Back in Black, as a darkly funny crime drama, is no whodunnit.
Ron Murphy’s satire about a failing funeral home has Christopher Walken starring as family patriarch Clyde Mortimer who is staring down bankruptcy. But his business enjoys a sudden rebound in fortune when Sam, his quiet granddaughter played by Ella Ballentine, triggers a suspicious rise in the number of small-town murders that leaves local police stumped and a trail of cadavers arriving on his doorstep.
All of which begs the question: what is it about benevolent serial killers that’s expected to have Toronto Film Festival audiences cheering Sam on as an antihero while her town’s local kill count rises? “It’s a bit of a trick, isn’t it? Most people in test screenings that we’ve done are rooting for (Sam). And meanwhile, what she’s doing is morally reprehensible,” Murphy tells The Hollywood Reporter ahead of Back in Black, his debut feature, having a world premiere at TIFF.
It turns out Sam, an embalmer by day and cold-blooded killer by night, is preying on local townsfolk because she doesn’t want to see Mortimer and his wife, played by Jane Curtin, fight over finances and be denied a dignified retirement. “I’m asking the audience, how far would you be willing to go for someone you love,” Murphy adds about his morality-bending psychological drama that has Fargo meets Six Feet Under vibes.
Not that Walken’s Mortimer character, for his devotion to his family and its generational business, isn’t himself cunning and ruthless. Murphy recalls getting on the phone with the Hollywood legend with his prolific film resume and Oscar-winning role in 1978’sThe Deer Hunter soon after he read his Back in Black script.
“I think he was testing me because he said, ‘Ron, I’ve played these dark characters for 50 years, these morally questionable characters,’” and Walken was suggesting that, at his age, actors just want to play normal people.
After insisting Clyde Mortimer was not a bad man, but in service to people he loved during tough times, Murphy added with an Avis, Try Harder sales pitch: “By the way, I didn’t write this for you. Nick (Torokvei) and I wrote it for Jack Lemmon. And he’s not available. You’re our second choice.”
Murphy is also with the layers of moral contradictions in Back in Black, urging audiences to explore how, in a world filled with injustice and inequity, serial killers can help as well as harm — even if that helps Mortimer cash in on bereaved relatives by upselling them on pricey caskets.
“It’s important that a bad person gets their comeuppance. But if they’re doing bad things for the right reasons, then an audience’s morality bends, as we’ve seen in the screenings. That’s very upside down, because innocent people are being harmed,” the director argues.
For Murphy, while Back in Black is his first feature, he has deep roots in the TV business. He began as an assistant to the late John Candy, and from there directed episodic comedies that starred Steve Carell, Leslie Neilson, Tim Conway, Snoop Dogg, and even Michael Cera and Drake in early small screen roles.
His Canadian TV directing credits include Trailer Park Boys, Heartland, Lost Girl and Wynonna Earp. But with his first feature, Murphy has looked to offer, via satire, his own take on our wider economy and politics. “There’s definitely a sort of darkness in the culture that we all feel, certainly since the pandemic. And it’s disorienting, and I feel I want to reflect that darkness in a comic way,” he explains.
Another anomaly in Back in Black is Sam, as played by Ballentine, a child actor graduating to adult roles, has no lines to speak as she and her grandfather quietly share a language of love and loyalty. “In film school, I was obsessed with Buster Keaton, and I’ve always wanted to make a silent film. I just think there’s an elegance to telling a story with no words,” Murphy says.
Having made his first feature long after he left film school, Murphy adds he’s looking forward to connecting, with his TIFF world premiere, to a theatrical audience after long working on TV sets and in edit rooms where viewers are well out of sight.
But as to how Toronto audiences greet Back in Black, whether with laughter, gasps or silence, Murphy has no expectations to avoid opening night distress: “I’ve learned during my television career to be very Buddhist about the material and to abandon your attachment to outcomes. If you think it’s going to be funny and they don’t laugh, your heart is broken. Or you’re surprised they laugh at something else you didn’t think was funny.”
Instead, Murphy is looking to Toronto for fresh eyes for a movie he and his team have long been working on. “As soon as it screens at TIFF, it belongs to the audience, and they can do with it whatever they want, respond to it however they want, and I’m really good at just letting go,” he adds.