The machinations of reality dating shows can be a uniquely hellish cocktail of stress, manipulation, and artifice. While what’s presented is a heartwarming tale of two people finding love after a gauntlet of potential suitors, it is a carefully constructed narrative on behalf of the show’s producers to craft a story that audiences will be bewitched by. It’s bewildering that more genre films haven’t been made that spin a dating show’s horrors into a compelling film; thankfully, director Rebecca Wahls does just that with Him.
Produced by Love is Blind cast member Nick Thompson, Him tells the story of the final five contestants of a reality dating show: Jenna (Kira Omans), Shana (Higgins), Savannah (Sydney Battle), Claire (Margaret Berkowitz), and Adrianne (Lucie Solène Allouche). As a reward for having avoided the chopping block, the women are relocated to a remote villa. Feeling more like a space of house arrest rather than a luxurious getaway (the fridge is ill-stocked, their phones have been confiscated, and none of the TVs have remotes), once they’re tipped off that the suitor, Jeff, (who is never seen on-screen) who they’ve been vying for the affection of has deceived them, they band together to confront not only him but the show’s producers who’ve had a hand in manipulating them from the start.
Mining the setting for all of its worth, the film started as a play written by Higgins and was adapted to the screen together by her and Wahls. While Wahls and Higgins rightfully and righteously skew the ways Love Island and Love is Blind have made a spectacle out of love and companionship, Him goes beyond just critiquing such shows and instead explores questions around society’s idolization of marriage as a whole and how relationships, when mediated through the screen, can be prone through to misunderstanding.
Dread Central spoke with Higgins and Wahls about whether reality dating shows can be redeemed, the use of clever camera angles and close-ups to make the house haunted and like its own character, and the ways people of faith on reality dating shows dangerously mix getting “chosen” on a show like The Bachelor as a sign of divine favor.
The film also draws into question the way shows like Love Island and Love is Blind have made a spectacle out of love and companionship.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dread Central: Tess, I know you wrote a version of this story in 2018, and then Rebecca, you directed a stage version of it in DC. Can you talk about how the versions of this script changed and shifted throughout the years? For example, I know that the original version of this script was 120 pages, but it’s been whittled down to 60.
Tess Higgins: [Laughs] It’s funny you ask that because now I’m wondering: what was in those other 60 pages? There’s just so much more you can do in a film medium than on stage. There was a lot more visually that Rebecca was able to do. I would say the biggest shift was that the producer character, Xav, wasn’t even a named character in the play. It might have just been named “Producer’s Voice” or something. In the film, though, it works better if all these people have a relationship with him, and we all know who this person is. It may still be a voice, but there’s a personality to this instead of it being this type of amorphous, Big Brother personality.
Rebecca Wahls: Those producer relationships became much more important. The film was always going to be from the contestant’s point of view, but we fleshed out the producer character of Sarah (Lisa Barnes). It helped give the actors someone to work off of and respond to as well. In the stage version of the play, Sarah was referenced, but we, as an audience, never saw her.
It is interesting to reflect on how this has shifted from a staged reading of a play we put on in 2019. It is interesting to reflect on how this has shifted from a staged reading of a play we put on in 2019. Playwrights are encouraged to write impossible stage moments. That’s a Paul Vogel thing where he talks about writing a moment that’s impossible to stage. For us, it was that finale scene where the girls are trashing the camp. On the page, in the context of theater, to do that final every night would be very expensive. The budget only goes so far in indie theater, but it can go farther in indie film because we only had to trash the house for one night.
When I was doing my master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon in 2020, my advisor brought in film work for me to do as well. I got to take classes with Andy Wolk, who has directed episodes of The Sopranos and Ugly Betty. That totally changed my life. One of the things he’d challenge us to always do is “think visually.” He would say, “You need to get right in the camera and think visually.” For whatever reason, that made me think of Tess’s story because there are so many exciting visual components to the story that belong on a screen, because it’s about something that takes place on a screen.
TH: For example, those scenes where we’re interviewing each of the girls the way we would on a reality dating show, on stage, we can make them look good, but with the medium of a movie, we can make those sequences look exactly like the shows we’re referencing.
DC: Tess, I know your parents’ house was used to film the interiors for the film. Were they okay with all of you trashing the place for the sake of art?
