In the Swedish thriller We Die Tonight [+lee también:
entrevista: Richard Holm
ficha de la película], screened at Night Visions, you literally get punished for shopping, because the movie sees store employees and random shoppers besieged by a gang looking for a couple who got away. At first, they present a united front, but wouldn’t it be easier to just give the gang what they want? We chatted to director Richard Holm.

Cineuropa: There’s something fun about such an ordinary setting. It’s hilarious when one character says: “I knew I shouldn’t have gone shopping today.”
Richard Holm: The murder of Leo’s father is so brutal that we felt we needed to lighten things up a bit. Since we were aiming for a very brutal popcorn movie, we needed to add a humorous touch to the gore and violence. It’s a fine line to straddle because you still want the tension and thrills. If it’s too funny, it will never be exciting; if it turns into too much of a horror experience, it’s hard to laugh.

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It brought to mind Romero unleashing his zombies on a mall in Dawn of the Dead. You allow yourself to be creative with violence. They don’t have access to many things, but they can have a bedazzled bat.
Well, you probably have to get creative in a situation like that! A lot of what they use is constructed by Conny [played by Kristoffer Joner] because of his war experience. Sometimes, they have to invent things as they go along, like when they pour petrol on the floor. Our big influences were, of course, John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 [where people are trapped inside a police station] and Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room [where they’re trapped in an isolated club]. But the whole 1980s VHS era in Sweden also included a lot of Romero.

Can you talk about the beginning? It’s very strong – and scary.
Christian Magdu, who plays Francki, and I had lunch around April 2024. We discussed the film industry and why people aren’t going to the cinema any more. After a while, instead of just complaining, we started talking about what we could do about it. We thought back to when we were 15. Where did all those movies go? We decided to go back to the roots and make a really exciting ride.

My son Robin, who wrote the script with Christian’s wife, Christin, started working in a small grocery store where we live. Six months before we came up with this idea, after he had only been working there for two weeks, two men burst into the store. They had been stabbed. He was shocked and called for two other employees, who helped the poor guys. Luckily, they survived. When the police returned to inform everyone about the incident, the men said they had been walking outside the shop when someone asked them if they smoked. When they said no, the assailant stabbed them.

The truth is, they might have been dealing drugs or something, but of course they couldn’t tell the police that. I thought this scary incident would make for a perfect scary film, especially if it were set in the countryside, where it takes a long time for the police to arrive. Add in a brutal gang who want to find the stab victims hiding inside, and you have the perfect siege film!

Is it harder to make sure the characters really stand out if you put them in a situation like this? They are under attack, but I still feel like I got to know them a little.
The secret lies in your casting and how you write them. We made sure to choose different actors, ensuring they all reacted differently to the terror and the pressure. If this had been made in Hollywood, I’m sure everyone would have looked great and always done the right thing. Our approach was more about how we would react if this happened to us. We would probably pee our pants, and do all sorts of dumb and illogical things. For me, the hardest thing about making this movie was creating a sense of panic among the characters. Actors are almost never allowed to cut into each other’s lines. Here, however, we needed to encourage it to make it work. They loved it – unlike the sound department.

It’s intriguing that someone who should be a hero is revealed to be a creep, for example.
We wanted to create a hero who was very different; someone you never see in movies. A hero who’s weird, and different from you and me. Heroes can come in all shapes and sizes, and to quote an overused saying, we should never judge a book by its cover. We wanted the audience to feel that he’s creepy and odd, but not dangerous. When she cries, it’s not really over him. It’s because of the whole situation and the day from hell.

You don’t reveal that much about the attackers. Why?
We felt they would be scarier the less they said. It’s like Carpenter’s Halloween. Sometimes, it’s more terrifying when you don’t understand the evil.