Feature Category: Article

Neil Marshall is an English film and television director responsible for some of the most significant horror films of the past 20 years. Notable for The Descent and his work on shows such as Game of Thrones and Lost in Space, Neil took some time to speak to us about Dog Soldiers ahead of its 4K Remastered release.

STARBURST: We’re here to talk about Dog Soldiers. So, you’re a young filmmaker looking to make your first feature. Why werewolves?

Neil Marshall: Because they were always my favourite monsters, of the classic monsters. And I also felt they were woefully underrepresented given the slew of vampire films at the time, and you can’t move for zombie films now. Werewolf films are still few and far between and part of the reason for that is that werewolves are not easy to do and are not cheap. Given that horror films are largely a low budget medium that makes things tricky, and it made things tricky for us. The first thing everyone said to us was that it was too ambitious for a first-time feature, but we persisted.

Were there certain tropes you were keen to avoid?

This was never going to be a curse of the werewolf movie, which so many are about. The werewolves here were going to be the enemy and that was that. But I was determined they should be practical and they should walk on two legs. I almost got into a bit of a ruck with Rick Baker [won the Academy Award for Best Makeup for An American Werewolf in London] about that one. An American Werewolf in London had and always will have the best transformation sequence in but I was always slightly disappointed that the werewolf didn’t walk on two legs. I think Rick took a little issue with that and when I bumped into him a few years later he picked me up on it, but after a long, painful pause he actually agreed. I suppose it does differentiate that werewolf from the ones in The Howling that walked on two legs and in Dog Soldiers, and it is an amazing werewolf, but for me they should always walk on two legs.

There is a similarity between the creature in The Howling and yours…

Yes, if I had to choose they’re more inspired by The Howling. And I knew going in we were never going to try and do a transformation sequence if we couldn’t do it right so rather than try and imitate An American Werewolf in London or The Howling. And we didn’t want to go down the CG route as even though it was a few years after Jurassic Park it was still relatively new and not capable of the quality needed. So, I decided to take Carry On Screaming as my inspiration and do the old ‘fall behind the furniture’ ploy! Do the sound effects then all of a sudden the werewolf pops up! I hoped no-one would notice.

That’s brilliant! And there are a lot of other film references from Zulu to Aliens.

There are a lot, a lot!

Was that key for you? As rather than out-and-out horror you have a siege movie in essence?

It was always pitched as a soldier movie with werewolves and not the other way around. It was focussed on the siege with the werewolves outside and I’d always wanted to do a siege movie like Rio Bravo, Zulu and Assault on Precinct 13; I love a great siege movie. And Zulu is a British movie with a lot of British humour so I threw a lot of that in there.

There is a lot of humour and I wanted to ask if that was all scripted or did it evolve through production with the actors and certain scenes?

The foundation of the humour was definitely on the page, getting that trench humour in there was important to me to make it authentic. At no point are they ever going to mock the situation, but they find humour in themselves and we find it in the characters, but I never wanted it to undermine the situation. As the terror mounts and the more ridiculous the situation the more humorous it is. When the actors came in they brought a lot to it too; they really got into it. With Sean, he improvised the ‘hit me properly you pussy’ scene and it was so good. They just got it.

On that Sean Pertwee scene, we wondered what direction you gave him, from when he’s first attacked to when he’s knocked out. It’s a hell of a performance.

It’s phenomenal. It’s a combination of several things. A lot was in the script, on how you deal with it when your guts are hanging out and you’re trying to shove them back in. Sean had this bag of sausages around his waist for half the film. He came to be before we did the operation sequences and asked if I minded if he had a couple of drinks, just to loosen up. Not drunk but enough to feel it. I said go for it. I think it lent some real authenticity to the scene, with Kevin [McKidd] and Emma [Cleasby] working against him as he starts to blither.

Did you film chronologically as you do trash the rooms and sets as you go along?

Yes. We shot all the exteriors first and then went into the studio, and we shot all that stuff in linear order from them on. We had to as we literally when from room to room trashing each one. It helped with continuity and it meant that when each actor was killed off they wrapped and left set. We did the same thing on The Descent too. It serves a practical purpose but it’s heart-breaking to see each character go.

In that short period you made two of the most significant horror films in recent times. You’ve wrapped Dog Soldiers and are planning your next movie The Descent. There are similarities between the two but there is a distinctly different tone. There’s more story.

That’s exactly right. In The Descent the big difference is that everyone is not in it together. If Dog Soldiers is about a group of people who bond and will fight and die for each other The Descent is the opposite. This is group who think they’re all friends but fractures appear and it all falls apart.

So was it a conscious decision to have an entirely different dynamic and a full on horror movie?

Originally, I was going to do a zombie film but it was considered too ambitious and too expensive. I left a meeting in London with Celador who wanted something cheaper, got on a train to go home to Newcastle and by the time I got off I had the idea for The Descent.

