Leigh Janiak took a circuitous route to filmmaking – she was
studying for her PhD in Modern Jewish Literature when she realized that
she wanted to pursue film. So in 2005 she packed her bags and moved to
Los Angeles, where she worked as a script reader and assistant producer
before setting out to make Honeymoon, an intimate genre film on a low budget.
The result, a creepy, minimalist new entry into the
relationship-horror genre, premiered in SXSW this March and opens in
theaters this Friday, September 12, 2014. It stars Rose Leslie (
Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey) and Harry Treadaway (
Penny Dreadful, The Lone Ranger)
as happy newly weds Paul and Bea who take their honeymoon in a family
cabin on a lake. After Paul discovers Bea sleepwalking, naked and
shivering in the woods, their marriage begins a slow, eerie fracture,
posing the question: How well can we ever really know the ones we love?
Janiak talked to
MovieMaker about the lessons she learned
from the studios, the perils of shooting night scenes and water scenes
on a low budget, and the inherent terror of memory loss.
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