Interview: #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead’s Marcus Dunstan & Jade Pettyjohn

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead director Marcus Dunstan and star Jade Pettyjohn about the seven deadly sins-themed slasher movie. It will be released in select theaters and on digital and on demand on August 2, 2024.

“In #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead, a group of college friends rent an Airbnb for the biggest music festival of the year. A weekend of partying quickly takes a turn, as the group is murdered one by one, according to their sin,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Jade, #AMFAD is such a fun movie. There’s such a great vibe about it all throughout. So what was kind of the big selling point to get you on board?

Jade Pettyjohn: There were a few things. I’m a huge fan of Marcus, so the idea of working with him was really incredible. So that was one of the first things that drew me in. But I also love the kind of horror films that are equally as shocking and gory as they are funny. I think using humor to sort of disarm an audience for shock and gore is actually really fun. So when I read the script, I was like, this candy-coated horror film is really incredible.

Particularly with Sarah, my character, she’s so interesting and so nuanced, and she really is like this final girl in a way that I don’t think a lot of people have seen before. So I was just totally enamored with that, and the idea of playing that kind of character was so interesting to me. It’s very different from anything I’ve done before. So the whole thing was super, super appealing.

Marcus, you have a knife dildo in this that leads to an incredible kill. That is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a horror film.

Marcus Dunstan: Thank you, and bless you. That was a reaction reshoot, and I’ll tell you why. That death was originally a curling iron, and right after we were shooting and posting, a movie came out where their signature image was death by curling iron. So, yeah, that couldn’t be; we needed to one-up the ante. So we did. And bless his heart, actor Julian Haig came back and was game. There was a lot to just go with it. I mean, some folks would’ve thrown up their hands like, “I don’t get it,” but bless his heart, he kind of trusted the tone that was ever-evolving as we were trying to find shock, humor, horror, and courtesy of Jade Pettyjohn, heart in this.

Jade, you get to have really quite the full horror experience with #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. You have blood splattered on you, you’re screaming your heart out. There are chase sequences. How is it really getting to go all out and just run the full gamut of horror sequences here?

Pettyjohn: This was the perfect film to dip my toes into the horror genre because you are really not dipping your toes at all. You’re jumping into the deep end, and it was honestly so much fun. I was really surprised at how fun filming such a horror-based film would be, but it was great. I mean, we had a great cast. Obviously, Marcus is incredible, and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about fake blood and how to get it off. I learned how to scream without totally ripping my vocal cords to shreds. Hot tip, if you ever have fake blood on you and you need to get it off very quickly, men’s shaving cream is the key. Little tip I learned along the way.

But yeah, it was just so fun. I mean, it was truly just a fun project to do, and it really leans into the sort of the escapism element of filmmaking, I think, because it’s so heightened, and you really get lost into this whole world and story and the practical effects and all of it was just such a blast to film.

Jade, as you mentioned, Sarah is a different spin on a final girl, and she’s also the odd one out in her friend group. She’s not seen as the most outgoing person. She also serves as a vessel for the audience since everybody else has more of a past together. What did you like most about that aspect of the character and really having the lens of the film tagging along with your character?

Pettyjohn: I really love it because it sort of gives you the feeling of being a fly on the wall. Experiencing a whole friend group and the dynamics and the nuances between all of these dynamics is really interesting. But to have that scene from the point of view of someone who is also just learning this along with the audience, I thought was really interesting. And I also think that it’s something that’s really relatable to people, you know what I mean? I think that people talk a lot about being a teenager and you’re sort of learning and navigating friendships, but that doesn’t end when you enter into your twenties and college years and beyond. It’s like this very natural ebb and flow of like finding your people and how does that work and who are your friends and what are these sort of, uh, dynamics and, and how do I fit into all of that?

So I think that was a really interesting thing to play with Sarah. And it also adds a little bit of a grounding to the story because obviously there’s so much chaos that occurs with her and with the, the friend group. But I think having that little heart of like, how do I fit into this group of friends that have known each other for so long? And there is a desire to, to feel connected and be a part of the group in some kind of way. But you’re learning as you’re going on. So she sort of left in the dark on a lot of what’s going on as it’s happening, which I think was a really fun dynamic to play.

Marcus, I love how you use the seven deadly sins motif in #AMFAD because it helps the viewer keep track of this ensemble cast. Because you can be like, “Oh, that’s the sloth guy, that’s who he is.” And then you also have these themes for the kills, which is so much fun. So how was it tying in that theme into all elements of the movie?

Dunstan: This was a conversation with color. And so every character, the, uh, the, we just did a little bit of that research into the imagery and the color associated with that particular sin. So the shot glasses might be a conversation moment, but the person who’s given, uh, let’s say the, the one that is associated with the green or envy or the one that’s associated with purple, well, they also, we stepped way back and said, well, then they have to always be wearing a note of purple. And sloth came in at a lighter color, more of a washed out [color] like a light. So that was always part of the environment. Then what we also did was, when it came time for the potential demise of a certain character, well then that color would also have an appearance in there.

It really just hearkens back to when I was a kid, and I watched Dario Argento’s Suspiria through splayed fingers. I thought horror can be beautiful. I can still feel all the jangled nerves, but this is gorgeous, and he’s telling a story with color. If the character goes into red, they’re dead. If they’re in blue, they’re safe, and the item of gold is to kill, the kill weapon. Like that’s defense. I love that and wanted to throw my arms around it. Even the use of holiday lights, why? Because they keep changing colors, and now we don’t know what’s coming next.

Jade, it’s really fun seeing someone with a platform as large as yours being in this film that’s also mocking influencer culture. We see these people with really vain ideals and how they’re going about life. What did you like most about that parody element of #AMFAD and all these people on their phones the entire time?

Pettyjohn: Yeah. I think that’s, again, where we have this point where we can use humor and parody to sort of make a comment on a certain portion or aspect of society or culture or where an extreme could go. Obviously, I think social media has its positive points, and there are a lot of good things that can come from it, right? But taking to any extreme something can be really negative and really dangerous.

I think that’s something that we’re sort of experiencing in certain ways right now in our society. So I thought that it was a really smart way, the way that Marcus and Sarah and everyone had come up with and created this funny way of being able to just sort of mock social media and how far it could go and could be in some ways a cautionary tale to not take it too far, you know?