Set in the 80s, Marc Meyers’s latest feature, We Summon the Darkness, revisits that specific time period when devil worshipers were going on killing sprees through suburban towns, leaving families terrified. The film is labeled horror, but it also has comedic elements, especially with some of the death scenes and music choices. In one sequence, Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven” plays quietly in another part of the house as mayhem ensues.

Overall, We Summon the Darkness is a fun thrill ride worth giving a chance. To learn more about how We Summon the Darkness was made, we spoke to the film’s lead editor, Jamie Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick has collaborated with Meyers on two other films, My Friend Dahmer and How He Fell in Love. Below, Kirkpatrick talks about his love of horror and how working on this film with Meyers was different than My Friend Dahmer.

Roarbots: How did you get into film editing? Was editing something you always wanted to do or did the job find you?

Jamie Kirkpatrick: I went to film school at Boston University. Back then, the film program concentrated on a solid, general film education with a good mix of theory and criticism and hands-on craft (writing, production, and editing). So, naturally, I felt like I was destined to be a director. But then the summer after my junior year, I somehow got an internship in the cutting room on a big Hollywood comedy (Little Giants), and it changed my life.

The editors let me come in every day and shadow the assistant editors. Several of those assistants saw how eager I was and showed me how to do what they did. Keep in mind, this was 1994, so while the editors were editing on Lightworks (an early NLE), all the assistants were working with 35mm work print on benches and Steenbecks.

Then one day, Steven Spielberg, who was an executive producer on the film, came in to help try to fix the second act, which wasn’t testing well. I got to sit in on those sessions for a couple of days, and when I saw how much they were able to affect the film – without any reshoots – I was hooked.

Jamie Kirkpatrick

Roarbots: You’ve mentioned that you loved watching 80s horror movies when growing up. We Summon the Darkness has that same vibe as many of those films. What were some of your favorite 80s horror films?

Kirkpatrick: It all started with John Carpenter’s Halloween. This was around 1981 (I was 9), and the film had come out three years prior, but if you were a kid then, you knew about this film even though we were too young to see it.

And then for some crazy reason, they showed it on network TV on Halloween night! I distinctly remember secretly watching it when I had a friend sleeping over.  On one hand, it was a huge mistake because neither of us slept well for quite some time after that night – in fact, I still get a chill down my back if I have to walk by one of those tall hedgerows that border certain sidewalks.

But on the other hand, I also became a diehard Carpenter fan. The Thing is one of my top 10 favorite films of all time.

Roarbots: When you begin editing a film, what is one of the first things you do? Do you begin the editing process after everything is already shot? Or do you start piecing together once a few scenes are filmed?

Kirkpatrick: I generally begin working a day or two after the first day of production as each day’s footage (dailies) needs to be processed and organized. The key to good editing is knowing the footage, so the first thing I do is watch all the dailies for a given scene. I make markers on each take in my editing software with super basic notes as I’m watching (e.g., GOOD LINE READ, GREAT REACT, LINE FLUB).

Then I just dive in and start assembling the scene, based on how the scene unfolds in the script. On a typical film, I try not to get too far “behind camera” and make sure I have at least a rough assembly of every preceding scene before I move on to newly shot scenes. If there’s a lull (for instance, if my assistant needs more time to prep and organize a day’s material), then I use that time to go back and do a more detailed pass on certain scenes.

Films are usually shot out of sequence, so sometimes for weeks I only have a collection of random cut scenes. One of the more enjoyable moments for me is when I’m able to join two or three scenes that I’ve assembled and see it start to become a film.

Roarbots: We know you can’t give too much away, but do you have a favorite sequence in the film?

Kirkpatrick: My favorite sequence in We Summon has to be the bonfire scene. It’s like a 12-minute scene, and it was an absolute beast to cut, simply because Marc likes to shoot long uninterrupted takes. Also, there was a lot of ad libbing and there were two cameras running the whole time. It was just a ton of footage and easy to get bogged down in it. My assistant, Mathew Buckley (who deserves a lot of credit on this film), worked hard to organize the scene into beats that I could focus on individually before moving on to working on the scene as a whole. That said, I’m extremely proud of how it turned out.

Roarbots: What did you do to prepare for this job?

Kirkpatrick: Marc had sent me the original script right about the time he had signed on to direct, so I had more lead time than I usually do to let the story seep into my brain. But I also wanted to re-immerse myself into the horror-thriller genre. I did go back and watch some of those classic 80s genre films like April Fools Day, Night of the Demons, and a couple of the Friday the 13th.

I also went on vacation during that time and decided to finally read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, which is this really thick, super in-depth unpacking and critique of horror as a genre and what makes things “scary.” I’m a huge King fan from way back, but I had never read that one before. It’s amazing and incredibly insightful. I actually found reading that the most helpful of all my mental preparations to work on this film.

Roarbots: For those people who aren’t familiar with the editing process, was Marc Meyers always in the editing bay with you? What is the editor-director relationship like?

Kirkpatrick: Typically, the director starts coming in a week or two after production wraps. This case was a little different since Marc had to immediately start prepping another film and couldn’t come in much. But this was our third collaboration and we had spoken so much during shooting that I knew what he wanted throughout the film.

Any time I had a question, I could just send him a video link of a scene and we could talk through it over the phone, so it didn’t pose any kind of problem. Later in the process, after I was already on another film myself, editor Joe Murphy came in to work with Marc to finish things up, finalize our visual effects, and deliver the film. And I thought he did a great job.

Roarbots: You previously worked with Marc on My Friend Dahmer. How was working on this film different?

Kirkpatrick: During the editing of My Friend Dahmer, we always felt we had something special, but the challenge was taking one of history’s most notorious serial killers and presenting him to an audience as a real complex human being with real complex emotions.

There was a lot of constructive debate in the editing room about when we had “pushed” the film a little too far in one direction or when we needed to pull back just a bit. That film took a lot of nurturing, for lack of a better word.

We Summon is a completely different animal in that it doesn’t have the same “baggage” as My Friend Dahmer. It’s more of a celebration (and subversion) of a lot of classic horror tropes. Even though the events in the film are presented completely seriously, there’s a wink to the audience, especially the true horror fans, that we want them to enjoy the ride.

Roarbots: Did you learn anything from working on We Summon the Darkness?

Kirkpatrick: I really do try to take away something from each job. I think on this one, I learned how to better structure simultaneous action occurring in different locations. In the last half hour of the film, there’s a lot of mayhem happening in different parts of the house at the same time, and it was fun to play around with that – who are we showing and when and for how long before we cut to someone else.

Roarbots: We see that your other film, Critical Thinking, was supposed to premiere at this year’s SXSW, but obviously didn’t happen because of the virus. Do you know when audiences are going to get to see that film?

Kirkpatrick: Yeah, that was a huge bummer that South By Southwest was canceled, but thank god they did. Critical Thinking is about as different from We Summon the Darkness as you can get. It’s the real-life story of an inner-city high school chess team who went on to become national champions.

It’s a film I’m incredibly proud of and so thrilled that director John Leguizamo brought me on as a collaborator. I do know the producers are talking to a number of companies regarding distribution, but that’s all I know. It’s John’s directorial debut, and I just can’t wait for audiences to see it. It’s really quite special.