspective of these two characters and how their relationship strengthens and grows over time and how these two very opposite people can come together. And at that point, it becomes less of a horror film and more like we’re pulling for these two people. We start falling in love with these two people.
As an actor, that is so juicy. With me coming from a Shakespearian background and Shaina also coming from a theatrical background, we love those juicy, meaty parts where we’re studying our scripts for weeks and weeks and we’re in the rehearsal room and doing all these things. And filmmaking is such a different process. But to be handed a script where it’s 86 minutes long and, for 80 minutes of it, we’re both on camera the whole time, it’s just an actor’s dream come true because it is just so much of getting into the meat of who these people are.
Some feel that the best genre stories serve as a mirror being held up to society. With this movie having so much to say, what are you hoping that Revealer reveals to its audience?
CA: Oh, wow. Brilliant question, Ben. Thank you for that. I want people to walk away and know that sex work is work. And not only does it work, but it deserves respect. It deserves unionization, it deserves legal protections, and not to be kind of swept under the rug that queer rights are human rights. And we need to stop having a conversation about whether or not queer people are human beings and just let us live our f**king lives.
I’ve also had a few conversations with various people from various publications and various podcasts and I just keep going back to something that Shaina, my co-star, said. I’ve really latched on to this idea: More than anything, we need to care for each other and take care of each other.
I don’t want it to be kind of a kumbaya moment where everybody comes together and sets aside our differences and things like that. There are a lot of hard-fought battles that are still on the horizon. And there are going to be a lot of people that don’t see eye to eye with us. But I do think they’re it matters so much to take care of those close to you and to really listen and really be present with people, especially in truly just uncertain times. We don’t know what’s coming and the best thing we can do is protect each other.
Revealer starring Caito Aase and Shaina Schrooten is currently available to stream on Shudder.
