Five Lockdown Movies with Esmarelda VillaLobos

Nothing but the Devil and a movie...

We would all rather forget the pandemic, but in terms of the creative output that was produced by those willing to point a camera at themselves (or the few individuals they were able to make contact with), some interesting and innovative projects made it into a desolate landscape of inner torment and (often) the darkest of reflections... if not for a quarantined chuckle or two...

To celebrate the five-year anniversary of Verzus — what is thought to be the first film shot and released during the pandemic — writer, comedian, and feature film director Esmarelda VillaLobos tells us more about her (single-handed) little film, along with providing a list of five lockdown favourites.

Your 2021 lockdown movie Verzus is thought to be the first film shot and released during the pandemic. How did you find this out?

No one was making anything for quite some time once lockdown started. It’s weird to think about it now, how we all just sat around for so many months just trying to survive, but on May 9th, I was shopping for a new comforter with my stimulus money and said to myself, “I want to make a feature,” so I started writing a script that same night. I wound up writing and shooting the entire film in 21 days with no planning whatsoever and around the same time I announced the release of the finished project, there were rumblings of the Sam Levinson film, Malcolm & Marie going into production as the first post-lockdown film, but by that time I was already finished with post.

Before we get stuck into your five favs, tell everyone what your own "quarantine feature," Verzus, about?

At its heart, Verzus is a comedy about the thoughts that creep into your head at night, and how the entire planet was simultaneously wrestling with its own mortality. Covid was an interesting time, this feeling of imminent death would creep in your bones every time you stepped out of the house and it felt like it would last forever. It was such a huge unknown and that created a lot of fears and insecurities in a lot people, I know it did for me.

Where did the idea come from?

I always tend to start with dialogue and build the story around that, so there wasn’t really an idea, per se. I was a camp counsellor for several years and had a bunch of funny headbands laying around. I found some devil horns in my cache, started writing a conversation between myself and the devil and the story kind of evolved from there.

If Covid hadn’t happened, do you think you would have still made a film, regardless?

I’m not sure. I made a twenty-minute short film with a full cast and crew three years later which I’m very proud of, but I feel like I needed to make Verzus first to really understand my own filmmaking process. I have projects I’ve been trying to get off the ground for years, but in this case, I think the fact that I didn’t have to wait around for anyone else, or chase anyone down, was probably the biggest factor in getting the whole thing finished.

In the bedroom. Writer, director, editor, set designer (the whole shebang), Esmarelda in the first lockdown movie.

Who inspires you, both in terms of filmmakers and other artists?

At the time I was riding high from the films of 2019, which I personally feel is one of the greatest years of cinema in the entire 21st century. Parasite, Marriage Story, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Little Women, 1917 all came out in 2019 and I’m pretty sure I watched those films at least fifty times each during lockdown. A lot of moments in Verzus are directly inspired by many of those films and it’d be fun to count all the Easter eggs someday. I really wanted something I made to live within that same time period, which is why I think I powered through and got it done so quick. I’m a big sucker for great dialogue. Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is, for me, far more thrilling than any action movie I’ve seen. The violence lies in the way the words cut each person’s emotional core and that’s the stuff that really revs my engine.

“I had made a true indie film, a handmade film, my film, I didn’t care about anything else…”

— Esmarelda VillaLobos

Aside from therapy, what was the most important thing the film provided for you?

Relief. I used to be an assistant at a busy indie film finance and international sales company for about five years and somewhere in there I think I got jaded and disconnected from cinema as my true passion. In January 2015, I visited The New Beverly for the first time and saw Singin’ in the Rain on 35MM and something inside of me just woke up. Shortly after that I walked away from the industry and set out to just create. I wrote half a dozen screenplays but struggled to get anything going and when Verzus happened, it was like a massive weight came off my shoulders. I had made a true indie film, a handmade film, my film, I didn’t care about anything else, I did it, I made it and it was such a relief to know that I could complete it.

I’m interested to hear more about your other endeavours such as the painting and the standup comedy.

I started stand-up comedy to build my skillsets after I started pursuing my creative endeavours full-time. I met and married my husband shortly after finishing Verzus, so I’ve disappeared from the scene a little bit, but I do have a couple of shows lined up and my first two self-produced comedy albums are available for download on my website www.esmareldaknows.com. I did a lot of paintings during 2020 and would love to do a show at some point, they’re cute and they tell a story. I’m no master painter, but I’d say of all mediums, painting is by far my biggest form of therapy.

Woman of many talents. Then there's the food 'n' that... you may recognise Esmarelda from her appearance on Gordon Ramsey's Idiot Sandwich.

What would the main advice be to anyone wanting to make a film?

Just make it. Seriously, don’t wait for anyone, just make the damn film. This 89-minute film cost me a whopping $350 and was filmed entirely in one bedroom with one person doing every single job on set, so there really is no excuse anymore – just make the damn film. You don’t need some big idea, you don’t need anyone to give you permission, you just need to have a voice and if you’re meant to make films, a film will happen. I’m a big fan of cooking shows, and Verzus was like “Chopped” for filmmaking. I used whatever I had available to me and built it as I went – four walls and a camera, that’s it, that’s all I had. Sure, I wish the audio was better or certain shots were more in focus, but in the grand scheme of things, I think I sleep better at night knowing that I made anything at all rather than wringing my hands over whether or not it’s perfect. Every person I’ve ever shown it to laughs exactly when I want them to laugh and is always delighted when it’s over.  To know it’s possible and it’s completed means the entire world to me. Seriously, just make the damn film.

Really excited to hear your thoughts on a number of lockdown movies you admire. Which films are you bringing to the table?

