'Not Him' Director Sarah Young Talks About How It Was Conceived, Her Inspiration And Future Plans

Not Him, a short film directed by Sarah Young has made a huge splash at the festival circuit. While Young’s film puts the extremely sensitive subject of domestic violence in focus, it approaches the story with an exciting, genre-film making style. The result of that is a very entertaining short film start to finish, which is also very relevant if we go by the context. We sat down with director Young and had quite a chat about how she conceived the film, what inspired her and her future plans about turning Not Him into a full-length feature. Here’s what she shared with us.

Congratulations on making ‘Not Him.‘ Can you tell me how you conceived the film? What was the motivation behind it?

Thank you! I have been a director for a long time but with Not Him, it was my first time when I decided to direct my own script. I am a big fan of genre filmmaker because it’s a great way to tackle complicated subjects in an accessible way, so I knew I wanted to do a genre film. As I remember, I had a troubling nightmare one night which pretty much inspired the opening of my short film. No big spoilers but the wife wakes up to her husband climbing onto her in the night and his eyes are pure black. I woke up, furiously wrote the dream down, and the script flowed from there. It became obvious to me that the story I wanted to tell is about domestic violence through the lens of demonic possession so once I understood the heart of the script the story came to life. 

What do you wish to achieve, with this one?

My goal with all my work is to spark conversations and get the audience thinking about topical, challenging subjects. In this case I want my audience to get a sense of what it’s like to feel trapped, the very real world horror of having a loved one, someone you trust, turn on you. I want to highlight the importance of believing victims, sometimes all it takes to save a life is someone to believe. And at the same time, my goal as a filmmaker in writing as well as directing this script was to create something that is truly me as an artist. The buck stops here for this film, no writer to “blame” if something doesn’t work. I kid obviously, but really this film is my calling card for the type of filmmaking I want to bring into the world.

Your short can be categorized as a genre film but it also has an unmissable social commentary angle. How important was the latter to you?

Extremely. I think the best and most effective kind of horror comes from real life. Like The Babadook tackles grief, like The Shining and the horrors of losing a loved one to alcoholism, like Smile with mental health. Genre filmmaking allows us to put ourselves into these situations with the buffer basically of there being something “supernatural” about it. I think this gives us a chance to process very real world traumas in a more accessible way than confronting them through a pure drama story for example. The most effective horror has an underlying truth to it. 

Do you consider yourself a genre movie fan? Did you draw from any other films when you were dreaming up ‘Not Him‘?

I do, yes. I love all kinds of genres from horror to fantasy to sci fi. As I conceived the film I had The Shining in mind of course, but also Gaslight, the film that coined the phrase gaslighting, where a husband tries to convince his wife she’s going crazy. Now that I’m working on the feature script I also have What Lies Beneath coming up for me as well with Harrison Ford in his shocking villain twist (spoiler). Though the camera movement I pictured for how it would be shot is very much influenced by the Succession TV show, I just love how active it is and I wanted the sense of our voyeurism that comes from hand held like camera movement. 

This is more of a general question – who are the directors that you consider as your filmmaking influence?

Jennifer Kent, the writer and director of The Babadook is one of my major influences and I find myself returning to that film frequently when seeking inspiration. And of course, I grew up loving Jaws and respecting the heck out of Spielberg’s direction of that. His sense of pace and letting the imagination fill in is really exciting to me.

Coming back to ‘Not Him‘ – How do you want the viewers to feel? Is there a message that you wish to deliver?

Not Him is a tense, nailbiter of a film told from the perspective of the wife experiencing domestic abuse. My goal is to get the audience inside her emotional state. I think there is great value to woman led horror films that are also directed/written from that perspective. I have had incredible feedback from folks who feel seen by this film in a way they haven’t before. Including a man who saw the film with his mom, and it led to them having a conversation about relationships she had experienced in her past that they had never discussed. He said he got to learn about a part of her life he had no understanding of before. So I guess the message of the film is that domestic violence is so much more prevalent in our society than we like to let on. Sadly it’s likely that everyone who watches the film is going to have some sort of personal experience with it either themselves, or a loved one, or a friend. It’s so important to acknowledge the scope of the issue, and I am grateful to do that with a horror film that will hopefully reach a wider audience than discussion of this type of societal issue usually does. 

Can you tell us any detail about your plans to turn ‘Not Him‘ into a full-length feature? And do you intend to keep the same cast?

The team is moving forward with the feature which is very exciting! We have had an incredible film festival circuit run so there is great interest in seeing it continue. The story will expand beyond the scope of the short of course. There are some character changes coming as the story is allowed to deepen with more room, but I do intend to keep the same cast as the short as much as possible. The performances in the short are incredible. Charlie McElveen as John (demon/husband), Tori Ernst as Michelle, his wife, Katharine Chin and Ryan Nicholas Cooper as their friends, all amazing actors and fantastic human beings. 

What’s next on the horizon For You? What kind of work do you intend to do in the future?

Writing the feature is my main focus at the moment but I do have two other shorts on the festival circuit right now that I directed and co-directed called An Ending and The Well. An Ending is a beautiful queer love story around an NYC apartment during the pandemic, and The Well is about a man who drives to a bar in the middle of the night to confront a man he suspects of being his childhood abuser. For a lighter project I am also writing the pilot of a comedy horror series called Ghost Hosts about a YouTube channel of ghost hunters that end up unexpectedly dealing with real ghosts.

Final Words

From what Young has said, we can only hope for better things in the future. The success of Not Him should pave the way for the director to turn it into a big screen thing, with the same cast. And given the kind of enthusiasm she has for genre-filmmaking, we can expect some groundbreaking stuff from Sarah Young in the upcoming years.

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