Must have been some journey…

[Laughs] It was mainly about how I could keep things contained. Could I do something in the darkness and in caves and also somehow affordable? I’d just done a macho movie so the flip side was an all-female horror movie. There was also a review somewhere for Dog Soldiers that I read, which asked when a British filmmaker was going to make a truly scary horror film so I thought let’s give it a go. The whole agenda for The Descent was to make the scariest film I could possibly make.

We won’t ask about the Dog Soldiers sequel as you’ve spoken on that before but there’s always the feeling that there’s a larger world out there in your films, whether it’s Centurion or Doomsday. You’ve spent a lot of the past ten years in television. Is there something you’d look to expand on in the future?

I would love to. A few years back someone mentioned the notion of a Doomsday television series, which I would be keen to expand on, especially now! I’m not sure about The Descent but Dog Soldiers certainly.

You’re recently gone back to films from television.

Ideally, I’d like to do both. Being part of the television world and the revolution that has happened has been amazing. Being involved in Game of Thrones and such like is great, I don’t want to lose that but I’d like to have more creative input. I’m developing my own shows but I’d also like to do more movies.

Having done those large budget productions on television, and recently Hellboy, do you still crave that earlier way of filmmaking; in camera effects and working a budget to fit the film?

Definitely. No matter what I’d done I would always want to do in camera effects. And with my next film, The Reckoning, I’ve gone back to working with no money but with complete creative control. It was really was a case of coming up with creative solutions. I like to be paid but there’s also a real pleasure figuring your way through things. I need a halfway solution where I get paid and can also be creative!

Dog Soldiers in re-released in cinemas on October 23rd and The Reckoning screens at Arrow Video FrightFest on Friday, October 23rd at 9pm.

Renowned Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon is back with Wolfwalkers, the third and final film in their informal ‘Irish folklore trilogy’. With their latest set to release theatrically in late October and premiere on Apple TV+ in December, Wolfwalkers has already become one of the top critically-acclaimed releases of 2020 and established itself as a strong contender come awards season. STARBURST spoke with directors Tomm Moore (also co-founder of Cartoon Saloon) and Ross Stewart about Wolfwalkers’ themes of environmentalism, colonialism and humans’ relationship to nature, as well as their artistic choices and inspirations.

STARBURST: What inspired the story for Wolfwalkers, and what sort of research did you get into?

Tomm Moore: We were talking about species extinction, and the worldviews that the world was getting locked into, more and more. We kind of thought about Irish history during that period when the wolves were being made extinct – even though Ireland had once been called Wolf Land – and how significant that was for the culture, what was lost beyond just the wolves. And we see that happening all over the world today. So that was the inspiration, and so was this kind of Irish version of the werewolf mythology from where we grew up, here in Kilkenny. That was the folkloric and historic inspiration, but it was more the fact that it spoke to stuff that is so relevant today which drew us to it. And of course, we wanted to tell a story that spoke to modern children and modern audiences. So the focus always has to be the emotional journey of the characters; that’s the universal thing. The research that we did was all like a shopping trip to find the parts of history and folklore that would help boost that central story, that heart of the movie, which is the two girls.

Ross Stewart: And the research also involved understanding what life was like at the time. The attitude that the Irish people had towards wolves was really interesting in that they didn’t see this species as an enemy or as a species to be wiped out. That was a newer way of thinking brought by the English. The Irish were able to live in harmony or in some kind of symbiotic relationship with this megafauna.

Could you elaborate on how this period of history and the story you tell in Wolfwalkers are relevant today?

TM: I think it’s sadly so relevant. And this idea that there’s something instinctual about a society that fearfully gathers around this strongman type of ruler, which kids need to be able to see past if we’re going to survive into the next generation. You know these strongmen, tribal rulers who just tell everybody what to do to be safe – we have to go beyond that and face whatever fear it is that’s holding us back from seeing things from the point of view of the other. What is it that’s making us shelter behind tribal walls? Kids need to be able to think beyond that, because it’s really sad to see the world collapsing back into this sort of strongman authoritarianism that existed back in the 1600s.

RS: And also, what’s really bizarre is that at a time when the entire planet is under threat, our collective home, we still have factions of humans fighting against each other instead of all working together to try and save our world. Hopefully people get some sense of that from our film.

TM: You just have to be a small part of chipping away at that block. I think storytellers can’t expect to convert anybody, but they can work to influence their audience so that they start to slowly see things from another point of view. Then at some point, there will hopefully be some breakthrough in consciousness for the next generation. We all need that.

RS: Become a ripple in the sea that eventually becomes a wave. You know?

And another way you seem to put that across is in the animation and stylistic differences between the town and the forest, or the townspeople and the animals. Can you speak a little more on those decisions?

RS: Well, from the initial concept of the story that Tomm and myself had, we had two contrasting worlds: the townspeople’s where, especially following the puritanical invasion, everything was ordered and ruled over. It became like a cage for the people, and especially for Robyn. Then in contrast to that you have the forest where the wolves live, and the way they and the wolfwalkers interact with their world is based on instinct. There’s a freedom there and a kind of a chaos. The visual styles of both worlds have to reinforce what they’re about. That way, everything in the town is about horizontals and verticals, with very angular and quite aggressive mark-making and very oppressive areas of black. By contrast, the forest is based on curves, you know, domineering areas of black. The forest, by contrast, is based on curves, it’s very free and loose, and the compositions lead off the screen. Everything is very impressionistically painted, very free and wild. The styles very much serve the idea that there are two contrasting worlds within the story.

