It is a warm and bright Friday morning at FrightFest when FILMHOUNDS catches up with Rob Rice to talk about one of this year’s least easy-to-define films. The writer-director has arrived on a delayed red-eye for the European Premiere of Ponderosa, but there’s no lack of sharpness as he talks about the risk that his latest film may not satisfy any particular audience. Or, as he reasons, “maybe they’ll find it also satisfying because it’s like life.”
FrightFest is mostly known for horror and fantasy, but has a strong history of screening challenging and genre-skewering films. Ponderosa could be this year’s flagship offering.
In a year where liminal horror is making significant inroads into mainstream cinema, it spins an obtuse satire of American society across generations and suburban spaces. From production design to horror tropes and finding the movie’s audience, Ponderosa’s balancing act is at the centre of our conversation with the fascinating director just outside the “dark heart of cinema.”
Your director’s statement is one of the most impressive I’ve ever read. It’s combative and sets out exactly what you’re going to do in Ponderosa… But it also acknowledges that idiosyncrasy is the way to do it. How was the process of making a film like that? Did you know what that idiosyncratic path would be, or was it a continual recalibration?
That’s a good question. I think it’s hard. In a way, the film is about somebody trying to tell the younger generation that the world is explicable, and they’re wrong. So for the film to also be completely explicable would somehow not jive with the moral of the story. George’s world sees the common sense of the 20th century as totally coherent, and I don’t. The film is about the broken passing down of that idea. So, if the film were totally coherent, I think it wouldn’t practice what it was preaching; it needs to have some brokenness in its language.
Maybe the film is trying to say that there is another way, and it may feel quite strange to you because of how much work has been put into saying that the existing way is commonsensical, but actually it’s totally arbitrary. And the new way, though it may feel strange, is out there and is possible.
The production design is a huge part of that. It creates that liminal space in between the characters and the canvas to play out. Madeline [Sadowski] was your production designer; what was your relationship like from start to finish?
She’s amazing, and I think you know it takes a trained eye to understand how amazing. In many scenes, what she was asked to do was not let her hand be felt. You know, like in their house, especially Zeke and Sandra’s house, the main character’s kind of hero location had to be almost entirely blank. It had to have almost nothing in it, and that had to feel intentional and not like an oversight. That’s very, very hard to do – you have to come all the way back around to not dress a place in a way that feels intentional.
The movie is so much about spaces and psychogeographies that a lot of the intellectual work was on her shoulders, and the spaces had to perform in the ways we needed them to. The movie is about the sterilisation of our lives, and the spaces had to be sterilised in exactly that aggravating way that might drive you to whatever happens in the government.
Within that space, you’re comparing two generations. I think it’s fair to say you fall in between those generations. Do you align more with one, and how was it balancing the two?
It’s complicated, too. I feel like the movie is performed as if I’m at a table overhearing them argue with each other. They’re kind of talking across me, and I’m in the middle, and I’m not exactly intervening. I like that format because I think the ideological hand of the director can be felt too much. It’s like a dramatisation of what somebody believes. I am a very ideological person, but I don’t think that’s what the film should necessarily be.
I thought it was a nice aesthetic gesture to recuse myself from the argument. It’s like I was tired that evening, and they’re arguing over the dinner table, and I kind of just sat it out and let them argue. I do have—of course, and I think it’s ultimately felt—my allegiances. But I also like to lend the perspective I have from being between them. I have a foot in each, and I can understand each by default, but also from somewhere removed, whereas each of them is totally dug in by their natures.
You’ve assembled a great cast. Difficult to pick on one, but Bill Camp puts in another incredible performance. I love the way the camera is often just there to capture him staring off-screen for a way out of a situation. How was the process of working with Bill to develop George?
I think with both performances, Zeke (Jack Dylan Grazer) and George (Camp), the script is contingent on them. The execution of the film is on the shoulders of those two performances.
But you know, Bill’s is very big. George is such a flailing person. You have to see his desperation, and it has to be getting away from him. It’s not a controlled performance, and so someone had to be really willing to unlatch something and let us watch it. I think the film would be less interesting if George’s character were totally coherently aligned with what he believes. Actually, he’s like one of the dumbest evangelists of what his world is asking him to believe. I think he’s more interesting because you can get an insight into the emotional desire to have an ideology that makes things make sense, but it doesn’t quite make sense to him. He doesn’t know any of those names. He doesn’t get it. He is just full of actual libidinal desire, and I think it’s interesting to see him try to square that circle. I can’t imagine anyone else doing it but Bill. Bill’s just Bill.
