Stuart Ashen is a British film-maker, comedian, and critic who is occasionally mistaken for Simon Pegg. Riyad Barmania is a Canadian film-maker, director and story-teller whose work includes Polybius Heist and the award-winning horror short, Another Game.
Their latest project, Turn Back, is a horror story told in reverse, inspired by local English legends. It can be found on Kickstarter here. We caught up with them to find out more…
STARBURST: How would you pitch the movie to an elderly relative?
Stuart: I suppose you’d say it’s a horror film. Have you ever seen Memento? You know how that wasn’t told in order? Well, it’s going to be a bit like that. And it’s going to have a sort of slightly folk horror, eerie, Wicker Man vibe to it as well, I suppose. Yeah, that’s probably the best way of doing it.
Riyad: I think, emotionally, I would say it’s a film that is more atmospheric. We’re not into excessive violence. There’s an atmosphere and a creepiness and a strangeness and an oddness. Even with our comedies, they are underpinned by emotion as well.
Stuart: What I love about horror is the atmosphere. Anything with a proper creepy atmosphere absolutely grabs me. I’m less interested in, you know, slasher films. You’ve had things more like Hostel, and that doesn’t really float my boat at all. This is far more about the feeling of impending dread, as opposed to extreme torture or something along those lines. We were not in it for the gore not saying there won’t necessarily be any gore, but that certainly isn’t the focus.
What horror movies have influenced you the most?
Stuart: Even if you try not to be influenced by your favourite movies, you’re always going to be a bit. But yeah, I love The Wicker Man. I know people talk about it a lot, but for good reason, because it’s bloody great. There was an Irish film from a few years ago called A Dark Song, which I thought was fantastic. Very rarely mentioned by people. If you want the Blu-ray, you have to buy it from Germany. It’s a fantastic film. I’ve got about 30 horror films I absolutely love. I went through everything from French auteur Jean Rollin recently, and some of his films, like The Iron Rose, are almost content-free. It’s like you’re just sort of watching a sort of slightly moving painting at times. But again, he can nail this weird atmosphere, which is what I enjoyed about them.
Riyad: For me, one of my favourite films, horror or not, in the last sort of five, six years has been Get Out, the Jordan Peele film. I was so amazed that the guy who I loved, you know, as a comedian and a sketch guy, was able to do something with so much confidence with such good pacing. And I love that there’s such an interplay, there are so many layers to what was going on. Like it’s a straight horror film that goes into a weird house in the middle of the woods, but it just worked on so many levels.
Why have you chosen the legend of Black Shuck as the inspiration for this movie?
Riyad: One of the things so we knew that we were going to have a demon. And one of the themes in the film, through one of the lead characters without giving it away, is depression. So we were talking about these themes of depression and how that will reflect into the horror, and we started talking, you know, the black dog, you know, of depression. And Stuart said, don’t you know, there’s the legend of in East Anglia of the Black Shuck. And it was one of these amazing, like, organic things.
Stuart: And there’s a nice universality to it as well because there’s some sort of ghostly black dog folklore in nearly every culture. I think they use the term Barghest, if I get that right. But yeah, it’s even found in the Middle East of Africa, Asia, you know, the whole world has their own version of Black Shuck. We’re going for my local one, but it’s very much a sort of universal image.
You can support Turn Back by going to the Kickstarter page as quickly as you can.