And you kept some of the sketch lines in the design, which is really interesting.

TM: Yeah, and it’s something which I think hand-drawn animation has lost, that sense that there’s an artist behind there. We have to keep that human element to it.

RS: And traditionally, clean-up departments would have been in charge of getting rid of the rough underdrawings and putting this perfectly clean line over it. We thought, let’s try and keep some of that rough underdrawing, because they’re beautiful. They’re part of the whole exploration of the characters.

The fact that those underdrawings appear much more in the wolf and forest scenes also emphasises that naturalism.

RS: Yes, totally. And it suggests this inner energy and inner life in them as well.

Another very interesting aspect, visually, happens when we see the world through wolfwalkers’ eyes. What influences or imagery did you draw upon to design those sequences?

TM: There was some research there into the way canines see the world with less colour but with much more powerful scent and hearing – we tried to represent that. And the wolf-vision was probably the most technically challenging. We worked with a small team that was led by Evan McNamara, who is a director and animator from Dublin that we worked with. We kind of combined a CG way of flying through the forest, and then everything after that was done hand drawn on paper. I think it gives a really unique look; it was a lot of work for just three minutes of movie, but it makes you feel like you’re completely immersed in the drawing. That wildness that we wanted to show is all around you, and we wanted to make it feel as exciting for the audience as it would be for Robyn to suddenly see the world through new eyes.

And lastly, what projects are you working on that we might look forward to?

TM: We’re deep in production on a new feature film. Nora Twomey, one of the partners in Cartoon Saloon, she directed The Breadwinner – she’s making a movie called My Father’s Dragon for Netflix. And that’s epic on a bigger scale than we’ve ever done before. I think it’s going to knock people out when it comes out. I’ve just finished a short film for Greenpeace about the destruction of the Amazon, so you’ll see that soon in late October, early November. Those are two immediate things, but we’ve got so much in the works in terms of series, and then another movie based on Puffin Rock. There’s a lot coming, so watch out for that.

WOLFWALKERS releases in cinemas October 30th, and on Apple TV + December 11th. 

 

Dominic Monaghan is one of England’s most versatile and best loved actors. With roles in The Lord of Rings Trilogy and Lost he has established himself as one of the leading actors of his generation. Dominic took some time to talk with STARBURST about recent project Pet in which he stars with Ksenia Solo.

STARBURST: The film we’re talking about, Pet, has been around for a little while now. Is it interesting to be talking about it again?

Dominic Monaghan: That’s kind of how it is in my business, but thankfully this is a project I liked being involved in. There have been films and television shows over the years I’ve been less inclined to talk about. Pet is a project I really like and am really happy with how it turned out. It makes it much easier.

We understand you were involved quite a long time before production began?

I was attached to Pet in between Seasons One and Two of Lost but because of the writer’s strike and certain actresses we liked either getting pregnant or cold feet, it kept getting pushed. We needed an actress who could bring the necessary intensity to the role, so we waited and waited. Thankfully, we waited enough time for Ksenia to be involved.

Your character Seth is quite complex; introverted and a loner. When you approached the role what did you hope the audience would get from him?

I’ve probably spent a little more time alone than normal trying to explore that character. What I’m always trying to do with any character I play is have them move from the page to the screen. You have to make them as believable and real as possible. I’m always trying to think if this is a character someone could meet in the street or in a bar and for them to be real. With Seth, even though he is antisocial, and he does have his own behavioural issues, I’m trying to make him seem like someone you could meet and have a conversation with. And because the script is so well-written a lot of the hard work is done for you.

And then with what happens, he doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong.

I think there are a lot of people who live their life justifying their actions whether it’s online or in real life, where they behave in various ways most elements of society would disapprove of. They feel justified by whatever injustices they’ve been through. We all have our own freaky things we shield from most people.

Did you work on the dynamic between Seth and Ksenia’s character Holly?

It’s not difficult for you to become beguiled Ksenia. She’s hugely charismatic, a very talented and beautiful woman. We allowed my natural inclination to be interested in her to keep going. She kept me at a nice arm’s length distance, both on and off camera which worked for the film. It’s a very well-written piece and once Ksenia got into her Holly outfit it’s easy to think she could be her.

There’s no real message in the film, and little guidance given to the audience as to how they should feel about the characters and what happens. Was that a conscious decision?

I think so. It was key to try and paint a bleak depiction of humanity, where everyone is struggling with their own demons. Perhaps initially the audience will feel sorry for Seth but then you realise he’s making decisions that could be morally wrong. Then you could feel sympathy for Holly but then that changes. We’re not one dimensional as human beings.

Your career has been varied in the roles you’ve had. Is there something that guides your decisions as you haven’t been pigeon-holed into one style or character?

