The Come-Up: How "Devil's Due" Directors Radio Silence Upgraded From YouTube to Feature Films

The story behind the first-time major studio players' DIY rise.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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It's a cold, rainy mid-December afternoon, and the four members of the Los Angeles-based filmmaking team Radio Silence are somewhere they never thought they'd be: inside the 20th Century Fox offices in New York City. Even more to their disbelief, they're in town to screen a 15-minute sizzle reel for a major motion picture they've directed, Devil's Due, a found-footage horror pic opening in theaters nationwide tonight at midnight. And preceded by that wonderful New York City promo with the evil baby in the carriage.

Two of the members, Tyler Gillett, 31, and Justin Martinez, 33, are all smiles but also all business once the footage ends, following the studio's reps into a conference room; the other two, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, 35, and Chad Villella, 36, have something a bit more mischievous in mind.

In one of the office's hallways rests a row of stand-up posters for 20 Century's Fox's early 2014 new release slate. First in line is the one-sheet for Devil's Due, which shows a pregnant woman seated inside a chalk-drawn, clearly occultist symbol on a bedroom floor, with a baby's crib off in the background; two posters down from Devil's Due is the one for Son of God, an upcoming film inspired by the recent hit miniseries The Bible, about, yes, Jesus Christ himself. The irony isn't missed by Bettinelli-Olpin and Villella, who move the floor posters around to have Son of God standing next to Devil's Due, ready for Villella's camera-phone snapping. "That would be the perfect double feature," he says as the others laugh behind him.

You would never see other directors of upcoming Fox films like Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past) or David Fincher (Gone Girl) pulling such a harmless but fun-loving stunt like that, especially in front of reporters. That's because the Radio Silence quartet are just a bunch of wide-eyed, can't-believe-they're-here dudes who, three years ago, were making viral videos with titles like "Mountain Devil Prank Fails Horribly" and distributing the clips themselves online. The fact that they've actually directed a feature-length film—about a newly married couple (Allison Miller and Friday Night Lights alum Zach Gilford) whose unexpected, in utero baby shows all signs of being Satan incarnate—for a major studio is still too surreal to allow the guys to take themselves too seriously yet. "We keep thinking that someone is going to come in and tell us this isn't really happening," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "Maybe we have a rich friend who's pranking us, like this is The Game. One of us will fall out of a window before the end of the day, I'm sure."

Originally known as Chad, Matt & Rob (back when their friend Rob Polonsky was part of the outfit), Radio Silence—named during a time when they couldn't get any studio heads to pay them any mind, hence the "radio silence" they experienced—started making vibrant, effects-heavy web videos back in 2009, paving the way for their first movie assignment, a segment in the 2012 indie found-footage horror anthology V/H/S. Devil's Due, though, is the biggest project they've ever worked on, a multi-million-dollar production shot in New Orleans and, tomorrow, set to open on a whopping 2,700 theaters across the country. Which is why 20th Century Fox is flying the guys all around the United States to promote the movie. They've certainly come a long way from the days when promotion was all autonomous and achieved by simply uploading files into the cyber abyss.

Not that they've lost the sense of humor that brought attention to the original Chad, Matt & Rob videos. Minutes after their Devil's Due/Son of God poster prank in the hallway, their response to a question about crazy it must be to have such a major film to their credits signals that they're anything but jaded or filled with newfound entitlement. "The whole process has been amazing so far, except this New York Trip," says Villella, looking directly at the publicist in the room with them. "It's been such a pain in the ass here." As everyone laughs, the publicist's grinning but somewhat uncertain facial expression causes Villella to switch his tone. "I'm just kidding! Please still release our movie!"

The good news for him: Devil's Due is definitely still opening tonight. Now, take a trip through memory lane with Radio Silence as they detail the road from making cheap-o YouTube videos to even having the opportunity to crack wise in front of movie studio PR folks.