TH: [Laughs] It was funny. My brother flew out to help for a while, and he flew out the night when we were filming that scene with the paint, where we were ripping things apart in the house. I knew that if my dad saw any hint of what we were doing, he would start going micro-control freak mode. I texted my brother to send me his location, and I told him I was not going to let any of my family in until we were done shooting the scene. We did parental management together, which was great because my dad never saw the behind-the-scenes. Then when he saw the film later, he was like, “Yeah, I would’ve been really mad if I saw that unfold.”
DC: I really loved the opening montage where we got to meet all of the characters and they shared a bit more about their backstories, hopes, and dreams but in this super stylized format. Can you talk about editing that sequence / knowing what to include? It felt very much like a homage to dating shows you’re skewering.
TH: Reality contestants have to fill out these really long packets that are personality quizzes where they kind of are just answering anything from “Who was your first love?” to “If you could have Double D boobs would you like that?” It could literally be anything. Rebecca and I thought including that scene would be a great way to show who these people are and remind the audience that everything on these shows is about performance. This is the point in their journeys where the girls think they’re in control of their destiny and the answers they’re giving are probably ones that they’ve rehearsed or thought about a little bit. They want to show themselves in the best light and be funny and endearing.
It’s interesting to contrast this later, though, with the interviews they do later in the film. Those initial interviews were all about getting them excited about being on TV. But later, the focus shifts where the producers are using the interviews as a way to not only get stories out of them but then use those stories as a way to pull out conflict out of them.
RW: In the edit, there were really very few moments that were left on the cutting room floor, and there were very few moments that cut together differently than we imagined. That opening scene is the exception to that. The edit was so fun to create, and the way it came together was thanks to the beautiful work of our editor, Kelsey Myers. It’s interesting to see that on the surface, the simplest scene had some of the most creative freedom in the edit because certain lines were cut to juxtapose one another and if a line was cut from someone’s answers, then we had to puzzle piece other parts together.
DC: To speak to another piece of the puzzle, one undertone I picked up was the religiosity of certain characters from Savannah talking about how she was “spiritually open to the process/journey” to Claire saying she was praying to God to send her a husband. I kept thinking a lot about the evangelical “ring by spring” culture, where marriage becomes its own idol. I wonder if that was something you two were thinking about for this adaptation.
TH: Not personally, but that idea of spirituality and relationships is something you see a lot on reality shows, especially for the ones that are geared towards love. There’s a lot of language about “God has a plan for me, and my plan is going on that show.” I felt like it would be important to have a “Christian good girl” role when building out this character roster.
In some ways, it feels a little campy, but the truth is on these shows, there are people who are saying these things like “I’m going to pray at the start of each date” and things of the sort. There’s always someone like Claire.
RW: I don’t come from that type of background either, but I have friends who have. There was one year I went to six weddings and was a maid of honor multiple times. We’ve seen all kinds of relationships and know why people want to get married by a certain age. It’s all about the narratives we internalize … “I have to be married by the time I’m this age … If I’m not married by the time I’m 30, then me and my gay best friend are going to get married.” There are all of these “ifs” and so many reasons why people set deadlines for themselves.
Jenna is the character I identify with the most in that she experiences all of these weddings for all of her friends, her younger sister is engaged, and she’s wondering, “When is it my turn?” My situation was not exactly the same as Jenna’s … I just didn’t get married as early as some of my friends. But there’s society, there’s God, and there’s yourself to want a particular vision of a relationship.
DC: I feel like everyone is either getting married, getting engaged, getting a climbing gym membership, running a marathon, or going to Japan … those seem to be the main markers of adulthood now. It’s interesting to think about marriage as a continual marker of maturity and having “made it” in some ways.
RW: It is interesting to think about how it may not be so as much as it used to be, though. The other important thing about a show like The Bachelor, which is the prototype for all of these reality dating shows, is that it was created in practically a different world, right? Back in the early 2000s, when people’s relationship with God was just very different than it is now. It’s designed around this Christian patriarchal framework. And so it’s interesting to see Claire thrive in that environment and Adrianne and Shana not.
DC: Back to some of what you both were sharing about filming in Tess’ parent’s house, the way you all framed the made it feel very much like its own character. I wish I had a better frame of reference but I kept thinking about Monster House where the house there is sort of closing in on the people within it. The movie felt like it was embracing its “horror” side the most when all of the girls are reconvening and learning about the revelation about Jeff. I’m curious how you approached that framing … giving personality to it is so important when you’re filming in a single room for that long period of time.