I am passionate about not being so. It would have been easy to have taken several Hobbit-y type roles as I was constantly being offered them. Leprechauns, pixies, elves and all that stuff. Then when I played Charlie in Lost, I was offered lots of rock stars and drug addicts. That’s what motivates me; to consistently do what the audience doesn’t expect. Outside of that it’s the roles. I’m lucky enough to read 75-100 scripts a year and maybe passionately like six or eight, and out of those films maybe 3 or 4 are interested in me. It’s a very small pool.

Having been involved in Lost which was ground-breaking television, and as we’re now in what’s called a Golden Age, are you keen to explore the longer form more or do you prefer the film process?

Both mediums have great qualities. The great thing about film is that in 6 to 8 weeks you can be done, finished with a rounded character and move on. With television, you spend more time with the character which is more like life. You can watch the character evolve. I try not to let money dictate what I do now. Ultimately it all starts with the script.

Pet is now available on Prime Video.

Composer Sam Ewing has slowly but steadily made a name for himself over the last few years, thanks to his work with the massive talent that is composer Bear McCreary on shows like The Walking Dead and films like the Happy Death Day series. However, Ewing has also started doing work on his own, and the composer’s first solo score, for director Frank Sabatella’s vampiric horror, The Shed, was just released on vinyl from the folks at Enjoy the Ride Records. We spoke with the composer  about his career.

 

STARBURST: How did you come to be connected with the Enjoy the Ride folks?

Sam Ewing: All through Bear. I don’t know how much you know about my background – I will assume you and readers know nothing. I started working with Bear McCreary, who’s a well-established film composer, back in 2014, and I was his intern turned assistant. I just kind of got in at a really good time with him. Fast forward like five or six years five years and Adam Green had approached Bear to score his movie, Victor Crowley, which was his surprise release of this movie that he made in total secret.

Bear said, “I can’t do it, but my guys Sam and Jason can,” so I co-scored this movie with Jason Akers, who was also in a similar position as me with Bear. Since then, we’ve kind of been doing our own things. The producer from Victor Crowley, Corey Neal basically approached Bear again and said, “Hey man, I’ve got this movie called The Shed. Do you want to do a similar arrangement?” Bear basically hooked me up. It’s all Bear. That’s how it happened. It was a fun ride.

Is the fact that you do a lot of horror/other genre type stuff: is that because you are involved with Bear or is that also something that appeals to you as a composer and musician?

It’s kind of like chicken or the egg, you know? I think I’ve always had an interest in horror music. So, this is actually going back a little bit further – it’s pretty funny. I was at school at Berklee College of Music Writing. Even back then, I was kind of writing horror music and doing mock-ups and little orchestral recording sessions for Aleatoric music, which is really modern and scary-sounding and whatnot.

My professor at the time, Michael Sweet – I ran into him at a burger joint and he was like, “You should work for Bear McCreary. I feel like you guys would have a good musical connection,” so he recommended me to the person who was hiring interns at the time. It all started with that. So, honestly, I think I had that sort of interest to begin with, but it’s also one of those things that once you start doing something – pigeonholed is a strong word and I would never use that for my situation or Bear’s situation – but just one of those things you do a lot and I think people recognize you for that.

I co-scored The Walking Dead season 10 with Bear and it’s just another thing that kind of perpetuates the kind of guy that you are. Fortunately, I really like that kind of music. I think Bear does, too. Like, Bernard Herrman’s Psycho is one of my favorite scores of all time, so there you go.

One of the things I’ve noticed about your work is that a lot of the horror stuff that you work on has a very humorous or playful element to it and it seems like that lets your music do the same thing. Is that just the work that comes to you? Is that something that you appreciate? Because it does seem like it lets you be a little lighter. I’m thinking specifically of stuff like the Happy Death Day movies or Hulu’s Into the Dark – Pooka!, specifically.

That was so much fun. Pooka!, yeah – let me talk about that. First of all, the appreciation part of it: I so appreciate some lightness in all the horror. I also just think that’s a modern way of making horror films. I think Blumhouse is a really good example of that. Jordan Peele, I think he’s just setting the tone for Hollywood horror films.

You watch these movies and it’s like this ride: you get this thrill, but there are these buoys of lightness and humor that that make it a really fun ride. I just totally appreciate as a viewer – having having some lightness and some humor in the movies, so Happy Death Day and Pooka! were so fun. They’re just so fun and musically, I think there are two ways to look at it.

I think, on one hand, you wanna be careful as the composer and as the filmmaker, because when the music gets too comedic, then it kind of underplays the dark stuff and then somehow it’s not as funny. I’ve imagined test screenings of a comedy beat in a horror film where in one version, you’ve got funny music and in another, you’ve got really scary music. I think somehow the one that’s playing scary is always going to be funnier.

That’s all to say that I never like to step on the funny stuff and bring it out too much because underneath, there’s usually a guy with a knife who’s trying to kill our main character or something, so I think playing that and having the score really, functionally be attached to that is the most important thing, bottom line, always.

