[Editorial] Interview with Don’t F*** In The Woods 2 (2022) Director Shawn Burkett

Sometimes when interviewing a film director, I could close my eyes and imagine we were giggling together about their work over a beer. It was pretty much like that when I met with Shawn Burkett recently to talk about Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 (2022), which has recently been released onto VOD.

I have great admiration for people who jump into making low budget films with passion, and was somewhat blown away by Shawn’s director credits on IMDB: over twenty shorts, anthology segments and features in just the last ten years. “Me and my business partner started this company,” Shawn said, “and we just stepped on the gas: seventy miles an hour and we just wanted to be able to make stories and try to show them the best we could.” Shawn is talking about Ryan Stacy here, who looked after production design and some of the special effects in the Woods.

I had watched the film with a grin from the start and laughed when I gave Shawn the first question that had popped into my head while watching it: had he considered launching a bikini merchandise range? “What’s funny is that I actually have a meeting this week with a clothing company,” he said. “We’ve thought about it, but I don’t know enough about what women would wear.” Having seen the film, though, I’m sure he would have plenty of people in his address book that do know!

The film’s music enhanced the mood very well. I asked Shawn how he briefed the composer, Rocky Gray. “Me and him talked back and forth for a while,” he said. “As I was editing, I’d send him a scene, so he’d have a head start on it. The only way I knew how to do it (because I hadn’t worked with a composer before) was just to give him references, like ‘for this scene, when we meet Gil, I’d like something mellow, like when we first meet Dewey in Scream.’ So he went that route with the guitars, and we carried on back and forth like that.”

I naturally wondered why he took that approach with Woods 2, but not the first film. “For the first one, it was mainly about budget. The total, over four years of crowdfunding, came to about $7500 to make that first film. Score just wasn’t in that budget. There’s a YouTube channel called Film Riot, and the associated company is called Triune Films; and every Black Friday, they have a massive sale of royalty-free stock, so you can get individual instruments arranged however you want… and that was a much cheaper deal for the first film.”

No regrets with this change of approach though? “No,” said Shawn, but clearly hesitated. “I had to think about it for a minute. I don’t regret it, but it’s funny: in the next film, I ended up scoring myself. For fifteen years before I started making movies, I was a touring musician, so it just got to the point where I thought ‘I can do this’. But it does take time.”

Shawn has many hands-on roles in Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2. It must be tricky to let go and bring other people into a team. “Oh it is,” he agreed. “That film was the first time that I let go of the camera. Normally, I’d do that as well, but it had gotten to the point where I felt like I wasn’t quite getting a chance to direct, because I was still doing all these other things. That was a hard thing to give up, but I did; and honestly, Travis Wilson, the camera operator on this film, has been camera-operator and co-director on everything I’ve done since.”

The first Don’t Fuck in the Woods (2016) was essentially a monster/slasher blend. This one has parasitic slugs that mutate their victims (believe it or not)… I had to ask: where did that idea come from? “It’s funny, we weren’t originally going to focus so much on the slugs,” said Shawn. “They were just a means to keep the ball rolling, because eventually they were supposed to evolve more; the end stage would have been the full creature like in the first film. It’s just… money. We didn’t have the budget to make full suits for everybody; the suit in the first film ended up costing $400 dollars to make. We couldn’t exactly reuse it; it had gone through Hell and back. So, we were thinking about trying prosthetics; we had a huge room full of prosthetics we’d made and in one of the deleted scenes, you’ll be able to see parts of the alternate ending, where you see more of a full evolution of the creature. But basically, we ran out of time and money for that ending, and the whole ending with the cave and everything is inside my apartment. We did the best we could, but at the same time, kept reminding ourselves that this is meant to be a fun indie film. Some people have said it doesn’t look like a cave, but I don’t care: it certainly doesn’t look like my apartment, either.”

It certainly looked like some sort of alien environment to me; and it worked, adding a little more complexity than one might expect from a passion project. “I don’t want to say it was a last-minute thing,” continued Shawn, “but the end wasn’t really scripted out. I said ‘guys, just trust me, I know what I want to do, just go with me on this adventure.’ And that ending with the cave took a day to build and then a day to film. But it was fun and got us flexing a different muscle that we hadn’t flexed before, having never built a set like that before. All in all, it was worth it. Some people are going to like it, and some won’t, but you can’t please everyone.”

I had certainly been pleased and impressed with how many layers to the plot there were. I teased a little: did Shawn get carried away? “I don’t know how to answer that,” he laughed. “Me and the co-writer Cheyenne Gordon [who also played Gil] basically would go through the whole script and make bullet points about what happens where. And he initially wanted a love interest in the film, which was to be the nurse, Vanessa. It didn’t work out, didn’t play as believable; so, we tried to hide that. But as we tried to hide it, that involved adding more of Jane [the character who had made it out of the first film] and at some point, it just got kind of weird. I remember having a conversation with Cheyenne and said ‘let’s keep it simple’: it’s called Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2, so I don’t feel that the people watching it are necessarily coming in for the storyline. The horror movies I grew up on, I can tell you what they were about, but I can’t tell you that they had a strong storyline.

“At some point, we zigged when we should have zagged, and it was a pain to come back in. It was also a pain to schedule actors, because we had three different shoots and with one shoot, we felt like it was missing something, considering the length of the edit. So that’s when they threw in the two lesbians in the woods.”