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

RELATED: The 50 Scariest Movies of All Time
RELATED: The 10 Best Horror Movies of the Last 10 Years
RELATED: Scare-A-Thon: The Stories Behind V/H/S, the Best, Most Unique Horror Anthology in Years

The Come-Up: How "Devil's Due" Directors Radio Silence Upgraded From YouTube to Feature Films

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It's a cold, rainy mid-December afternoon, and the four members of the Los Angeles-based filmmaking team Radio Silence are somewhere they never thought they'd be: inside the 20th Century Fox offices in New York City. Even more to their disbelief, they're in town to screen a 15-minute sizzle reel for a major motion picture they've directed, Devil's Due, a found-footage horror pic opening in theaters nationwide tonight at midnight. And preceded by that wonderful New York City promo with the evil baby in the carriage.

Two of the members, Tyler Gillett, 31, and Justin Martinez, 33, are all smiles but also all business once the footage ends, following the studio's reps into a conference room; the other two, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, 35, and Chad Villella, 36, have something a bit more mischievous in mind.

In one of the office's hallways rests a row of stand-up posters for 20 Century's Fox's early 2014 new release slate. First in line is the one-sheet for Devil's Due, which shows a pregnant woman seated inside a chalk-drawn, clearly occultist symbol on a bedroom floor, with a baby's crib off in the background; two posters down from Devil's Due is the one for Son of God, an upcoming film inspired by the recent hit miniseries The Bible, about, yes, Jesus Christ himself. The irony isn't missed by Bettinelli-Olpin and Villella, who move the floor posters around to have Son of God standing next to Devil's Due, ready for Villella's camera-phone snapping. "That would be the perfect double feature," he says as the others laugh behind him.

You would never see other directors of upcoming Fox films like Bryan Singer (X-Men: Days of Future Past) or David Fincher (Gone Girl) pulling such a harmless but fun-loving stunt like that, especially in front of reporters. That's because the Radio Silence quartet are just a bunch of wide-eyed, can't-believe-they're-here dudes who, three years ago, were making viral videos with titles like "Mountain Devil Prank Fails Horribly" and distributing the clips themselves online. The fact that they've actually directed a feature-length film—about a newly married couple (Allison Miller and Friday Night Lights alum Zach Gilford) whose unexpected, in utero baby shows all signs of being Satan incarnate—for a major studio is still too surreal to allow the guys to take themselves too seriously yet. "We keep thinking that someone is going to come in and tell us this isn't really happening," says Bettinelli-Olpin. "Maybe we have a rich friend who's pranking us, like this is The Game. One of us will fall out of a window before the end of the day, I'm sure."

Originally known as Chad, Matt & Rob (back when their friend Rob Polonsky was part of the outfit), Radio Silence—named during a time when they couldn't get any studio heads to pay them any mind, hence the "radio silence" they experienced—started making vibrant, effects-heavy web videos back in 2009, paving the way for their first movie assignment, a segment in the 2012 indie found-footage horror anthology V/H/S. Devil's Due, though, is the biggest project they've ever worked on, a multi-million-dollar production shot in New Orleans and, tomorrow, set to open on a whopping 2,700 theaters across the country. Which is why 20th Century Fox is flying the guys all around the United States to promote the movie. They've certainly come a long way from the days when promotion was all autonomous and achieved by simply uploading files into the cyber abyss.

Not that they've lost the sense of humor that brought attention to the original Chad, Matt & Rob videos. Minutes after their Devil's Due/Son of God poster prank in the hallway, their response to a question about crazy it must be to have such a major film to their credits signals that they're anything but jaded or filled with newfound entitlement. "The whole process has been amazing so far, except this New York Trip," says Villella, looking directly at the publicist in the room with them. "It's been such a pain in the ass here." As everyone laughs, the publicist's grinning but somewhat uncertain facial expression causes Villella to switch his tone. "I'm just kidding! Please still release our movie!"

The good news for him: Devil's Due is definitely still opening tonight. Now, take a trip through memory lane with Radio Silence as they detail the road from making cheap-o YouTube videos to even having the opportunity to crack wise in front of movie studio PR folks.