There’s something about these movies – and maybe it’s just the filmmakers. They bring this energy with them. On Happy Death Day, for example, we did stuff that was more traditional orchestration so there were these flavors of Alan Silvestri and Bernard Herrmann that are just so fun and I think, for a movie that might take itself too seriously, you might not get to go there, so it’s just a win-win. It’s all super fun.

What, for you as a composer is the difference between doing film and television? I guess Pooka! counts as a made-for-TV movie kind of thing, but you’ve also done these series where, in the case of Walking Dead, it’s been running forever. You’ve also done Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is very hardcore tied into a cinematic property, while also doing Fantasy Island, which is a movie based on a TV show. You have all of this very interesting cross-platform stuff.

That’s really true. It’s tough to draw the line anywhere other than simply the deadlines. I hate to like go there, but with a movie, you spend months making a score for 60 minutes of music. On TV, you’ll crank out 60 minutes of music in two weeks, easily, so that creates differences in the music.

With TV, usually you need some help. Things are usually more broad strokes. You create some themes for the entire season and then you reuse them and develop them. Bottom line, I think that, no matter what – this goes for TV or movies, and especially with Bear, and this is something I have always appreciated about him – is we just like to keep everything cinematic, no matter what.

You’re watching and scoring into a vacuum and you ask yourself, “How can we make this as awesome as possible?”, whether it’s getting an orchestra or doing synths. You figure out the logistics later. S.H.I.E.L.D., for example: that show had seven seasons of almost 22 episodes for every season and we had an orchestra on every single one of them, but we made it work, so it sounds cinematic and awesome. I think, ultimately, it’s like the lines are really starting to blur and especially today, where people say we’re in the golden age of TV.

I think that’s true. I think TV is incredible right now. Tthe bar just keeps going higher and higher. The budgets become higher and the music gets carried along with that so they should all be treated the same, no matter what.

The Shed is getting a vinyl release from Enjoy the Ride. Are you a vinyl person?

I would be lying if I said I was a vinyl person. I’ve always appreciated vinyl and in my house, my dad had vinyl and an amp and crazy-good speakers growing up, and he would play The B-52’s and classic rock albums and stuff like that, but beyond that, it’s simply, for me – and maybe this is just an age thing, but I grew up in the ’90. I see vinyl as this really cool collector’s item that is more significant as a thing you hold in your hand than a listening experience. That’s just me. Maybe I’m just showing my age here, but that’s what it is to me: it’s this thing that you hold and it’s beautiful and in a way, it’s a relic of where music has come from and the fact that we can still make these things is like just so cool.

Will this be the first time you’ve had a physical release of any of your music?

It sure is. I’ve worked on a a bunch of things with Bear, of course, but my name is not on there as a sole composer, so this is absolutely the first physical release I’ve ever had. I’m so stoked. Huge shout out, by the way, to Frank Sabatella, who’s the director of The Shed. He was just pushing for this and pushing for vinyl, specifically. I was just kind of like, “Okay, yeah. We’ll see,” but he pushed me and pushed Bear and we made it happen and Joe Augustine helped coordinate everything so I’m so stoked.

The Shed can be ordered from Enjoy the Ride Records on either Vampire Sunrise (limited to 150 copies) or Shotgun Brain Blast (350 copies) vinyl. Each copy also includes a free 14 day trial to Shudder, a horror, thriller & supernatural Video On Demand service from AMC Networks.

With Netflix recently debuting the animated spin-off JURASSIC WORLD: CAMP CRETACEOUS to much acclaim (read our review HERE), we were delighted to sit down with three of its stars – PAUL-MIKÉL WILLIAMS (who voices Darius), GLEN POWELL (Dave), and JAMEELA JAMIL (Roxie) – to talk about its reception, what lies ahead, the anxiety of the recording booth, massive tails, and more…

The story of Camp Cretaceous overlaps with the event of Jurassic World. How would these characters fair against Claire Deering or Ian Malcolm?

Paul-Mikél Williams: I would say that the main franchise is a big part of how this series is currently going. If it wasn’t in the main setting it would still be on the same path of a bunch of stuff breaking out, because the Jurassic franchise has a lot of adults making bad decisions, so I don’t think it would make that much of a change in storyline.

Glen Powell: Yeah, I would say Jameela’s way more responsible, her character. I have no responsibility; I assume I would be the first one to be eaten if I got on that side of the island.

Jameela Jamil: Yeah, and if anything, my character would eat him, if a dinosaur didn’t [laughs], for survival.

PAUL-MIKÉL WILLIAMS

Even though this is an animated show from such a beloved franchise, how do you all feel about coming in and joining it now. Obviously, it’s exciting, but is it also quite daunting for you?

JJ: I’m the biggest Jurassic Park freak, I have been since I was a child. I still think the original movie holds up, and I loved the reboot, which I was afraid I wouldn’t because of how much I enjoyed the original, so to be able to participate in just the legacy of Jurassic Park feels massive, especially to my inner kid, and to know that if I go on to have kids one day, that they’d be able to watch this means the world to me. I’m so glad to see how much people love it, I can’t believe how extraordinary it looks. When we’re doing it, we’re doing it to these very basic line drawings, so I think we were all so amazed to see how it turned out. It’s a massive honour, that I don’t think any of us take for granted.

