Isabella Gomez plays a key role in the May slasher movie Initiation. Set at a college during pledge week, the movie is ostensibly about a slasher in search of his next victim while the whole school panics…but there’s a lot more going on, including an apparent sexual assault that may or may not be tied to the killing. Gomez plays the victim of the assault, and she and her friends are the most likable characters in the film, where they are surrounded by drunken crimes by students and crazy overreactions by the faculty (including Riverdale‘s Lochlyn Munro).
The cast is pretty stacked, actually; along with Munro and Gomez, you can also sneak a glimpse at Witchblade star Yancy Butler and a cast of familiar faces if you watch The CW or other TV shows and movies that film in Vancouver.
Gomez joined ComicBook for a short conversation about Initiation, which is now available on digital to rent or buy.
What were the character dynamics that really popped on set, that maybe weren’t immediately obvious on the page?
I think when you read a script like this, which is like an ensemble of young people, you always hope that they were going to have real chemistry, and seem like real friends. It can be tough, especially in this industry. There are a lot of egos.
For us, it was so lovely, because I think the second we all met each other we knew it was going to pop because we all adored each other, were obsessed with each other, had the best fricking time. We still all texted each other, we still all hang out, the whole nine. So I wasn’t per se surprised when I watched the film, that it looks like we’re all actually friends, but I think it really came off that these are a group of people that know and care about each other, and they’re doing this life thing together.
Is it tough, when you’re balancing the needs of the story with making a movie that deals with social media into something that won’t feel cheap and disposable?
Absolutely. I think anything that is too topical and of the moment, can very easily be cheesy or done wrong, especially if people are just doing it to try to be” with the times” and be hip. So, not only do I make sure when I’m reading a script that it feels authentic, I also, when I talk to the team that’s making it, make sure that they are open to listening to the kids and the people that are actually living through the thing.
Luckily for us, all the producers and our director John were very open to listening to us about things like, “oh wait, no, we don’t actually say that” or “on social media, we wouldn’t do this, we would do that,” which was really awesome because it became such a collaborative effort. I think it helped make it really authentic, and help weave in the social media and the internet in a way that didn’t feel like it was in your face; it genuinely felt like just the part of these kids’ life.
Do you think it was a good idea to keep the actual killer off social media, so that it wasn’t like “you’re being haunted by your phone?”
Yeah, I think it was actually really smart not to do that. I think once you find out who the killer is, it also makes a lot of sense that the killer wouldn’t be very online. I think part of social media is, it can feel suffocating, like, “oh, this little bubble that we exist in is only thing that matters.” I think keeping the killer outside of that, and keeping it just the kids involved in this thing, helped create that claustrophobia and that feeling of, “this is the only thing that matters in our world.”
In a cast full of young people, is it helpful to have veteran journeyman actors like Lochlyn and Yancy?
Oh, totally. I mean, I think we can learn something from everybody on the set, but like you said, especially Yancy.
I didn’t get to work with Lochlyn a whole lot, but Yancy set up that scene for me at the end so well. I was telling John, our director, that I don’t think I could have gotten there without her, because she is so precise and in-character and grounded. There is not a false note. You believe everything that comes out of her mouth, and that’s so hard to do.
I don’t think people understand how hard it is to really ground everything you do in a film or in a TV show, so working with them and like seeing how calm they are, and how on-their-game they are, and how easily they maneuver through a set, is really impressive. I definitely watched them a lot to learn from them.
You have a really vibrant energy as a person. Is it a challenge to tamp that down for a darker movie, that doesn’t necessarily benefit from having too much brightness in it?
Yes, in the sense of I’m a very animated person. I’ve also been working on sitcoms for the last half decade, so I’m very used to being very broad and very energetic on screen, but I think it was a little easier because we shot it mostly in order. I think at the beginning, the thing about Kylie is, she is the light, and she is the hope and she is like all of this fun.
And then we get to see that shift, and because John was so great about helping us do it as in order as we could, it was really easy to go through that arc with her as things were happening, and follow her down as things went on.
That’s a rare experience in a feature film. Did that help your characters’ state of mind changed dramatically between when it’s a normal weekend, and when there’s a crazy person stalking people?
Totally. It helped so much, and even there is a few scenes towards the end when more of the action is happening — I’ll say in the non spoiler way — where we actually shot it kind of as a play, even if there weren’t cameras on us.
We were all in the positions we were supposed to be in, and we all went through it, even though we weren’t on our coverage, which was so helpful, not only for the actors that were being filmed, but also for all of us to really get into the movie, and feel like we were in it and kind of get to go through the steps and go through the emotions before being on camera, so it was so wildly helpful.
And like I said, I’ve been doing sitcoms, so I’m very used to rehearsal weeks, and I’m very used to getting to fill out things before a camera rolls, so for me it was ideal.
Is there anything in the film that to watch it, you wouldn’t know how complex it all is?
There is a party scene at the beginning of the movie, that we actually waited until the end of the filming date to do.
They actually just let us rage — like, there was no set anything. They just blasted music for 20 minutes, and followed all of us along with a camera, and just let us actually party. I had no idea where the camera was at any point, and it was so fun. I feel like with the themes of the movie, and talking about the MeToo movement and all of that, it was the first time that I had been at a party like that and felt completely safe, and completely able to let go and do the thing.