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

RELATED: The 50 Scariest Movies of All Time
RELATED: The 10 Best Horror Movies of the Last 10 Years
RELATED: Scare-A-Thon: The Stories Behind V/H/S, the Best, Most Unique Horror Anthology in Years

The Early Days

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Back in 2009, the idea of directing a feature film seemed more like a dream than a reality to Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (an Oakland, CA, native), Tyler Gillett (from Flagstaff, AZ), Justin Martinez (Tucson, AZ), and Chad Villella (Punxsutawney, PA), then simply four aspiring directors who'd moved to Los Angeles to chase that seemingly impossibly dream. But a feature film backed by a studio as major as 20th Century Fox, and shown on upwards of 2,000 screens nationwide. Try a pipe dream, one laced with extra narcotics.

At the time, the foursome who'd eventually become Radio Silence just wanted to create the kinds of wild, funny, energetic genre movies that they themselves would watch—by any means necessary. Circulated, no less, via the modern-day Wild West known as the Internet.

Tyler Gillett: Justin and I went to the University of Arizona together, but we didn't really work on any film projects while we were there; that didn't happen until we moved out to Los Angeles. Matt and I worked together at New Line Cinema, in the mailroom.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: For what felt like a decade. [Laughs.] And then Chad and I met when he moved out to LA from Pittsburgh and we ended up in the same acting class. Once we all connected, we used the New Line offices to shoot all of our early stuff that ended up online. Since I had access to the whole office, that gave us all of this room and office set space for free, so we asked ourselves, "OK, what can do we here?"

Chad Villella: We shot all over that building, from the roof to the elevators to the offices within it. All super guerrilla style. We were renegades.

Bettinelli-Olpin: You know that scene in Goodfellas when they're doing the first robbery, and they walk in and he's like, "I'm the security"? That was me. [Laughs.] We went in on the weekends and did as much as we could without getting caught. I actually had New Line's president of production come up to me one day and say, "Hey, Matt, do you know if someone is shooting films here on the weekends? Because one of the security guards was telling me about it." And I was like, "I don't know, but I'll look into it." [Laughs.]

(Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin)

Villella: The best story from those days, though, is that we did this zombie scene once, and the cheese we used for the ripped-up flesh came from pizzas. We threw it all over the walls and onto the ceilings.

Bettinelli-Olpin: Yeah, so on Monday, we thought we'd cleaned the entire office, but I wanted to make sure again. I went in a half-hour earlier than usual, and I'm walking around the office, kind of tired. I get off the elevator on the third floor, look behind me, and notice that the elevator doors are just splattered with cheese and the sauce we used for blood. [Laughs.] I was like, "Oh, shit!" I had, like, three minutes left before everyone started arriving at work, so I had to Windex the shit out of those doors. And we ended up getting away with it.

Gillett: The first thing we did together was this little interactive viral video called "The Birthday Party," and our chemistry was just instantaneous. We loved the same movies, we laughed at the same things, and we all had the same work ethic. We all wanted to make stuff and we all wanted to be accountable for each other. We've literally worked together everyday since that first project, which we did in 2009.

Bettinelli-Olpin: One of the things that was really cool about it was, through YouTube now, we had distribution. Anybody can see anything anyone makes. So, cool, how can we, on our free time and with our own money and small budgets, tell stories that are bigger than just two dudes in a room talking, like those cheap web videos you see so often?

Gillett: Since sci-fi, horror, and adventure have always been our favorite kinds of movies, we said, "Let's tell those kinds of stories on the Internet." It felt good to creatively problem-solve, like, "OK, we have $100, let's do something with an alien. But then how can we show 10% of something and still make it work?" The way Steven Spielberg made Jaws by keeping the shark hidden and obscured for most of the movie, that's the way we approached things because we had to—we had no other choice. We've carried that with us through every project since.

Villella: That's made us great problem-solvers, because it's taught us how to solve problems through what's necessary for the story, too, not just what's best for the spectacle.