GP: Also, when you take a beloved piece of IP or something that we all have a strong emotional connection to, it’s more often in Hollywood that it gets screwed up than it’s done right. Obviously having Steven Spielberg, Colin [Trevorrow], and Frank [Marshall], these amazing brains behind it to make sure that we don’t screw up what I consider to be holy ground in a cinematic world, I’m really glad we didn’t ruin it, because there’s a lot of people in my life that would tell me if we ruined it. And I didn’t have to answer to them, so that’s nice.

PMW: Joining this wonderful franchise was really a dream come true, because I loved the Jurassic World movies. The Jurassic Park movies got me enticed into the series, they gave me a newfound love for dinosaurs that I never thought I would have. Then, I got the surprise that these two would be joining me and I freaked out even more. This franchise just skyrocketed my love for it, and being a part of this show with these amazing people and their voice acting – they were some of my favourite characters I’ve ever seen in an animated series – I would say that I was very nervous in the beginning, but the more I got to know them, the more I listened to their recordings, the more I felt right at home.

JJ: Also, please make it known that the other cool thing of being a part of this franchise is just being able to ride Paul’s coattails, because he’s going to be a massive star.

GP: I don’t know how often you all came in for recordings but Paul, you must have been living in there. I feel like I came in there occasionally every once in a while and made some Dad jokes, but you run the show, man!

PMW: You guys got some amazing screen-time – you guys were iconic! I feel like you guys will be made into Funko Pops at some point because of how funny and amazing and creative your scenes were.

GP: It’s all I’ve ever wanted, man.

GLEN POWELL

It’s animation, so it’s a vocal performance, but how into it do you get inside that sound booth?

GP: Watching it, I realised how into it I really was [laughs], maybe a little too enthusiastic sometimes.  They kept telling me to bump up the energy and I was like “really?”. I’d go on drives home and I was light-headed from that amount of energy. I’d have to take a pre-workout before I went in for a voiceover, they really wanted the energy. I hope Dave isn’t annoyingly energetic, but I was sweating every time I left that booth.

Paul, how do you expect your character to develop moving forward in Season 2?

PMW: I feel like the campers are going to go through some crazy things, there are probably going to be a lot of things that I haven’t seen yet. Scott, the producer, I’m loving what he’s doing on the show, what the writers are doing, I’m a huge fan of them right now, but development-wise I want to say there’s going to be more than just dinosaurs; they’re going to dive into the lore of everything that we missed in the ‘quote unquote’ gaping hole of Jurassic World through Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. There are going to be a lot of things said that people didn’t think were going to be said, and I feel that development-wise Season 2 is going to be one heck of a ride!

There’s some quite dark moments in the show, so was there any apprehension from your side how the young audiences watching it would receive it?

JJ: I personally advocate telling kids the truth and not trying to keep them overly sheltered, and I think we did it in this really relatable way. I know kids as young as six or seven who are watching it who don’t feel too overwhelmed. I think we managed the balance correctly but, also, I think kids can handle more than we think, and it’s great for preparing them for big emotions. So, I like that it sets us apart from the rest of the franchise. Even though it’s animation it feels so human and so full of heart and I really like that.

GP: I think also when you look at Steven Spielberg’s Amblin work, the way he treats the kids, it’s usually through their point of view, and he always treats them with an adult perspective and responsibility. They’re the ones who save the world in all the early movies, and because he doesn’t treat them like an adult looking down at the kids, it’s kids lookingup at adults. He’s the master at that and he’s done it better than anyone, and I think that’s why a lot of young people are responding to the show. It doesn’t feel like they’re being talked down to, it’s like they’re saving the world because they know better than the adults.

PMW: I love how they’re idolising the kids in this series because the Jurassic franchise has really  been based on the adults and how they do things, and I love that they’re showing a kids side, even if it’s dinosaurs eating people they’re showing that kids have a voice. I like what Jameela said about not having it filtered towards a younger audience. It has so many morals that kids can learn, but it still has that action aspect, so it doesn’t feel too childish or too youthful. It explains friendship, teamwork, all of those things you need as a kid, but it also explains some of the other things you might be going through as a kid, like losing a parent or a family member. It’s good for awareness, not only for the kids but for the parents also.

JAMEELA JAMIL

Did you realise when you came aboard the show that the story would overlap so neatly with Jurassic World?

JJ: I didn’t, and I wonder if they didn’t tell me that so I wouldn’t get too intimidated, because I think you can get in your head and the whole joy of animation is being completely lost, no inhibitions.  We’re English, we know how difficult it is to let loose and be free, so I had to really throw myself in and go to a place I didn’t even know existed in me in order to pull out these big screaming performances, and I think I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I’d felt intimidated by what was ahead.

GP: Did you ever feel intimidated when you did one of those emotional scenes and people are just silently watching?

