Nefarious (2019)
Director: Richard Rowntree
Writer(s): Matthew Davies, Richard Rowntree
Stars: Jon Vangdal Aamaas, Aaron Thomas Ward, Richard Rowntree, Nadia Lamin, Tony Sands
Darren, Lou, Jo and Mas live a meager existence on the fringes of poverty. Indebted to the criminal kingpin of their social housing development, they routinely fear for their lives. On the other side of town, the already wealthy Marcus and his disabled brother Clive receive a windfall in the form of a winning lottery ticket. When their worlds collide following a botched robbery, the would-be criminals get more than they bargained for, and will be tested to their limits in a desperate attempt to survive a predator of monstrous proportions.
In a new interview in the series leading up to Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, I got a chance to ask Nefarious co-writer/Director Richard Rowntree a few questions about what we can expect from the film.
Q. Your latest horror film Nefarious has been selected to play at Horror-on-Sea. Can you tell us what we can expect from the film?
We’re thrilled to be playing at Horror-On-Sea – it’s a festival with a great reputation, and we’re really looking forward to it – their plans for the fest sound very exciting! “Nefarious” is a home invasion horror/thriller with a grindhouse edge to it – it’s something a little bit different and doesn’t really fall into one specific sub-genre, so hopefully the audience will find it interesting! It starts out with quite a lot of social commentary before building to a thrilling final act!
Q. What were your influences when writing the original script for the film?
We looked at how we could containerise a film to make it achievable on a low budget, and decided that home invasion was a route we’d like to go – particularly as we didn’t feel satisfied by the endings of most films from that sub genre that we’d seen. I re-watched a lot of movies with similar tone, including The Strangers (2008), Don’t Breathe (2016), Funny Games (1997) – things like that – but we also wanted to ensure that the characters were all multi-layered and not just black-and-white good OR evil – because in reality, people aren’t like that.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
We wanted to make the start of the film feel very real, almost documentary style in a lot of ways – so the lighting and camera work hopefully reflect that. It’s almost a British Social Realism style and content. As the story complicates in the second act, I wanted to make it more nightmarish – culminating in lighting choices that were inspired by the films of people like Nicholas Winding Refn and Panos Cosmatos. My production designer Mel (Wignall) and I wanted to make every aspect of the set decoration believable, so that all comes from a very real place, and hopefully is the link that bridges the two kinds of worlds we see in the film.
Q. Where there any elements of the original script which were adapted for any of the stories during filming?
When you’re shooting a movie with this kind of budget, you always have to adapt various aspects to fit into your locations and what you can achieve aesthetically. Story wise we tried to stick as closely as possible to the script as we were confident in it and had some great feedback prior to going into production. I think it’s pretty close to what we originally wrote!
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
Multiple! But we have such a great team of people working on these movies that we always manage to overcome them together. I think the favourite story of the crew is that when we were shooting one particular scene on the last day of filming, there’s a scene where the villain attacks someone with a crowbar – I was obsessed with getting as close as possible to the action with the camera and doing multiple takes – which culminated in me taking the crowbar in my hand down to the bone. I was panicked and bleeding, but I was comforted by the fact that I thought someone in the crew who was seeing to it had formerly been a paramedic. After half an hour I was ready to go back to shooting, and he calmly told me that he had not, in fact, been a paramedic!
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
Shooting the scenes in the room at the finale of the film were brilliant. Mel had built us this incredible set that we could manipulate and not have to worry about destroying an actual location, which was hugely liberating. Another favourite was the scene where the four protagonists are in the taxi heading to the house – our gaffer Chris Wilson and his team built us a massive blackout tent an we drove the car into it. The car never actually moves, but we had five or six people all with different lights – and they were choreographed to move their lights so that it emulated lights passing the car and it going through this neon-lit seedy area of town. When we threw in the POV shots in the edit, it tied in wonderfully and shows what you can do with a bit of ingenuity!
Q. What makes Nefarious stand out as something different in the horror genre?
I don’t think there’s anything in the sub-genre of home invasion that I’ve seen that is quite like this. The structure of the story is very different, and we played a lot with the idea of the camera being an unreliable narrator which has confused few less savvy viewers. The juxtaposition of the climax of the film with the much calmer first act and complication of the second act is unusual, and there’s a death scene which I think a few people have been pretty shocked (and impressed) by!
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
So long as the film is intriguing and ambiguous enough for people to be thinking about after the credits role, I’m happy! The ending is a little open to interpretation which is what we were going for – and I would like audiences to ponder what the message of the film is to some extent. Obviously though, I hope people enjoy it on some level!
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
We have a few scripts for shorts that are done and ready to shoot – we might work those into an anthology. We also have a couple of features – one of which we’ve been working on for about 5 years, but it would require a decent budget to shoot it properly. No firm plans as to which project will go first at this stage, but hopefully we’ll be able to shoot something in the first half of next year, as I really miss being on set with this amazing team of people!
Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own film what advice would you give them?
Go out and do it! Don’t procrastinate, don’t make excuses why you can’t do it – you can shoot a feature on a mobile phone in 4k resolution if you want to! The only thing holding you back is yourself, whether it be a short or a feature. You don’t have to show it to anyone if you don’t want to – but the steep learning curve you get from making each film pays off dividends in the long run! You only learn from mistakes, not successes! BUT – make damn sure you have a good script – you can’t make a good movie from a bad script!
Nefarious will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Friday 10th January at 20:00 hrs.
You can find out more about Horror-on-Sea and purchase tickets for the festival here:
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!