The Do-It-Yourself Approach

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From Anonymous to Viral

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Breaking Into Movies with V/H/S

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In addition to action-oriented clips like "The Birthday Party," the Radio Silence collective dabbled in the horror genre. Their short ">"Mountain Devil Prank Fails Horribly," a raucous mix of comedy and lo-fi but impressive visual effects work, made waves online when it was released in April 2010, giving the guys enough confidence to send it along to their favorite horror website, Bloody Disgusting, specifically its overseer, Brad Miska.

It was a wise move. A year later, Miska commissioned Radio Silence to make a found-footage horror short for an indie anthology he was producing, V/H/S. What they delivered to Miska was "10/31/98," the film's strongest segment and the crowd favorite during V/H/S' 2012 festival run, which included a Sundance premiere in January and SXSW in March.

"10/31/98," the film's closing short, is a haunted house picture for those with little patience—the antithesis of a film like James Wan's The Conjuring, "10/31/98" plays like a theme park ride, with its four ill-fated characters (played by Radio Silence themselves) showing up to a random suburban pad for a Halloween costume party, stumbling into an exorcism in the attic, and getting bombarded with an onslaught of supernatural insanity.

Made on the cheap, "10/31/98" is heavy on the slick, how'd-they-do-that? visuals effects. It's also the kind of calling card all hopeful horror filmmakers would would kill for.

Gillett: We definitely were having conversations with people from the movie world while we were making those web videos. It's funny, though—it's not the number of views you receive, it's the eyes that are viewing it. That's what's most important, I think, to this process. Things changed so much after V/H/S and so fewer people have seen V/H/S than have seen our online stuff, but we're so glad to have come from that online space. Everything we know as storytellers developed and was practiced online.

Bettinelli-Olpin: How we got involved with V/H/S actually connects to that idea of the actual eyes seeing something being more important than the number of eyes. I sent an email to Brad Miska, who runs the big horror website Bloody Disgusting, pretending I was a 13-year-old girl. We loved Bloody Disgusting, we did this "Mountain Devil Prank Goes Horribly Wrong" video that we thought could work well on that site, and we were trying to get it out there. So I emailed Brad, as this 13-year-old girl, with, "Hey, I saw this thing, it's super awesome!" [Laughs.] And he emailed back, like, basically calling us out on it immediately, asking, "Did you guys make it?" And I replied back with, "No, but I can get you in touch with the guys who did!" From that, Brad brought us in, we clicked, and we kept kicking around ideas for almost a year before V/H/S actually happened.

Gillett: It's funny, he called us to join the V/H/S team right when we'd decided to fall back from the digital stuff. Film and TV was always the goal for us; we always wanted to tell bigger stories. We were using that time to write and really kind of figure out how we could make our own feature, and then Brad called and things took off from there.

Villella: He called and said, "I know you guys want to make a feature, but how about you make one-fifth of a feature?" [Laughs.]

Martinez: And then, somehow, V/H/S got into Sundance, which was mind-blowing for us, even though we were drunk the whole time at Sundance.

Gillett: Even thinking back on it, that whole Sundance experience still doesn't feel real, like that was really some other guys living through that.

Villella: The first screening of V/H/S was one of the most nerve-wracking moments, just getting through a screening where Bob Weinstein is sitting in the front row, and Jason Blum is walking through the aisles. It was like, "Holy shit, what the fuck are we doing here?"

Gillett: And nobody had even seen the movie yet, which made it even more nerve-wracking. For all we knew, people would hate it and think our segment sucked the most. [Laughs.] We hadn't seen any of the segments. We had no idea what we were affiliated with at that point. There's the moment in David Bruckner's segment ["Amateur Night"] when the guy's dick gets ripped off, and that got the best response. All of the sudden, we breathed a sigh of relief. You could just feel all of the filmmakers started breathing much easier. Once people responded to that moment, we figured people would respond well to ours.

