EDGE Interview: Director Steven Pierce on Zombies, Gays and Homophobia in 'Herd'

The Halloween-timed horror movie "Herd" was about to have its Italian premiere, but director Steven Pierce didn't venture to Trieste for the occasion. "My wife and I have a four-month-old," Pierce told EDGE. "I got to go to Fright Fest and my wife stayed home with the baby. Since I've been back, I've been traveling and promoting the film. So, I just emailed them the other day and was like, I cannot. My wife will murder me! It'd be a horror film when I arrived home."

Domestic horror – with a dash of domestic terrorism – is what "Herd" is all about. A fresh twist on the zombie genre, "Herd" features a married lesbian couple – Jamie (Ellen Adair) and Alex (Mitzi Akaha) – who, following the loss of a baby, are struggling to save their marriage. A trip to the rural area where Jamie grew up puts them out of reach of the news, so by the time they realize the world is being overrun by zombies, Jamie's hometown has been taken over by rival militias looking to restore order, and only one of the two groups is interested in niceties like compassion or human decency.

"Herd" blends a wealth of social issues into its narrative about a same-sex family faced with an existential threat and less than hopeful odds of survival. The state of our deeply divided democracy, public health and safety, the role of government, and the rise of paramilitary groups that assume they, and they alone, are "patriots" all figure large here, but Pierce – who wrote the script together with James Allerydyce – keeps the focus on this family, as well as Jamie's painful past relationship with a homophobic and rejecting father – a men now revered as a savior in a world on the verge of losing all semblance of civilization.

EDGE chatted with Steven Pierce about the rise of queer visibility in recent horror movies, the zombie as metaphor for polarization, and the need to balance different opinions with an unmistakable point of view.

EDGE: Just recently we saw a new lesbian werewolf movie come out, and now we have a lesbian zombie movie. It's interesting how LGBTQ+ people and horror are coming together in the movies in a way that's more overt than it used to be.

Steven Pierce: We wanted to make it about a queer lead couple because [homophobia is] something I [witnessed] growing up in the '90s and early 2000s. We filmed this in my hometown, and when I was coming of age you could see how small groups, when they disagree with people's orientations, can very easily ostracize people. I saw that happen to some people who were very close to me, and it always stuck with me.

Horror is great because you try and put people in the most extreme emotional circumstances possible. I think for characters like this, where they're not certain they're going to be safe in any sort of given environment, is the truth for many people in areas of the world where their orientation is not understood or accepted. I think that that is a very important aspect to that story, because it not only works for the character, but it also does mirror what we're going through in real life with a lot of our fellow humans that are just trying to live, love, and get through life.

EDGE: It feels very topical to see a horror movie where rival militias are as much of a threat as the zombies.

Steven Pierce: There's a version of this movie, in a different universe, which is very much a tongue in cheek caricature of [these] types of individuals. Again, I'm from where this is filmed; these are people I love, they're my family and people that I know. I felt like it was necessary to give them an honest representation, but also give an honest representation of Jamie and Alex, who are more of an urban couple. Jamie's originally from here. She's been ostracized. She's run away from this community. It's kind of the theme of her character throughout the film, is her running away from things, and this world is dragging her physically and emotionally back into it.

The militia aspect of this was something we wrote far before the whole thing with January 6. The mission here was to tell a story that explains how these happen, not an assumption of, "Here is a thing [believed in by] this group of people that's easily to marginalize." I think we wanted to point a light at, "Here's an example of how the series of choices, and these people that care for each other, end up in a situation where they're willing to condemn and destroy first, rather than try and accept and understand."

EDGE: Zombie movies have always been about a fear of the herd, and zombies as a trope have been so successful lately, I'd argue, because both left and right see the other side as a mindless mob out to eat them alive.

Steven Pierce: Yeah, obviously. I think you have to address those elements. When you say "zombie," even the word sounds comical because you think about bad makeup and silly characters and people trapped in a building and getting eaten alive. But for me, what's interesting about them is that these are individuals that you may have known. You're not fighting an alien that has come from a world that you don't understand; these are people that had a similar path, that come from a similar place, it's just that events have led them to end up in a different scenario than you. That's a pretty terrifying concept.

EDGE: Is that what scares straight people about gay people and, especially, trans people – that sense that this is someone you thought you knew, and now they are different?

Steven Pierce: Right, and we do touch on that a bit. This is not a film about being gay; this is a film in which the lead characters are gay. I think it's an important distinction. I love so many people with so many different orientations that it doesn't bother me whatsoever. I figure, whatever makes them happy. As long as you're not taking somebody else's rights away, who cares what you do?

If films had more general representation of people being normal humans, you could stop full there and do it with straight couples. But it's more impactful that it is a gay couple, because it's not about being gay. It's about being in love and trying to find your way through [the world].

EDGE: There's a particular twist that the movie has that feels like a pointed remark about the politicization of the COVID pandemic, which is another hot-button topic.

Steven Pierce: The film was a discussion, and it's me working through my own ability to discuss these sorts of things. We have people [we care about] that fall on both sides of the camp politically. I think there's a little bit of a hinting of what the end message is for me. It is my hope that it is not too direct, and not too over the top. While I do have an opinion – and I think as an artist, it is your responsibility to have an opinion – I'm not a believer in the [idea that if] I put something out in the world, what the audience thinks of it is what it is. If you're going to ask these kinds of walking-the-line questions, I think you have to give your own point of view its day in the sun, or else all you're doing is observing. That's journalism. Films have a point of view.

"Herd" is available now on digital platforms and VOD.