The Haunted is now available from Vertical Entertainment on VOD and all major platforms, and to mark the release of this clever psychological horror movie, we recently caught up with director David Holroyd.
The filmmaker is best known for his work on the likes of WMD, Bad Girls, and The Bill, but his well-received leap into the world of horror has resulted in an absolute must-see. We made sure to ask David not only about his surprisingly timely movie, but also whether he's interested in working on a superhero project, his favourite horror films, and how best to scare people as a director.
The movie stars Sophie Stevens (The Black Prince), Kirstie Steele (Waterloo Road, Glasgow Girls) and Nick Bayly (Goodnight Sweetheart, Emmerdale), and is well worth checking out if you're a horror fan!
Needless to say, we want to extend a huge thank you to David for taking the time to talk to us, and you can check out the trailer and synopsis for The Haunted at the bottom of this interview.
Where did the idea of The Haunted come from and what made this a story you wanted to tell?
I love ghost stories, but It’s insanely difficult to get any movie made in the UK. The Producers and I had been developing a couple of other supernatural films with bigger budgets but of although you can get 80% of the money through tax breaks etc you still need 20% in cold hard cash and for a two million dollar movie that’s $400,000. A lot of money to convince people to give you!
In frustration one day I half seriously said we should just make a cheap fast haunted house film in one location with one actor for $20,000. The Producers looked at each other and said ”we could probably raise that!”. So then it was on!
Then the challenge was “how do you make a ghost story for basically no money?’ (all the cash we had went on renting camera and lights and paying all the cast and crew travel, accommodation and a tiny fee – we didn’t want anyone to be out of pocket.)
Ghost stories aren’t about the dead, they are about the living. I’m against bigotry and repression wherever I see it and that’s what this film is really about. The main character Emily is in a dilemma experienced by many young people today - women especially – who cant get a decent job, struggling to survive, zero prospects, zero hours contracts, repressed by a society dominated by older white males. In a way it’s a metaphor for the way the world is today; the younger generation is being screwed by old white guys who seem to be only interested in money and their own power. But there will be a reckoning very soon I imagine…
Isolation is something we can all relate to right now, but what about that do you think makes a good basis for a horror film?
Claustrophobia is like the lid on the pressure cooker of tension. Alien and Aliens are two of my favourite horror films and both have that crushing sense that you cant escape the terror. Being locked in you have nowhere to hide from the demons, be they real or imagined. Filming in one location allowed us to tap into that and make the best use of a very low budget at the same time. Locations are expensive and we got this one for free as it was The Producer’s parents’ house!
Emily being a carer also feels very relevant; what led to you deciding to give the film's lead that sort of job?
I wanted Emily the main character to be relatable – if the audience don’t empathise with her from the first minute, you lose them and you’ll never get them back. Those first 5 minutes are when the audience subconsciously decide if they’ll go along with the movie or not, and that’s about liking the main character and identifying with them in some way. Sophie Stevens who played Emily is a really lovely person, and an actor’s true character always shines through whatever performance they are making, so its impossible to not like her on screen. Then her main dilemma, that of struggle to make a living in a land of zero hours contracts is something I think many young people can relate to. Your first few jobs in the adult world are like entering an alien world where you still have to find who you really are whilst trying to survive. It’s hard!
Were there any horror movies, in particular, that inspired your work here?
For this film, I loved Nightwatch made in 1997; a film where Ewan McGregor is a student working in a morgue at night. The silence of the night, the isolation, the paranoia. I’ve only seen it once but it stayed with me. It also has Josh Brolin, Nick Nolte and Patricia Arquette, so a really great cast too. I also watched a hell of a lot of South East Asian horrors (when living in a flat on my own!) and they are unsettlingly strange but brilliant.
What made you decide to primarily shoot the film in a handheld style?
I decided to shoot the film handheld to give a sense of immediacy and unease, but also for speed of shooting. We shot in a real house with narrow corridors and awkward doorways so there was no room for any grip equipment; tracks, dollies, even steadicam. Every time you move the camera it eats up valuable minutes of shooting time and we had to make this film in as short a time as possible as everyone was there basically for free between other jobs. So we had to go fast. Being handheld means the camera operator can change the shot instantly.
There are some really frightening moments in the movie; as a filmmaker, what do you think goes into connecting with the audience in a way that builds that tension and leads to those big jump scares?
First, you need empathy – Ghost stories aren’t about the dead, they are about the living, so if as an audience you dont care about the main character and their dilemma you wont be scared when they are. If you care about them you will be drawn into their dilemma.
Then the setting has to be credible because all of us have feared ghosts in our own lives and generally that is in the most mundane of settings; homes, hospitals, empty places, old buildings etc. That’s why ghost stories tend to be in those places – it’s an experience we can relate to.
After that it’s the ‘long nothing’ that happens before the scares that makes them most frightening; the slow chugga-chugga-chugga of the rollercoaster pulling up the ramp before it throws you down the scream-inducing other side.
If the opportunity were to present itself, are there any horror franchises you'd like the chance to work on or are you more interested in telling original stories?
Any! I make movies (when I can!) because I love watching them; I love being immersed in a different world to the point where you forget your own and experience an entirely different existence. So whilst I love the supernatural and would be delighted to work on any of the franchises, I’d also make any movie with a great story. My very first movie WMD (2009) was actually a political thriller! A massive global issue we shot entirely on a real shoestring budget just using surveillance cameras, but we still got shots of the actor in Rome, Berlin and New York! Talk about ambitious! The Guardian called it “enterprising and undeniably gripping” so I guess we succeeded. Id love to do something in the Star Wars universe – imagine a dark thriller there!
What about superhero movies? Are those of interest, and are there any characters which jump out at you?
I love superhero movies. They are done with such reality, with great actors and storytelling. They are stories about real people with real dilemmas – they just happen to have superpowers. Once you have the real human dilemma nailed audiences will accept whatever world you put those characters in, be that a superhero world, a sci-fi or a historical one. I do love Guardians of The Galaxy: I think Quill is the movie character I’m most like – not quite so cool as he’d like to be and a bit of a dick! It helps that I have close friends and family who are just like the rest of the team!
You obviously love the horror genre, but which three of your favourite horror movies would you recommend that people watch during quarantine? (after they've watched The Haunting, of course!)
There are so many, which is great! Alien is without doubt one of the best and can be watched over and over. I’ve already mentioned Nightwatch as a film out of left field. Don’t Look Now is deeply unsettling in the way that Hereditary is.
Finally, what's next for you after The Haunted?
We have our next horror film scripted and ready to start financing, Im developing a supernatural series with Vicki Madden, writer of Australian Series The Gloaming, and we have several other film ideas and TV series ideas we are working on to, so we have a lot of material!
Employed as a night-nurse for the ailing Mr Cunningham, young carer, Emma, arrives at an isolated house in the English countryside for her first shift, expecting an uneventful evening ahead. But stepping inside the house, and left alone with her silent new patient, Emma is unable to shake a growing sense of dread. As the night draws on, unease blossoms into terror as signs of a supernatural presence grow increasingly harder to ignore. Desperate to escape the premises, yet unwilling to leave the old man behind, Emma is forced to confront the dark secrets which lie buried in the house… secrets that drive her towards an appalling revelation.