Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival Marina de Van, director of “Dark Touch,†at the Tribeca Film Festival.From “Carrie to “Firestarter,†the horror genre is filled with girls who have special powers â€" to move objects, or ignite flames â€" that can be used for good or evil. In the film “Dark Touch,†an 11-year-old named Neve, the only survivor of a massacre that killed her parents and brother, finds she has similar powers. What she does with them, and who she turns them against, makes the film more of a grisly revenge story than a tale of supernatural chicanery.
“I had this idea that the horror genre was a good one in which to experience the problem of child abuse,†said Marina de Van, who wrote and directed the film, part of this year’s Midnight Section of the Tribeca Film Festival. “Usually when you see children growing up in comfortable neighborhoods you have his feeling that they are happy. It hides the violence inside of the family.â€
Ms. de Van recently spoke with ArtsBeat about her film. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Why have a little girl as your protagonist?
Since I’m a girl, it’s easier for me to pretend to feel how the girl feels. It’s frightening because a young girl is associated with sweetness. She’s less frightening than a boy. A sweet little girl becoming a killer was more frightening for me than a boy.
She is also a victim of abuse. What interested you about taking the story of an abused child and making it into a horror film?
Kids who are damaged enough not to be able to be touched in an easy way â€" I wanted to show that it was a dead end once they were molested and damaged. They couldn’t handle relationships with other people and adults. Love is not enough.
I also wanted it to be more than a horror movie, more of a psychological movie about a girl discovering her own emotions at the beginning, but then she finds that when objects start to kill, she’s not aware of her own anger and pain.
It sounds similar to “Carrie.â€
I love “Carrie.†The girl is a little older in that film, but she’s still trapped with a mother who is completely crazy and oppressive and abusive.
There’s a creepy scene in your film where a girls are at a garden party, and all of a sudden the dolls they are playing with catch fire. Thanks to Neve.
It’s like a kind of metaphor of the strength of girls. On one hand it’s a way of using the sun and the power of the girl’s gaze, and in another way it’s a metaphor for the feeling the dolls could feel if they were alive, this fire burning inside them.
Do you consider your film a horror movie?
I consider it a thriller rather than a real horror movie. It’s horrific yes, there are horror scenes but it’s more of a thriller. I’m not a fan of horror movies. I don’t know the genre well. But it’s useful to feel fear, to feel the shock of blood and of death. It’s a feeling we have to be confront with in life. It’s cathartic.
What was it like working with Marie Missy Keating, who plays Neve?
It was very pleasant. She was easy. It was her first job and she did well. She wasn’t scared. On a set when you see furniture moving with some wires pulling them, when you see actors with a piece of glass in their feet, it’s not dramatic it’s funny.
