Romola Garai is a British actor known for Atonement, Emma, and Amazing Grace. Her impressive directorial début Amulet premiered at the Sundance film festival 2020 and is now set for release in the UK. Romola sat down with STARBURST to discuss directing her first feature, mythology and where the film’s themes came from.

STARBURST: How does it feel to be talking about Amulet again after almost two years?

Romola Garai: Yeah, my film has been in Covid isolation, so it’s been a while. On the one hand, it’s amazing because I was worried like a lot of people who made their debut films in 2019, that it would never come out and all that work would be for nought. But also, I think it’s great because I now have some real distance from the film, and I can talk about it a bit more intelligently and I can see it as a piece of work much more clearly than I could at Sundance when I’d only recently finished the film and it felt impossibly close. I’m sure that if you’re more experienced as a filmmaker you get better, and your eye becomes more attuned.

Coming from an acting background, did you feel that gave you a different focus, having seen many directors working?

It definitely does. It feels a slightly arrogant thing to say but I think I was good at directing the actors. I mean, I certainly directed them in a way that I would wish to be directed. To be collaborative. We didn’t have a lot of time, but we had plenty of rehearsals and dialogue and they were incredibly influential in influencing how I saw the script and how the characters were realised on screen. It felt like an accepting and collegiate atmosphere. When it came to the look of the film, I’d storyboarded with our DP. Laura [Bellingham], but I let her line up the shots and I wasn’t controlling about that. Your background, whether in front or behind the camera informs what kind of director you are and that was definitely true of me.

Horror can be a gateway for new directors who set out with a list of genre conventions to tick off, whether that’s to be scary or gory or atmospheric. But Amulet is built on character and that can sometimes be missing in horror. Was that something you were conscious of?

Yeah, it slots into a heritage of character-driven work. Having said that, the characters in the film are somewhat cyphers; there are two we don’t know much about at all for important reasons. Some of the references were European horror films like Trouble Every Day and Possession, films that are existing in a space where the horror that’s there is about disquiet and unease, and those films often dip in and out at times quite uncomfortably of different types of horror. There’s body horror, jump scares and the supernatural. And hopefully, our film has quite an uplifting ending as well. I’m comfortable working in a place that feels quite contrary or deliberately provocative (laughs).

You mention the ending and it’s interesting you use the word ‘uplifting’. The film does take some turns that you don’t expect so, with that ending, did you consider pulling back or were you committed to where you wanted to go?

I think when I wrote the script, and then when people read it, I did get a few ‘I can’t comment on it’. When I was asking for notes some people were like ‘I cannot watch or imagine this so I cannot give you feedback’. I was aware that some of the ideas people found offensive or quite extreme. But when I was making it, the parts of the film that I found the easiest were the ending sections and the parts where it ramps up. Because those were the parts that were fixed in my mind. Also, those sequences, because the special effects were pre-planned and the only controllable set was the attic in which a lot of the ending takes place, a lot of the resources and planning were poured into those sections. The scenes where there were just two people talking were often harder to direct as we’d just arrive on set and had to decide how it would play out.

You have strong themes of masculinity, relationships, and also consequence and forgiveness. But it also seems that every time there is a new female director there’s a discussion as to whether there is a feminist element or not.

I think it’s quite pertinent to my film! [laughs] I think the problem is that there’s no official definition of feminism. It means very different things to different people, especially at the moment. And it’s always in flux as a political ideology but I’m always a fully paid-up member so am happy to have that attached to my work. And even if I wasn’t it would be hard to argue my film doesn’t have a political motive or bent. [laughs]

With the mythology you’re created, did you question yourself at all as to whether you’d seen this somewhere before, because it does feel different?

I’ve not written a script in the way I wrote this film. I’ve written several screenplays before, in lots of different genres including a ghost story. And then it was suggested to me that as I like horror I should try and write a horror film. I had a gap in my diary, so I did, and I just sat down and wrote it. So, what you have is a lot of the subliminal things that were going around in my mind at the time, such as birth and transformation, and forgiveness as you say. And also faith. I think I’m someone who would quite like to have faith but as it’s been used so much to oppress women it’s very hard to pay up to any organised religion. So, there’s a bit of that. And the idea of there being some kind of alternate mythology that would act on the part of women and offer them some sort of existential justice. It’s a piece of revenge fantasy you can indulge in to right some of the wrongs in the world.

What you say about faith is interesting, as the film begins with that as a theme, which then changes and is largely dismissed as the plot develops.

I understand the importance and value of faith in our secular times where we just shop and are lonely. But for women, it’s been used almost exclusively as an engine of oppression. I think in the film there is the Catholic mythology, which is usurped by something greater. The idea of forgiveness and how that is framed in Catholicism is represented by a female figure, that being their function, and not ever to be full of rage and anger. And that being usurped by an older mythology, a pre-Christian idea that you might have to pay for your sins and that being exemplified in a female god.

Amulet is an incredibly impressive debut film. Is this where you see yourself going forward, being behind the camera now and is there more horror to come?

I have other horror scripts, but I have a lot in many genres. Being an actor, I’ve worked with lots of different creatives and as a viewer, I enjoy lots of different things. I have an inclination towards the dark, so many of my scripts have that if not necessarily horror. I love acting, and would never not want to do it, but I love having this as well. Ideally, I’d like to have it all! [laughs]

Amulet is in cinemas on January 28th. You can read our review here.