Over at Timeout has an interview with Neil Marshall, Writer and Director of both Dog Soldiers and The Descent. There are a few insights into his work, and interestingly his lack of offers after Dog Soldiers:
…it seems like horror films are sustaining the British film industry…I think that the problem at the moment is that the market is a little overcrowded with horror. I don’t like the way that the Americans are going with their soft horror, their PG-13 versions. That’s not horror – I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s not horror. Horror for kids? I want to make adult films, for adults. I want to make horror films for people like me. And that’s what ‘The Descent’ is. It’s an 18 certificate, like it should be…
…There are so many films I want to make here, and I’m not going to help the British film industry by deserting it. The offers didn’t come flooding in after ‘Dog Soldiers’ because, however well received it was over there – and it’s got a healthy internet following, it never actually got a theatrical release so the studios didn’t take it seriously at all…
…I didn’t feel that I’d scared people enough with ‘Dog Soldiers’. I felt that I’d made something that was a lot of fun and had a few scares and plenty of gore. This time I thought I’d make another horror film, but a really, really scary one, and that was the challenge…
…caving encompasses a lot of fundamental fears like claustrophobia, height, dark, drowning, bats, whatever – there are a lot of ways of to die in a cave…You’ve got a bad enough situation, but what if you’re not alone down there? What if there’s something else in the cave with you and it wants you either out or dead?…
…I had said to the director of photography, Sam McCurdy, that I was determined to do it 2:35 ratio, in 35 millimeter widescreen. But I also wanted to utilise the fact that the caves are pitch black until the girls take a light into them. The only light source there could possibly be was the source the girls have with them at the time, whether it be their helmet lights, torches, a lighter, a box of matches, flares…
I totally agree with the soft-horror comment, that’s not horror, it’s a frightening kids tale more than anything. Glad to see Marshall is championing the cause. Not only for that but for British films in general, it’s funny how many movie industry people talk about the state of the British Industry as they tot off to the States to work. The comments on the movie are adding to the hype and trailers I’ve already seen, I think this could be a pretty scary movie. Are you looking forward to this one?