JJ: Yeah, but also I was shouting and screaming and I had to use my arms to get into it, so I was very physical pretending to fall backwards, and then you see a bunch of very well-dressed executives blankly looking at you through the glass [laughs]. You feel like such a fool!

GP: It’s that silent moment right after you finish it. You realise how silent that booth is. You do all this crazy stuff, and then it’s the silence of your own insecurity. I’m glad that isn’t on film.

JJ: Oh my god, career ending.

GP: Totally.

PMW: I definitely agree with both of you on that one; this is one of the most crazy roles that I have ever gotten into. I’ve never run from dinosaurs in my life, I’m sure none of us have ever run from dinosaurs in our lives, and then I really relate to screaming in the booth. You’re chilling in the booth to see if they want you to do it again, and it really shows how much time goes into this because there are so many aspects of animation and also voice. The studio director and Scott were in there the whole time, and they put all of their time and effort into showing us how to do what we do and giving us things to relate to. They helped us so much with these roles.

Which dinosaur do you think you relate to the most?

JJ: Oh, I’m a T-Rex. Look at me on Twitter! [NB: This was recorded on a day where Jameela was trending worldwide on Twitter] Massive destruction, flailing around [laughs], just a big loud monster. I’ve always identified with the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

PMW: I would have to go with Ankylosaurus. Huge tail gentle giant, herbivore, I would never eat a person, I’m not a cannibal. Also, the gentle giant aspect of an Ankylosaurus, you have the power to do something, but you only use it when it’s really needed. With great power comes great responsibility.

JJ: Also, he has a massive tail [laughing when she realises that could be misconstrued]. Oh, no, I didn’t mean that! Look at me, T-Rexing around again!

JURASSIC WORLD: CAMP CRETACEOUS Season 1 is out now on Netflix, while Season 2 is due in 2021.

Possessor is a thrilling sophomore feature from writer-director Brandon Cronenberg (son of the legendary David Cronenberg) and stars Mandy’s Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuppence Middleton, and Sean Bean. This sci-fi horror follows Tasya Vos (Riseborough), a corporate assassin who uses brain-implant technology to take control of others’ bodies in order to kill her assigned targets. Her latest excursion sees Vos inhabit the body of Colin Tate (Abbott) for a seemingly routine assignment. However, it’s not long until things go awry and she begins to lose control, and her life threatens to unravel around her.

Screening at London Film Festival ahead of its UK release on November 27^th, STARBURST spoke with Possessor’s writer-director Brandon Cronenberg about his original concept for the film and its ideas surrounding identity, selfhood, and control.

STARBURST: We wanted to start by asking, where did the concept for Possessor originate from?

Brandon Cronenberg: I think it initially came from a trivial, personal place. I was on the press tour for my first feature Antiviral and travelling with a film for the first time was a very surreal experience. You’re constructing this public persona, in a sense, you’re performing a version of yourself, this kind of media-self that then runs off and has its own strange life online without you. So because of that and a couple of other things, I was having a difficult time seeing myself in my own life; I was waking up in the mornings feeling like I was sitting up into someone else’s life and having to madly construct a character who could operate in that context. So I initially wanted to write a film about a character who may or may not be an imposter in their own life, and do that as a way of talking about how we create characters and narratives in order to function as people. And then the thriller and sci-fi elements kind of built up from there. The seed of the film was actually in those more dramatic scenes, the relationship and family scenes.

So would you say that Possessor is essentially about constructions of the self, and finding a unified sense of self?

I mean, I think it ended up becoming about a number of things. That was really where it started, about those characters that we perform not only for other people but also for ourselves, that self-image and those personal narratives we build. But other things also crept into it. For instance, the Snowden leaks happened as I was writing, and I was becoming very angry and depressed about the death of privacy through technology. And so that surveillance element also ended up in there.

It’s interesting that the Snowden leaks influenced that exploration of privacy, because conversations around that have found even more traction in recent years. Do you think it has found renewed relevance with concerns around the US elections and accusations of foreign intervention?

I would say so, definitely. Less in terms of surveillance – although there is that – but I think depressingly, it has become more relevant from a kind of mind-control perspective, I think. It’s interesting because, as people, we have this idea that we are coherent selves with our own wills and desires, and that we’re somehow unified entities. But actually, all human beings are this chorus of conflicted impulses and ideas, some of which come from our own brains, but some of which don’t. I mean, there’s incredibly interesting science for instance, about the ways that our microbiomes affect our personality, just the fact that we have micro-organisms in our bodies that are partly dictating our behaviour.

And, of course, we are also affected by what could be considered psychological infections, ideas that we pick up from other people and which end up defining us. And right now, I think we’re really seeing the beginnings of how the construction of our online society will dictate the next era of human behaviour – foreign interference in elections being just one example. I mean, there are many people who feel that they are operating as motivated by their own ideas, but their own ideas have actually been carefully crafted by foreign governments… which in another era would have sounded like a completely insane conspiracy theory! But that’s actually just daily life right now, and I think we’re only just starting to understand the repercussions of being in an online society.

