Film Name: Goryo
Director: Emma Dark
Writer: Emma Dark
Starring: Emma Dark, Alfred Clarkson (voice)
An epidemic outbreak, a woman is isolated at home. Whilst reading a news article about the horrific death of a Japanese celebrity she receives a strange message from a user named Goryo, with a strict warning not to watch the video attached
In another interview leading up to the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, I got a chance to ask writer/director Emma Dark a few questions about what we can expect from Goryo which will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Saturday 15th January at 17:30hrs.
Q. Your short horror film Goryo has been selected to play at Horror-on-Sea. Can you tell us what we can expect from the film?
A. It has indeed, which is excellent news! Goryo is a Japanese horror influenced ultra-short film that was, and still is, part of a larger anthology film called The Isolation Horrors (2020), put together by fellow filmmaker Nicolai Kornum. All directors involved made a short film on a mobile device at the start of the pandemic lockdown in 2020. Nicolai made the wraparound short The Bloody Face Mask, the synopsis of which is: “During an epidemic outbreak a concerned neighbour calls his isolating friends to check on them, after he finds a bloody face mask in the street. Meanwhile, the neighbours are experiencing their own horrors in their homes of isolation.”
One of the other segment directors Martin Daniels (Ghosting Isolation) created the chilling score for Goryo, utilising the skillset of those involved within the anthology itself as much as possible.
Q. What were some of your influences when writing the script for Goryo?
A. Not that it’s comparable of course but the Japanese horror films that are relatively well known amongst film fans are Ring (1998) and The Grudge (2004). As a default, I would imagine most people would think of these films when watching this kind of film, although ghostly women with long hair wearing white and curses seem to be fairly prevalent in Japanese paranormal storytelling.
I’d recently got back from a month in Japan myself at the time of writing the script, where I’d visited a bunch of film locations, including the original Japanese Grudge house (which sadly had just been pulled down) so I really spent a good deal of time immersed in the horror style of my environment at the time. It then seemed natural to make something Japanese in style.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
A. This was limited by the space and ‘props’ I had available. As the main character was essentially me, and I had to film in a small space, I set it in a home studio so I could get away with lighting the scene and having the film gear in shot. There wasn’t much room for doing work in post, so I mainly pumped up the tungsten tones in post for a 90s J-horror stylised feel and then desaturated the ghost in places for contrast.
Q. Did you make any changes from the original script during filming?
A. I wrote for what I was able to shoot at the time, so the script was fairly simple and easy to stick to. The one thing I did do in the edit was to remove a very small amount of dialogue I’d written for myself, which didn’t seem necessary in the grand scheme of things. All the graphics for the news website and messaging app shown in the film were created by me, and I’d planned to film these directly on my laptop. That didn’t work due to moiré from using the iPhone to film the screen, so I had to just keyframe the cursor movements etc. in Premiere Pro in the edit. So not really a change to the script, but it did add a bunch more edit time on to postproduction.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
A. I was fairly surprised I managed to get things framed well and shot in a couple of takes. I had no remote monitor for my iPhone, no lens kits, it was all very basic.
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
A. The main issue for me is only having myself to play both characters in the short as it was shot during the lockdown. I had limited resources, and limited space. I would have liked to have done more with the end scene and would have had the circumstances been different.
Q. What makes Goryo stand out as something different in the horror genre?
A. For me this was a fun short, shot on mobile. It’s not the sort of thing I’d normally make, however it was a great exercise in filmmaking with limited resources and a limited time frame. If we operate on the principle that most people have some sort of smart phone or handheld device with video functionality it does help put tools in people’s hands to help visualise the story they want to tell.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
A. Mainly that you can shoot something fairly simple on technology that is relatively accessible. Whether that means making a movie or just taking decent video memories of your family and friends I hope it helps give others the confidence to try something for themselves.
The Isolation Horrors’ anthology film can be viewed here:
You can find out more about Emma Dark and Goryo on the website and following social media:
Facebook – Twitter – Instagram
Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