(I had wanted to ask about them; they were fabulous!)

“Originally, they were going to be in the film as different characters, but they couldn’t make the planned film dates,” explained Shawn. “So eventually we reworked it to include them. Another funny thing is we have Gil in it as a handyman, but we only ever see him hammering something. We kind of wanted to keep that going but wanted to add some run time and I knew that with the ending we had already shot (with the cave and everything) it wasn’t really wrapped up. And I definitely felt like it didn’t have a specific line to a potential third film. So, with the lesbians in the woods, I’m sure that we could carry on, if needed.”

(Personally, I think they’re needed; especially the one who removed her skirt!)

Anyway… it’s clear that Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 needs a sequel. I asked Shawn whether film 3 is going to be the end of the story, or whether he has lots more in his head to film. “Oh man,” he said, clearly a little jaded. “I’ve lived for eight years in that universe in the Woods. I’m not going to lie: I’m tired of it at the moment. I have people talking to me about being part of a Don’t Fuck 3 and I’ve had a couple of writers send me their ideas, half-scripts and stuff. I just don’t know at the moment where it would go; I know it’s already unrealistic, but it’s still tethered to reality at the moment, other than the end-credit scene.”

I had to confess I’d not seen the first scene; but the pre-credits scene and Jane’s brief exposition gave me enough background. I had to wonder though whether a sequel might explain where the monster had come from. “That’s something people have been asking since the first one,” Shawn said. “When we made the first one, I was thinking to myself there were so many horror movies in the eighties with a monster in the woods; they didn’t explain where it came from or anything like that. So I didn’t feel like I needed to. But everyone wanted to know: Is it an alien? Is it a mutant? Is it a science experiment gone wrong? I will be a hundred percent honest: I’ve never thought about it. Maybe to the extent that people ask at conventions and occasionally I throw out a random answer; like somebody’s hamster got loose, something ridiculous to mess with people. At one point, Cheyenne Gordon wanted to put some sort of prequel into the opening credits, to show where this thing came from. I wasn’t against that, but the things we had talked about just didn’t sit right. Then my business partner Ryan and I talked about it at one point; I liked that route more, but I could have done a whole prequel film about that. I don’t really know at the moment. I’d like to think there’s be a Don’t Fuck in the Woods 3, just because I always wanted to do a trilogy, but I can say that if there is a third film, it will end there. I don’t mean like they say Halloween is done, and then I’ll wait and come back with a reboot after twenty years; but really done.”

That would surely involve the whole world being infected or something!

“Actually, that was one of Cheyenne’s ideas,” said Shawn. “He said ‘why don’t we bring the army into it?’ But do you know how much that would cost, to look good at least? No, we can’t do that. I don’t even know where we’d get an army-looking Jeep; that’s a little above my pay grade.”

I watched Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 right to the end of the closing credits and I sensed there was a story to be told behind the credit that declared Stephen J. Hodke is “super famous, and has a huge cock”. Nobody else has their genitals credited! “Stephen likes to credit himself as being super famous,” said Shawn, “so I wanted to put that in there. And funnily enough, at the end of the film, after the explosion and we see all three people on the ground, the one who doesn’t get up is actually played by Stephen, not the actress. So he put on tight black shorts and a yellow t-shirt and just lay there. I don’t think anyone will notice. But since he did that, I said I’d add to the credits that he’s got a big dick, because nobody else was willing to be a stunt double for that scene, so cool!”

I also saw a nice bold piracy warning at the very end of the credits. I had read what happened with the first film and asked Shawn if he’d had more luck this time around. “I don’t believe it’s been pirated yet,” he said, with fingers firmly crossed. “We’ll find out soon, as it comes out on digital next week.”

As with most interviews, I asked Shawn what he has lined up next. “I love creature features,” he said. “I have a bigfoot feature called Stranded, which should be coming out next year via Wild Eye as well. It’s currently in the festival circuit, doing well, and it’s definitely the complete opposite of Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2. It’s got a serious tone, and it’s about a group of siblings whose mother passes away. The mother’s last wish was to have her ashes scattered at a lake house they all used to visit as a family. So basically, these four semi-estranged siblings have to make this trip; and on the way, their car breaks down, in a territory which just happens to have a legendary bigfoot: Boggy Creek in Fouke, Arkansas. So definitely this one is a way more serious toned film, so I’m especially glad it’s been well received.”

I’ll keep an eye out for that; but in the meantime, I can't help but be curious to see how Shawn Burkett ends the Woods trilogy. “I can tell you there’s going to be creatures, for sure,” he said. “That’s always going to be a thing. I love coming up with new ways to make and show them.”

He reminisced a little. “We filmed Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 so long ago that it was around the time the last Terminator film came out, and there were a lot of time travel movies for a while, Terminator and the Marvel Cinematic Universe doing it. So I don’t know if it could be in the third one, but I really want Jane to reappear, Terminator-style.”

Maybe she could jump onto its ship and follow it home, like Derek in Bad Taste! “She could!” said Shawn.

Don’t Fuck in the Woods 2 is now available on Digital, with a Blu-ray to follow in December from Wild Eye Releasing. Catch the trailer now!

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