Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is the most theatrical rock musician in the game, so it comes as no surprise that she'd eventually decide to try her hand at making movies. What is unexpected is that her directorial debut isn't the heady sci-fi rock opera that her psychedelic-space-idol musical aesthetic would suggest. Instead, it's a nasty little bit of pitch-black comedy.

"The Birthday Party" is a short film centered around a cartoon panda and an inconvenient corpse that makes up one of four chapters the horror anthology XX. After impressing Sundance's horror-loving contingent, the film opens this Friday on VOD, Amazon Video, iTunes, and in select theaters.

Given her eye for staging, costuming, choreography, and stunningly produced live shows, it's no surprise that she'd helm a great film on her first outing. What is surprising though is she made a horror film. She confesses that she hates horror movies, but when the call from XX producer Todd Brown came, she couldn't say no. "I'm of the opinion that one should say yes to challenges in life, and that you get a lot more enjoyment out of saying yes than saying no, so I decided to try my hand at it," Clark said. And thankfully she did, because it gave us "The Birthday Party."

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The complex art of movie-making is a language of its own. And Clark had to learn it fast.

I think the biggest challenge for me was kind of the lexicon and learning all the different parts that go into making a film. There was a little bit of a language barrier at first, but I think I got the hang of it. The thing I liked the most probably was working with the actors and actually being on set. You're going a million miles a minute juggling a hundred different things, making decisions on gut instinct, and it's just so exhilarating.

Some of her skills in the music business translated to directing.

I think just in general, I've put together big tours and shows and all kinds of stuff, and I know that a show or a project is sometimes only as good as its weakest member, so I felt like I had a good knack for collaborating with people already.

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Hating horror actually paid off, twisting the tone of Clark's short film into more of a dark comedy.

I don't like horror films. It sounds obvious, but they're too scary for me. So I thought, if horror is about the things that frighten you the most, how can I do that, but in my own voice? And that voice ended up being dark comedy. I think how strange the physical world is in the piece and how stylized the whole piece is helped play into the absurdity of the whole thing. Because on the surface, if you just read the story— a mother waking up, finding her husband dead, and trying to protect her child from that knowledge for a few more hours—that's a very dark premise.

There's definitely some inspiration from David Lynch.

The David Lynch thing... it seems like what he does is kind of picks, like, two different poles, like [Twin Peaks] is '80s and '50s, and because there are things that are anachronistic left and right, they skew your timeline so it feels like it's in some other world completely. It's in an undefined timeframe. So in that sense, I chose '60s and '90s references visually and tried to mesh them together.

Naturally, the music was the easiest part for Clark.

It was fun. I have to say, after spending so much time co-writing and directing the film, the score was immensely easy. I mean it took me like a day and it was done. It was kind of a relief to score it. I finally like, oh yeah, I know how to do this.

Clark really tried to get Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun."

Originally I was trying to get "Black Hole Sun" to play at the end, just to drive home the macabre absurdity, and I tried to get in touch with Chris Cornell, sort of via back channels, but I didn't have any luck.

And she might hate horror, but, yes, she did watch the other chapters in the anthology.

I've seen it twice now, and my eyes were closed for most of it. It's too scary for me.

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