We were all surprised because, certainly, none of us set out to make a Sundance movie when Brad called us. We literally just approached it like we were going to make something small, with the four of us acting in it, and Brad gave us some money, so if something happens with it, great, but if not it would still be an awesome experience. Having it get into Sundance and then, of course, sell was completely unexpected.

Villella: We were getting burritos when Brad called us to say that we'd gotten into Sundance [Laughs.] We were in the parking lot eating, and he called us, saying, "Hey, guys, we got into Sundance!" And I remember all of us looking at each other and saying, "Wait, which Sundance? Not the actual Sundance Film Festival, right?" Maybe it was some other thing called Sundance. One that happens in Miami or something.

Working on Devil's Due

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Thanks to the industry buzz around V/H/S, the Radio Silence crew was suddenly hot in Hollywood. Meetings with big-wigs were scheduled. Hands were shook. Babies were kissed. Yet their dreams of joining the big leagues didn't materialize until they received the script for Devil's Due, a found-footage project that not so subtlety pulled inspiration from Roman Polanski's classic Rosemary's Baby.

Instead of a happily married couple moving to New York City, Devil's Due centers on newlyweds Zach (Zach Gilford) and Samantha (Allison Miller), whose honeymoon goes south after a few too many drinks turns one night into a forgotten blur. Back home, though, Samantha finds out that she's pregnant, but, like Mia Farrow's Rosemary Woodhouse before her, her baby's daddy isn't the man she married. He comes from a much hotter place of eternal damnation.

Gillett: V/H/S premiered in January, and then it was basically nine months of free water, validated parking, and meetings with producers and executives that all ended with, "OK, it was nice to meet you! We'd love to work on something with you guys someday." But then we'd never hear from them again.

Bettinelli-Olpin: We actually started working on a new Amityville Horror project with [fellow V/H/S co-director] David Bruckner for the Weinsteins, and we were holed up writing that for a few months. Then, we got another call from [producer] John Davis while in the parking lot of a burrito spot. Which makes me think, all of our biggest moments have happened in burrito spot parking lots. [Laughs.] We should move into a burrito parking lot.

Gillett: Before John called, it had dawned on us that the year before Sundance, we were constantly making web videos and working, but a year after Sundance, we hadn't made anything. But it was V/H/S that got us this job. John has such a small attention span, one of his assistants told him to sit down and watch V/H/S, and our segment specifically, and that we'd be a cool choice to direct Devil's Due. Within five minutes, apparently, he agreed and called us. The call was literally him saying, "Guys, I'm on vacation, but I want you to do my next movie." And then IMDB-searched for "John Davis" and saw his credentials, and were like, "Holy shit! Predator! This will be his 91st movie! Holy shit!"

In those meetings we'd been having, we were constantly getting pitched haunted house projects, because of our V/H/S segment. That's how Amityville came to us, too. It was also all found-footage stuff being sent our way. For a short time, actually, so we'd have something to work on, we were independently going to make a feature-length version of the V/H/S segment.

But when Devil's Due came our way, it was really exciting. It was the love story that really sold us. Usually in found-footage, point-of-view movies, you end up having more conversations about why the camera keeps being used than about the characters, but this one was about the characters from the very beginning. We certainly still needed to have those conversations about how we'd solve the fucking camera issue, but from the start it was about two people in love who want things in life but they're also at that stage where they're wondering if they'll be good parents and good in marriage, and those were questions we could all relate to. It felt unique. There's more to this movie than just scary found-footage stuff.

Bettinelli-Olpin: At first, we'd been hoping to not have to do a found-footage project, but this particular movie solved the camera problem and was about the characters, so we couldn't pass it up.

Applying Their Own Sensibilities to Familiar Horror Material

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Radio Silence's members know what you're thinking—great, another found-footage movie, and not only another found-footage movie, but one about the devil and demonic possession. How original, Hollywood.

