Neil and Charlotte joined us at our Monsters and Movies event to present their brand new movie THE LAIR, and Neil also took part in a talk following a screening of his claustrophobic classic THE DESCENT.
Ahead of these screenings, they popped by The Reaper’s graveyard for a little chat…
The Reaper: So how would you describe THE LAIR in one sentence?
Charlotte: A hell of a lot of bloody fun.
That should go on the poster.
Neil: I was gonna go with the plot. I was thinking ‘soldiers versus Aliens in Afghanistan’.
One goes on the poster, the other literally says what you get. What appealed to each of you, separat,ely about this project?
It was a chance to do another like action horror movie in the vein of DOG SOLDIERS. We’d done THE RECKONING together and that was quite serious, I wanted to make something that was just more fun. I wanted to make something like a classic B movie.
I guess for me it was the challenge of doing an action role. I had done action before, but not to this extent of firing guns. This is the first time I’d actually fired a gun <laugh>. Then I’m there, I’m shooting the AK 47 which is a lot fun. A physically challenging role and I just loved the role of Sinclair that we created together.
So you collaborated on that role and built it up – I wondered if it was always intended to be a female pilot or if that was changed.
Always a female pilot.
We created the whole thing from scratch together. We wrote it together during lockdown, and the original intention was that it was gonna be a Covid friendly type film as back then we didn’t necessarily know when it was gonna come to an end. It was like, well we need to make film that’s got minimal cast, minimal crew, minimal locations. We thought maybe shooting something out in the desert because we’d heard that Covid can’t exist in like 30 degree heat or more, so it’s like a desert would be a great place to film. Then it’s just all these stupid things that we like to throw into the mix and then suddenly ended up being Afghanistan and aliens and bunkers and way more ambitious than originally intended.
It was meant to be one location, low budget. But Neil just can’t write low budget unfortunately. His mind’s too ambitious.
Too ambitious for my own good.
Not a bad thing! So what do you both think of the current state of British horror?
British horror in particular? I don’t really know that I have an answer for that because I’ve not seen a lot of British horror films lately. It’s not to say they’re not being made, I just haven’t caught up with a lot of them. There’s films that I need to catch up with, like CENSOR. I dunno how well commercially British horror is doing. Very recently horror has done very, very well commercially, but it’s all American stuff. We get all the endless Halloween reboots but British horror in particular… I dunno. There’s nothing.
Has it kind of become more artsy now? More less commercial potentially.
Definitely a bit of that going on. Just the films that are getting made and getting wide releases are.. for want of a better description, the A24 type movies. More sort of esoteric horror films than just fun stuff. That’s why THE LAIR kind of stands out. It’s not trying to be like that at all. It’s just a good adventure movie.
Yeah, it’s not trying to be pretentious.
It knows what it’s aiming to be. Horror always seems to be just struggling a little bit in the UK because there’s always that kind of slightly snobby attitude toward it from the main film industry who are still doing their period dramas and all that kind of stuff. So everybody looks down their nose at horror.
What if there’s a period drama with horror?
Well, they tried that with PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES.
I suddenly remembered that exists as I asked the question. Are you not a fan?
Well, it wasn’t as good as I would’ve made it <laugh> I pitched like crazy for that one. Mine would’ve been a bit different.
What’s the best horror film you guys have seen recently?
The trouble is I always come up with the same answer and it’s not even a recent film, it’s 10 years old now. It’s LAKE MUNGO.
Oh, I love LAKE MUNGO.
I swear by that film. It’s fantastic.
That’s the thing about that question. I say recently, it doesn’t have to be a recent film.
I haven’t seen any recent stuff that I really liked. But I haven’t seen enough, that’s the trouble. I know there’s a lot of good stuff out there. I haven’t seen X yet. I haven’t seen the prequel to X yet. I haven’t seen SMILE, I haven’t seen BARBARIAN. So I guess FALL if that’s a horror film. But nothing that really grabbed me like MUNGO did. I’m very, very picky when it comes to horrors.
What about you, Charlotte?
I just can’t do ghost horrors.
So you don’t like GHOST?
No. I can do zombies and sharks and —
Zombie sharks.
Yeah. THE REEF is a great shark movie, actually. Seen that?
I have seen that, and the two sequels. Two? Three? Those ones aren’t the best.
Stick to the original. So good. Let’s see, THE BABADOOK. Loved that. That was a good one.
You’ve been watching AMERICAN HORROR STORY.
I’m up to Season Three. Season One so far is the best for sure. I love Season One. Season Two wasn’t very good, and I’ve just started Season Three.
Season One is good. Are you a fan of those, Neil?
I watched the first four seasons when it kind of first started. I lost touch with it after that. But THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. I really like that. Yeah.
I liked HILL HOUSE too. What film, horror or otherwise, would you both love to remake?
Oh, that’s tricky. I’ve always fancied doing a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON movie.
Nice.
I think that would be great.
Does it have to be horror?
No, no.
I’d love to remake BARBARELLA. That’d be pretty cool.
Not so much a remake, but I’ve always wanted to do a new adaptation of KING SOLOMON’S MINE and PRISONER OF ZENDA – two great adventure movies. Remakes are tricky because you don’t wanna remake good films. You want to make remake films that were a great idea. Missed opportunities. But then take a look at what Cronenberg did with THE FLY – it’s a great concept and then he took it and turned it into an all-out masterpiece.
Absolute masterpiece.
So it’s trying to find those things. I think updating CREATURE would be great. BARBARELLA is a good one.
I’m sure I read that BARBARELLA is actually finally getting remade.
Oh, Rodriguez was gonna do it for ages. But I don’t think it’s happening. it’s like his RED SONJA..
Cursed projects. So what’s next for you guys?
Do you wanna say…
So a couple of years ago we were sitting in London and we were talking about the classic gangster movies, the GOODFELLAS, CASINOs, the SCARFACEs.. mainly SCARFACE. I thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool to do an amazing gangster movie? An amazing British gangster movie. An amazing British gangster movie, but with a female gangster?’ That’s how DUCHESS was born.
We shot that over the summer. We’ve been keeping busy!
Yep, we shot that over the summer and that’ll be released next year. We’re super excited. That was like a real pet project, a real labour of love. Super proud of it. It was tough. I got Covid during the filming. Neil got Covid. It was horrendous, but we got through it.
I’m very happy and we’re just in the editing process now, but yes it’ll be coming out next year sometime.
Do you bring gore to it, Neil?
Yes, there’s gore.
There’s guns and blood.
Torture and stuff like that. <laugh>
Ah, a bit of torture. You guys are on a hot streak of teaming up for projects. Are you gonna keep working together?
We definitely are, but we’re also gonna be doing our other stuff.
You’ll be focusing on DUCHESS for now, have you had a thought about what you wanna do next?
We’ve got a film plan that we’re gonna do next at the beginning of next year. I’ve got a couple of projects planned…obviously Neil can only do one, two movies a year as a director. As an actor, I can do many more. So I’ve got some other things in the pipeline too.
Neil, do you prefer directing film or tv?
Film. Film. I mean, TV has its plus points, the regular work and money is nice. <laugh>
What’s your favorite horror movie?
Of all time? It’s either THE THING, ALIEN or AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.
Mine is THE THING, that’s something I can watch over and over and over again and not get bored.
Absolutely.
That was actually a big inspiration for THE LAIR.
Of course. One location. A naughty little alien.
The autopsy scene.
Ah, yes! Thank you so much guys, it’s been a pleasure.