RW: We’re all really proud of that bedroom scene which is a 30-page chunk of the script. We spent three days in that bedroom shooting that scene. We had to be extremely meticulous about what shots we were getting in the order we were getting them in, and we got almost everything that we intended to. Speaking for myself, blocking five people in space is something that I’m super used to on stage, but was a new and exciting challenge on camera.
There’s very little improv, particularly in that scene and everyone’s pretty much saying what Tess and I wrote. With those factors accounted for, it allowed me to do the thing that I know I can do, and trusting that the actors were going to come in off-book and the camera team was going to make it beautiful. We waited many an hour for a lot of those setups, and the stress surely did build, but it all paid off in the end. It’s one of my favorite things to hear people say is that that scene was exciting to them.
TH: What’s cool about it, too, is that the way that the layout is in the actual house, too, does not match the way it is on screen. That room, for example, is on the first floor; it’s not down the stairs. We used a different exterior, and there’s also an extended hallway off that room with bathrooms and closets that we pretended weren’t there when we were acting. We just never showed that wall. So it was a little theatrical in a way that there was a fourth wall that you didn’t see.
DC: I’ll confess that I didn’t know that much about the nuances of reality TV. I knew there was some artifice, but I didn’t know the level of manipulation and control from the producer’s end. They’re completely different mediums, but it reminded me of football in a way where people watching it are aware of the damage the sport is causing to players. But they still view it.
TH: That is the exact analogy that I used when we were at film festival Q&As; I would tell people this world is exactly like football, so I’m glad that you were thinking about it too.
DC: Love to hear that. It’s a similar thing where learning all about what happens in spaces like the NFL, that knowledge has forced me to rethink what my relationship to that space should be. I’m curious how working on this project has made you think about redemption in these dating shows. Can they be redeemed, or do we have to destroy it all?
RW: We think about this a lot.
TH: I think if the system continues the way things are, you run the risk of what we see at the end of our film in terms of how the characters’ arcs wrap up. As someone who is a big and longtime fan of reality TV, and I have been for a while, I think you can enjoy things, know things are wrong with them, and want them to be better. It’s important to critically engage with the media that you’re consuming, which I don’t think most people who watch reality TV do.
They kind of see everything that’s presented to them on screen and take it as truth: “This person’s evil! This person’s good.” They’re not always thinking about the ways the way someone is presented to them may have been crafted by the producers to elicit a particular reaction. So I hope that’s something people who watch this film can take away to have a little more empathy for the people on the show.
I hope that it also inspires people to advocate for the people on the show to get better treatment overall. If the players are treated better, we all get better television. Rather than producing against these people, there can be a shift toward producing for them. If people feel like they’re having a good time and can trust the people they’re working with, they’ll be more willing to do what you want them to do. People will make great television because they can sleep well at night.
And I also think everyone should be paid.
RW: So we have an exciting partnership with the UCAN Foundation. Nick Thompson, who was on season two of Love Is Blind, is one of our executive producers for this project. He came on after it had been shot and completed. He became a partner for us because he found what we had done to be truthful to his experience, particularly those producer scenes, and deeply aligned with the values of the UCAN Foundation, which stands for all the things Tess was just talking about. The foundation has raised money for legal fees for these former, unscripted cast members, and they help pay for their therapy.
I do agree with Tess that one of the simplest things these shows can do is pay. It’s easy to be like, “Well, these contestants are here to find love … you shouldn’t get paid for that.” But the male lead, who is also there to find love, is getting paid. Make it make sense. People will rewatch these shows forever, potentially, and these cast members will never see financial gain from that.
DC: Rebeca, a lot of your work, from #cottagecore to the upcoming Golem.AI, has focused on the ways our relationships change when mediated through the screen and through technology. Him is an interesting evolution of that idea. I’m wondering what draws you to these types of stories.
RW: That’s one of the coolest things that anyone has ever observed about me. It’s true, though. Screens are an unavoidable part of our lives. It requires great privilege to be someone who goes textless and has a flip phone and stuff. Tess and I could not do our work for some similar reasons and some very different reasons if we didn’t have smartphones in our hands. I think a lot about how these screens that we carry with us have sort of started to morph, blend, and warp the personal and the professional. That might be what my next project is about, we’ll see …
TH: I think in reality TV space, too, is that a lot of times they try to ignore the fact that social media exists. We have to acknowledge it; there is a different show that’s happening outside of the show. If you’re not keeping up with all the tea that people are talking about on TikTok when you’re watching Love Is Blind, you’re missing half the plot.
Him is now available on VOD.
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