Frightfully talented

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This article was published 18/12/2020 (2074 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the new horror movie Hunter Hunter, Summer Howell is tasked with playing a young teenage girl who learns how to trap, hunt, and skin animals under the tutorship of her grizzled trapper father (Devon Sawa) in the remote wilds of Manitoba.

It’s a tough role in a movie that has more than its share of harrowing scenes. So keep in mind the reason the role of “Renee” exists at all is a testament to Howell’s talent, says the film’s writer-director, Shawn Linden.

“Her character was an eight-year-old boy before I met Summer,” Linden says. “After her audition, I had to take a week to rewrite (the role) into an older female character.

“There was just that much talent that instantly was apparent from seeing her.”

Howell, who has spent the entirety of her 16 years in St. Andrews, north of Winnipeg, has become a veteran of film and television, especially in the horror genre. Her very first acting gig was in the locally lensed Curse of Chucky, in which she played the niece of the terrorized paraplegic heroine, played by Fiona Dourif.

“I had the pleasure of working with Summer on Curse of Chucky back in 2012, when she was just eight years old,” says Chucky creator/director Don Mancini. “Even then, it was obvious she was very talented, intelligent, and delightful. 

“Part of her audition required her to stare sightlessly, as if she were dead, and she nailed that in terrifying — and hilarious — fashion,” Mancini recalls. “Summer was also preternaturally mature for her age — although there were a couple times when she was legitimately frightened by Chucky: perfect for the film, but I did feel really guilty about it.”

“When I was younger, my older brother was really more of the actor and he started going for auditions and things like that,” Howell explains in a phone interview. “So I would help him with reading lines and then I just gained an interest for it.

“He eventually stopped because he found other interests, but I kept going with it,” she says. “I got Chucky, and from then on I just loved it.”

Howell seemed to find herself in horror projects more often than not, including work in the second season of Channel Zero (produced by Mancini), the locally shot horror-thriller The Midnight Man, and now Hunter Hunter.

Howell admits she was in the curious position of not being allowed to see the movies she made back then.

“When I was younger, I only watched my parts in (those movies),” she says. “I wasn’t allowed to see the really extreme, violent parts.

“But I’ve seen them now, and I love the movies,” she says, noting that people who work in the genre are more fun than the material would suggest.

“We can be filming something so dark, but people are so happy and there’s constantly these jokes going on,” she says. “It was like that for Chucky and for Hunter Hunter.”

“Just thinking back on it now, it’s crazy to think about how nice the people were, and how lucky I was to come into acting in such a nice way.”

The horror genre prepared Howell for dramatic work outside the genre, including the drama Clouds, now playing on Disney Plus.

“That was another great experience,” she says. “It was based on a true story, so it was different, because I wasn’t so much creating my character as copying somebody who is already living.

“It was emotional because it’s about this boy with cancer who passes away and I’m his sister Grace. It had elements to it that I understood a lot, but it was different because it was based around family and I haven’t done a bunch of family kind of movies. So I think it was great for me and I really learned a lot from it.”

She says she also learned from her adult co-stars on Hunter Hunter, two of whom — Devon Sawa and Nick Stahl — started out as child actors themselves. She was especially inspired by Camille Sullivan, the actress who plays her mother.

“I admire all of them, especially Camille seeing how successful she is for an actress her age,” she says. “I would be so happy if I was as successful as her by the time I was… however old she is.”

Howell says she can see her own career expanding into working on the other side of the process one day.

“I’m really into writing, so I think in the future if I could write something and make it happen that would be really cool,” she says. “If I don’t, that’s OK. I’ll still be happy because I know I’ll be acting till the day I die … or however long I can.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing