In hyper-stylized Door Mouse, Avan Jogia pays tribute to Vancouver's grittier side
Star’s directorial debut sets dark issues of drugs and missing women inside a neo-noir fairy tale
Keith Powers and Hayley Law play a pair of friends drawn into a twisty underworld in Door Mouse.
Door Mouse runs at VIFF Centre from January 13 to 19
YES, AVAN JOGIA’S directorial debut Door Mouse takes place in a hyper-stylized, neon-blasted noir universe, and yes, he shot a lot of it in an abandoned church in Sudbury, Ontario. But at its heart, the locally raised actor, filmmaker, and writer tells Stir, it’s a love letter to Vancouver—albeit a dark and bitingly comic one.
Jogia went to Killarney Secondary School before heading to Hollywood to make it as an actor in his late teens. “The Vancouver I grew up in doesn’t exist anymore,” says Jogia, on a break from filming Orphan Black: Echoes in Toronto. “It’s been cleaned up and washed and scrubbed.”
Spending time in government housing and riding the buses and Skytrains through East Van, Jogia was all too aware of the grittier issues the city faced in the late 1990s and early 2000s—the women going missing off the street, the drug-addiction problems.
Those experiences no doubt fed the humanitarian causes Jogia gets behind as a celebrity whose breakthrough role was starring opposite Ariana Grande in Victorious. They also directly fed the plot of Door Mouse: in the twisty mystery-thriller, the titular comic-book artist (Vancouver-born Hayley Law in full feisty, deadpan form) and her buddy Ugly (the objectively not-ugly Keith Powers) take it upon themselves to investigate the disappearances of young women from the burlesque club where Mouse works; the police and club-owner Mama (Famke Janssen) could care less about marginalized women going missing.
“I wanted to create a heroine who would rise up from that community, a movie where the monsters get caught,” Jogia asserts. “Door Mouse was also a sort of a love letter to the punk rock, anti-establishment, misanthropic women I grew up around in Vancouver who were such an inspiration for me growing up.”
Jogia, who plays the dealer Moony in the film, chooses to portray the dark, seedy underworld of drugs and trafficking through a heightened, graphic-novel-like lens. Sometimes scenes are intercut with animation. With its surreal touches, oddball angles, and eye-searing palette, the look sometimes brings to mind Sin City, and sometimes Eyes Wide Shut or Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge, but Jogia has come up with a punk visual language all its own.
“I was really interested in creating a dream state or fairy-tale state—kind of like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, but through the lenses of film noir and punk rock,” the writer-director says, adding that there are aesthetic hits of anime and comic books in there too. “The subject matter is intense, we’re talking about a serious subject. And I feel like it’s sugar medicine.”
Avan Jogia grew up in East Van, heading to Hollywood in his late teens.
A big part of the film’s feel comes from its punk-driven soundtrack—put together by his brother Ketan, with whom Jogia makes up the band Saint Ivory. If Door Mouse has an anthem, it’s “Big Mouth” by fantastically in-your-face, female-led Vancouver band Necking.
“That was really important to me: to use a local Vancouver band,” enthuses Jogia. “I grew up in Vancouver and I know that so much about the West Coast is yoga, granola, hiking, and weed. I think everyone forgets how important punk rock was in Vancouver and how much of a pilgrimage it was. And I think Vancouver has had a hard time retaining that culture.”
Put together, Jogia’s directorial debut is bursting with energy and ideas—visual, musical, and socio-political. How does Jogia, who’s also written the book Mixed Feelings (a series of short stories and poems about multiracial identity) manage to squeeze it all in, amid regular acting gigs in everything from Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City to Zombieland: Double Tap?
“I wrote the first draft in one week, like, with no shower,” he says of Door Mouse, with a laugh, adding there were many rewrites in the ensuing years. “So I can get a lot done. But then I have these long periods where I stare at the wall or doomscroll. Honestly, to get work done I have to be haunted by something. And so I do have this relief and excitement and anticipation when it’s done. So, come January 13, a lot of my brain will be freed up for other things!”
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