Terror intrudes on seemingly idyllic small-town Florida in “The Man in the White Van.” The new thriller, from Jacksonville native Warren Skeels, opened in theaters nationwide on Dec. 13. The film revisits a string of abductions and murders that actually happened in the mid-1970s, which led to the grisly discovery of a “house of horrors” in Spring Hill, a yard full of buried bodies and the life imprisonment of Billy Mansfield Jr., for the killing of five women— although his murder victims are still being identified, all these years later.
Skeels, perhaps best-known for his reality series “Siesta Key,” made his feature directorial debut with a cast that includes Ali Larter (“Final Destination,” the “Resident Evil” franchise), Sean Astin (“The Goonies,” “Lord of the Rings”) and young horror-movie star Madison Wolfe (“The Conjuring 2,” “Malignant,” “Mayfair Witches”) as Annie, who is stalked by the faceless man in the white van in the weeks leading up to a fateful Halloween night.
Although Shreveport, Louisiana, sits in for rural Central Florida—see if you can tell the difference—roughly a quarter of the production was shot in the Sunshine State, with a key crew largely made up of Floridians. “This really is a Florida story,” says Skeels, who met with Flamingo over Zoom for a recent conversation about the film. The writer-director talked about his own early brushes with sinister vehicles, his true-crime fascination and his love of scary movies—especially those by the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT FLORIDA AND SERIAL KILLERS?
Warren Skeels: You know, it’s crazy. I mean, there’s a lot in California and Texas and all along the South, obviously, and pockets in New York. But it really does feel like Florida was sort of an epicenter of serial killer activity in the ’70s, along with that kind of central part of the state in California, where, oh gosh, Ed … featured in “Mindhunter.”
ED KEMPER.
WS: Yeah. There’s a pocket in California, and all over Florida (where there) was a golden age of serial killers. It could be a lot of things. They call it “weird Florida” for a reason, right?
HAVE YOU ALWAYS BEEN A TRUE CRIME AFICIONADO?
WS: I grew up fascinated by the strange activities of things in Florida. Serial killers, true crime, suspense thrillers. I was a latchkey kid growing up. I had my share of long walks home from school or riding my bike. When I was 10 (or) 11, I had moments where I felt that I was being followed. One day it was a van, a year later it might be some sedan. That always felt creepy and mysterious, and it was negative attention. That was something that dialed me into Annie’s story when we were crafting it and talking with the woman who survived her experience with Billy Mansfield Jr. She started off trying to ignore this white van following her, until it really became a presence. By time she approached her parents about it, they didn’t really believe her. She was prone to telling tall tales. That period of time in rural Florida was not prone to criminal activity of that nature. An idea of a serial killer wasn’t top of the mind for anybody.
HOW CLOSE DID YOU STICK TO THE ACTUAL DETAILS OF THE CASE?
WS: There is always an element of transitioning from a personal account and turning it into a movie. There are some creative liberties taken. There were about five or six core moments that happened, and Sharon, the co-writer, and I decided we wanted to home in on those as guideposts. We also felt like we wanted to be really true to the story of the sisters. In real life, Annie was a bit of a tomboy … caught between being a kid and a young woman. Her sister was very much a fashionista and very feminine. That dynamic was interesting to us. Annie’s storyline is 80% one victim, and 20% another victim’s outcome. We pieced those together for our fictional Annie.
WERE YOU A FAN OF THE CLASSIC ’70s AND ’80s SLASHER FILMS?
WS: Sure. John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” (and his version of) Stephen King’s, “Christine,” both Spielberg’s “Duel” and “Jaws,” were inspirations for the fabric of certain elements in the film. And how the cinematographer and I decided to treat the van, ultimately, as a villain in itself, as kind of the henchman for the predator. I loved Alfred Hitchcock. As a young lad, one of my favorite movies was “Rear Window.” I don’t even know why at the time I loved it so much, but it made such an impact on me: that level of suspense, and what he was able to do with two or three characters. Jimmy Stewart, who has a broken leg, and is sitting in his apartment just watching what’s happening … the suspense of that, in a slow burn that ratchets up into this really fun climax.
YOUR STAR, MADISON WOLFE, REALLY DISPLAYS WHAT HORROR FANS CALL “FINAL GIRL” ENERGY.
WS: She does. There’s just a lot of strength in her and a maturity that I felt she could bring to Annie that would really bring out who Annie was … You felt like she could be up for the challenge. She’s such an incredible actress at her age. One day I was chatting with her, and I realized “Oh, man, you’ve worked with Amy Adams, you’ve worked with Brian Cranston, you’ve worked with Vera Farmiga. Directors like James Wan. The list went on.
WHAT’S NEXT?
WS: Sharon (Cobb, the co-writer) and I really wanted to talk to detectives who worked the case and trying to track them down 45 years later was a little bit of an arduous task. I was able to lock in with one detective … (but) he was going through some surgeries at that time. We decided to lean on the archival footage and the information that we needed to pepper in elements of the serial killer, but since it was being told from Annie’s perspective, there’s only so much that we are going to get into. After we’d been finished filming, that detective reached back out and was like, “I’m doing so much better now. Do you want to come down and meet with myself … and the cold case detectives in Hernando County?” That was a very interesting conversation that has led to much more research on my end. I’m working with partners now, developing a limited docu-series based on those findings. That is the next incarnation of the story to potentially be told here.
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