I love that scene when he runs off saying I don’t know any of those names; the desperation in it. There are also distinct flashes of horror tropes that pull out the idiosyncrasy, running across the realm of hybrid horror. I’m particularly thinking of the tracking shot running through the house, and what I think is a bit of Grand Guignol at the end. How was it bouncing through that horror?
In the UK, I like to talk about Mark Fisher. He has a beautiful book, ‘The Weird and the Eerie’. The weird is the presence of something unexpected, and the eerie is the absence of something expected. And I think it is a very eerie world; we’re talking about liminal worlds a lot these days. This American suburban world, which I think is recognisable to a lot of people around the world, where everything is explicable economically, but not in a human way. So everything has been sterilised, everything has been homogenised, and they think that’s going to make it work for them. But actually, I think they’re loosing some kind of monster into the world by doing that. I think that you cannot push people that deeply into the absence of humanity without something really scary coming back to fight you.
So, I think the film in many ways is about imagining what will come to punish them for what they’ve done, or what kind of golem or egregore is getting produced by that sterilisation. Like in the hospital, the most dangerous bacteria are produced by the presence of antibacterials all around the hospital. I think we did something in the 20th century where we protected ourselves from all the most common forms of infection, but we’ve also insisted that the most destructive one will now come for us. I think that’s part of what the film’s about.
So do you think audiences will see this as an apocalyptic film?
Yes, I think they can feel it as one. I think the film is one that, like where we started, has some idiosyncrasies. That is what generous people call them, or obtuseness, or something. I think there’s a bit of intellectual confusion sometimes, and then emotional coherence, where you say this is touching on something that I put to the side within myself, which is some kind of fear of apocalypse.
It’s a kind of interregnum film—a period between the return and the fall; like something has broken irreparably, and whatever is going to come in and fix it, however violently, is still on its way. We’re in that kind of eerie silence where we’re waiting, and I think all of us have that sense. The film names it, even though not so explicitly.
You include a post-credit scene – a very confrontational lock frame. Why was it important to end on that note?
Yes, I just like it. One, because it’s kind of architectural. The film is about spaces and architecture. This sequence comes after the credits: It’s kind of like in the basement of the film, in the basement of the material of the film. It’s like an answer, in a way, to the inexplicability. But it’s both satisfying and not satisfying. It’s kind of like you wouldn’t say that you didn’t expect that guy was part of all of this. You know he’s there. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but you knew he was there. And then when you see him, you say, “Oh yeah, I knew this guy was involved.” I liked it.
I also like the film ending with something unfinished. Something happens, and it stays there. Playing basketball at the end; the ball never falls. I like sending people out knowing the film will never resolve itself. They’re forever, in a way, cursed for having seen the film with that irresolution. And he’s like an usher or something, sending them back into their lives. He’s also an architect. You know, the copyright often comes up at the end of the film—the year—but also, I think it’s a kind of curse, like a Black Spot in Muppet’s Treasure Island. Like you know something’s happening this year.
“The basement of the film” is a beautiful phrase. Finally, you’re here for the European premiere at a massive horror and fantasy festival. So how much has gone into the strategy of finding an audience, or finding the biggest audience you can for this?
Yeah, very good question. It’s an in-betweeny kind of film. You know, it’s kind of an art film; it’s kind of a horror film; it’s kind of a comedy. I don’t know… It’s all these things. It’s a weird contemporary landscape where only the things that are the most straightforward have an easy time finding an audience. So I think you really need to go to where the people are in order to bring the film. And so I don’t know that it’s a stretch, but it’s an invitation at least: can you guys see this as your kind of thing?
I also think the frustrations of the film are part of what’s productive about it. So I think the art film audience will be slightly frustrated by its flirting with commercial aesthetics. The commercial audience will be slightly frustrated by its pace and ultimately obtuseness tying up the narrative. The genre audience may be frustrated by how long you’re made to wait for the genre elements to emerge. But maybe they’ll find it also satisfying because it’s like life. I think you may feel, in the end, maybe more of a true believer than a lot of people who play with elements because they’re there to play with. It’s not that I’m just a fan of genre films; it’s that I believe these things may emerge literally in life. Just bear with me, and you may find something for you.
Ponderosa received its European premiere at FrightFest 2026 on Friday, September 28