Rest assured, though, Devil's Due isn't The Devil Inside, mainly because its makers aren't pedestrian horror enthusiasts. Long versed in the first-person POV aesthetic, they're well aware of the found-footage style's overused techniques and scare tactics; known for zany genre adventures like "Mountain Devil Prank Goes Fails Horribly," they're not interested in dreary cinematic Satanism, either.

For them, Devil's Due presented the rare opportunity to marry, no pun intended, a heartfelt story about two likable characters with the gonzo horror outbursts seen in their V/H/S segment, but on a much larger scale.

Gillett: We wanted to keep pushing the boundaries of found-footage, because we have dabbled in it a lot. It's always fun to ask ourselves, "OK, how can we make this fun, original, and fresh?" For no other reason than to just not be bored while making it, honestly.

Bettinelli-Olpin: We really brought our voice to the project, which made making the film so much fun. The question was, "How do we instill a fun energy throughout this?" That's always the question running through our projects. The script was originally much more like Rosemary's Baby, honestly, and much more of a creepy mood piece.

That's no slight against the original draft. We're obviously huge fans of the original script, or else we wouldn't have signed onto the project. And we love Rosemary's Baby. It was definitely more of a conventional horror movie, though, which presented challenges from the start. It was pitched and sold as a found-footage take on Rosemary's Baby.

Gillett: Audiences have very specific expectations when it comes to these kinds of horror movies, and we were very aware of that. There have been so many movies about the devil possessing people lately—it's been done so much. One of the things we did, and made the decision to own up to from day one, was to acknowledge that this is about the birth of the Antichrist. What makes Rosemary's Baby so tense and great is that they withhold that for the entire movie. That's what makes that movie fantastic.

Ours, though, is called Devil's Due—everyone's going to know what it is before they even buy their ticket. So let's own that. We moved that up to 15 minutes into the movie, whereas the original script concealed it for a long time, like Rosemary's Baby. From there, it was fun to figure out how to keep the audience ahead of the characters at first, and then when to put the characters in the know, and then when to have those points-of-view intersect and, if we do our job properly, put the audience in the dark when certain characters know more than they do. That was a really fun challenge.

Also, as a fun little nod to Rosemary's Baby, we were able to score an original prop crucifix from Roman Polanski's film and put it into Devil's Due. Our post-supervisor had it and let us put it into the movie.

The ideas of satanism and demonic possessions in horror are just so much fun, too. When you're playing with a demon or the Devil, there are no rules. You can do whatever you want with it, and that opened us creatively to do any number of crazy, fun paranormal things. There's no box when you're working with something like a demon—you can interpret that in so many fun ways.

Bettinelli-Olpin: We instilled such a sense of humor into the first half of the movie, and we're so proud of that. That's the kind of sensibility we had in our earlier web shorts, and in our V/H/S segment. Fox let us keep the humor in. It wasn't in the original draft, but we were able to allow Zach [Gilford] and Allison [Miller] to work their own senses of humor in and make the characters feel authentic.

Gillett: That's the kind of horror we want to make—horror with humor. Super-bleak horror isn't our thing. We love those kinds of movies, but that's now what we want to make. Those movies don't feel relatable. You always feel like you're watching a horror movie in those kinds of movies, because it's missing part of the dynamic range that real people have. Even when things are super shitty, we still try to laugh and bring ourselves up somehow.

As much as we could, we tried to explore that full range of emotions in Devil's Due. That's even more important when you're making a found-footage movie, too. It's supposed to be "real," right? So if the characters are just miserable and everything is so bleak, it doesn't feel real.

The trailers, we know, make it seem like we've made just another found-footage movie about the devil. Bu the stuff that they're not showing in the trailers is ultimately what will make the movie memorable. People will see this movie and fall in love with Zach and Allison, and they'll root for them, and feel something when all of the bad, crazy shit happens to them. At least that's our hope. That was the intention from the start.

The stuff that happens in a lot of horror movies is going to happen to their characters, but you're going to care about them through it all. We'd love for that to be part of the marketing, but that people will be surprised by that feels like a good thing.

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