How would you then define this idea of ‘the self’ in modern society?

I think it is a vague concept. I was looking into the neuroscience behind the kind of brain control aspects of the film, and although I don’t think this technology is actually around the corner, it is rooted in real neuroscience. In particular I was looking at this Dr. Jose Delgado who was a Spanish doctor working in the US in the 50s, and 60s, and he was doing experiments where he would put actual wires into people’s brains and then stimulate parts of their brains electrically, and found he could control a very wide range of behaviour and emotion. Alarmingly, not only motor function but also emotional and other behavioural functions. There is one experiment he described in his book, where he would press a button to activate the brain implant in a particular subject and, because of that trigger, the subject would get up from his chair, walk around it and then sit down. And every time the button was pressed, he would go through the same motions, but every time he did it, he would decide after the fact that he had done it of his own free will, and come up with an explanation for it. For instance, he would say, “I was looking for my shoes,” or “I heard a sound from the other room”.

And so it was like the subject’s brain had decided, after the action was performed, that it had been generated internally rather than by this implant. I think that that function of the human brain, the one that allows someone to claim ownership over certain ideas and certain actions is, first of all, very philosophically interesting, but I also think it’s at the heart of what we’re seeing with a lot of social media. People are deciding something came from them, even though it didn’t, because that’s just how we generate our ideas of ourselves.

You’ve touched on this already, but how do you think modern technologies are transforming our ideas of humanity?

Absolutely. I mean, again, I think it really comes from being online constantly. We’re constantly exposed to information through our phones – not to sound like an old person! But we’re carrying around these devices all the time which are, for one, plugging us into a constant stream of information, but are also being used to tailor that information in order to affect our behaviour. And so who we are is this process of push and pull, where we’re contributing to this online community but we’re also being very, very affected by it in some very nuanced ways. The part of the film where they’re looking through people’s webcams to see what kinds of curtains and blinds they own, and to then use that for commercial data mining purposes, that’s a joke in the film. Yet it’s only kind of a joke because we really are having our privacy violated in incredibly invasive ways, all for incredibly mundane reasons. So much of it is just about money and selling us things.

Possessor works as commentary on modernity and technology, but it also explores more organic ideas of the self – for instance there’s a fascinating scene in which Vos, in her otherwise female-presenting body, is seen with an erect penis instead of a vagina. Can you talk a little about exploring that relationship between gender and identity?

I think that if you’re someone who jumps into other people’s bodies, gender becomes incredibly complicated and fascinating. And sex becomes incredibly complicated and fascinating, because who we are is so rooted in our bodies, and not just our ideas of self but also in a basic, physical way. So of course, if you’re jumping into the body of someone who’s of a different biological sex, you’re going to be having a complicated relationship with that body; you’re experiencing a very different kind of physicality, but you’re also experiencing all of the cultural elements of gender that come with it. And I think Chris’s performance was very interesting because he was playing with those moments of being more female or more male, depending on how much of Tasya’s personality was coming through. And the shot with the penis was because I wanted to find a point in that scene where Vos was losing herself in Colin, not just physically but psychologically. She was Colin in that moment, and then suddenly also having this sense of her own self; that kind of disconnect between who she was, who she is within him and who he is, in this very physically intimate moment, that’s fascinating.

Possessor has an R-rated version and an unrated, uncut version. That was partially because of those sex scenes we’ve just mentioned, but also because the film features its fair share of graphic violence. Why was it important for you to keep that violence in the film, even as it meant a higher rating?

For the most part, the uncut version is fortunately the lead version of the film; I think the violence in the film is very narrative. So much of Vos’ character is about her relationship with violence, and the evolution of that relationship. So, for me, part of that is the need to communicate her experience of violence in a visceral way, because it has so much to do with her emotional and psychological state. I think the audience needs to connect with her on that level; and if they’re horrified, that’s important too. That’s part of her character, part of her relationship with her work. And the violence also really tracks with her psychology: sometimes it’s more observational, sometimes it’s more tactile, sometimes it’s a memory that’s very stylized because she’s looking back at it. That violence is so essential to the film that I didn’t want to tone that down for the sake of ratings.

And similarly, what inspired the use of body horror to visualise Vos’ consciousness taking over Colin’s?

I mean, when you have a scene where someone’s consciousness is remotely invading another person’s body, how do you communicate that in a way that allows the audience to feel it? Those scenes were in many ways about trying to visualise something that’s very hard to imagine. Not only because the technology is imagined, but because the concept itself is something that’s so abstract. Those scenes were an attempt to make it more concrete.

We just wanted to finish by asking you about what future projects you might have in the works?

I have two films that are fairly far along in development right now. One is called Infinity Pool, which is a kind of tourist resort satire with some sci-fi horror elements, and the other is a trippy space horror film called Dragon. I hope to shoot them back-to-back as soon as I get a chance.

You’re definitely speaking our language there. Thank you so much for your time.

POSSESSOR releases in cinemas from November 27th, courtesy of Signature Entertainment, or catch it as part of the BFI’s London Film Festival on October 16th, 9pm.