It was so fun putting this list together. I hope one day “lockdown” is considered its own genre, but below are a few films that were made during this era that stood out to me.

Hypnotic (2023, dir. Robert Rodriguez)

Okay, first and foremost I need to get this out of the way – I love Ben Affleck. I love Ben Affleck like it’s 1998 and Armageddon just came out, but millennial fangirling aside, the main reason I’m including Hypnotic is because 1.) Robert Rodriguez is the ultimate O.G. “shoot from the hip” director – I mean he literally wrote the book on how to do a lot with very little – and 2.) because Hypnotic is such a good example of post-pandemic creative pivoting. I don’t know if it counts as a “lockdown film” particularly, but the whole project was stopped and started and stopped and restarted so many times, and eventually RR said, “hell, we’ll just finish it in my backyard” and did exactly that. It’s such a fun sci-fi noir where if you get it, you get it, and I got it and I loved it and I even got to visit Troublemaker Studios while I was in Austin for SXSW, which ranks as one of the best days of my existence. Hypnotic is such a good example of creative perseverance and, for me, it’s an overall fun watch for more reasons than just Ben Affleck’s incredible jawline.

Inside (2021, dir. Bo Burnham)

If I were to ever have Verzus on a double feature with another lockdown film, I think I would choose Bo Burnham’s Inside. It’s not a narrative feature, but the creativity is just oozing out of every frame. I feel like there are a lot of similarities as far as theme and tone goes and both revolve around funny people just making the best out of a bad situation. It really is a time capsule looking back on it now, especially how it captures everyone’s mutual feeling that lockdown would last forever. Looking back five years later, it kind of feels silly how panicked we all were, but I think that’s why it’s important to have the films that were made during those first couple of years. It really was a global moment where nearly everyone on earth was reckoning with their own mortality at the same time, and I think it’s important to keep in perspective that – for better or worse – for a brief moment, we really were all on the same page.

Host (2020, dir. Rob Savage)

I think if this was an awards show, Host would win the prize for Most Entertaining Lockdown Film. It’s really a great horror film, especially considering that it’s all done “over Zoom,” but you’re hooked from the first frame, and it really doesn’t let go. It would be so easy for it to get hokey or boring or unbelievable quickly, but it’s incredibly gripping the whole way through. Its runtime is only 57 minutes, which is similar to the first version I made of Verzus. Originally, Verzus was only 55 minutes long (called the “Abbreviated Version”) because I had a hard out on May 31st for a summer job that was starting. But that job ended early due to Covid and then I created the longer 89-minute version of the film which is the “Extended Version” that’ll be getting the bootleg VHS release. Host does such a fantastic job crafting a narrative not only in such a short time frame, but also simultaneously “live.” Watching a movie that takes place over the course of 24-hours is thrilling in and of itself but end to end 57 minutes is really a testament to its craftsmanship. The relationships between each character are strongly felt which again is remarkable considering they are never in the same room together. You can really feel all of the Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity influences, but I don’t care – a good film is a film that makes you feel things and Host really did give me the heebie jeebies, I can’t recommend it enough.

Malcom & Marie (2021, dir. Sam Levinson)

Malcolm & Marie didn’t go over well with the critics when it came out, but I’m a sucker for dialogue, so I was pretty captivated by it. I will say this – John David Washington goes on some of the absolute best rants I have ever heard in a film, and he delivers them with such passion and gusto, I found myself clapping alone in my room while I was watching it on Netflix with my cat. At the time I was a little salty about this movie since Netflix bought it for $30 million and Wikipedia still lists it as the “first Hollywood feature to be entirely written, financed, and produced during the COVID-19 lockdown.” Okay, maybe my movie wasn’t a Hollywood feature, but again, I had wrapped post just as they were starting production, so I was kind of mumbling to myself when I went back to work at my minimum wage job. Five years later, it is what it is, and I just love Zendaya as a movie star – she is so lanky and tall and her eyes just pierce your soul, I’m a sucker for any actor with great eyes and Zendaya has both the look and the attitude to back it up. It’s been exciting to watch her career grow and I love that she took the initiative to produce the project as well. I also feel that films like these get better when you watch them together because it really does capture such a very specific bubble in time that we will – thankfully, probably – never experience again.

Skinamarink (2021, dir. Kyle Edward Bell)

I really love the aesthetic of Skinamarink. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Kyle Edward Bell emerge as a top cinematographer down the line, but the whole film for me really encapsulated a late-eighties/early nineties mood that I feel is the true star of the film. If it makes any sense to anyone, I watched the entire film while sitting on my couch, but I felt like I was lounging on a beanbag chair circa 1998. There isn’t much narrative, and I wasn’t affected by it the same way I was with Host but you still have to give props to a film that managed to make $2 million at the box office off a $15,000 budget. Also shout out to any filmmaker who makes their first feature in their parents’ house – I feel like that is a creative rite of passage all on its own.

I’ll be auctioning off a select few Collector’s Edition VHS copies of Verzus: The Extended Edition on eBay July 15th to celebrate the five-year anniversary of when I first released it online for my friends and family. There will be a simultaneous Kickstarter to raise money for finishing funds so that hopefully we can get it distributed to the masses one day. I’ve spoken to a few different film historians and I’ve yet to find any other instance of a full-length, live-action, narrative feature film made entirely by one person, so as far as we know it’s one of a kind. I’m hoping that anyone who is a film fan will think that’s cool, and if we can get the word out enough, I think it’d be great to put this on a midnight movie circuit at some point. A lot of great filmmakers started with small handmade films, so if you’re a fan of creative DIY silliness, then Verzus might look cool sitting on your shelf.

You can follow Esmarelda on Instagram and stay updated over on her official site. Make sure you also check out the extensive Verzus BTS.