Demonic is an innovative mix of supernatural horror and science fiction. What was the inspiration for that?

It was really a combination of things. When the pandemic occurred and my other projects were put on hold, I wanted to do something we could control and just go out and shoot. References for that were films like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, so I decided to do something in the horror realm. I also had this idea of using a new technology called volumetric capture, which lent itself more to science fiction. So it became a case of how do you create a story with those elements.

Some of your best-known films, including District 9, Elysium and Chappie, have had a science fiction component. What is it that draws you to that genre?

I’m not trying to make something overtly science fiction, I’m just following ideas that interest me. The concept of the brain as a computational device for external senses, and the idea that those inputs can come from your body but could also be connected to other sources, was something I found fascinating.

On the horror side, did you do research into traditions regarding demons or did you invent the film’s mythology?

It’s a combination of both. I did read a lot about the beliefs in different cultures having to do with demons, which was pretty fascinating. But the one in our film is synthetic. Carly Pope, who plays Carly, is in virtually every scene and it’s through her eyes that we experience the film’s varied realms: simulations, nightmares, hallucinations and supernatural events.

How did you cast her and what qualities did she bring to the role? ​

I think Carly Pope is really likeable, and if you have an actor who’s likeable, the audience will go on a journey with her. Plus I had cast her in a bunch of projects for my company, Oats Studios, and she also had a small role in Elysium and I’ve always enjoyed working with her. When I was writing the script I pictured someone similar to Carly and I could see her executing it well. She turned out to be awesome.

The simulation scenes are stunning and also quite unnerving. Can you explain how they were created?

We used an extremely new technology called volumetric capture, which I don’t believe has been used in a film to this extent before. It’s basically three-dimensional video, where you’re turning your actors into geometry. You need about 260 cameras arranged in some sort of grid or dome that can see the actors from all points of view.

So the actors are in a controlled environment with all these cameras, and then the background is added in later?

Yes, it’s all these independent elements. On our stage where we had our 260-camera volumetric setup, the only thing we were gathering was the actors. They were in a very difficult nonconducive-to-acting environment where there was scaffolding and cameras everywhere they looked. And the only elements we got out of those sessions were the actors in that volume. Then separately we photographed the environments they would be put into, which are turned into 3D objects. And then you drop your actor captures into those 3D environments. Once they’re combined, you can set up the shot exactly as you want to see it in the movie and film that with your virtual digital camera.

Probably one of the scariest scenes in the film is when Sam (Kandyse McClure) drops by Carly’s house in the middle of the night and says she’s going to show Carly a trick she can do. How was that sequence achieved? Was it CGI?

What’s interesting about the scene with Sam is that there were absolutely no visual effects whatsoever. It’s all down to one amazing performer. His name is Troy James and he’s just highly flexible. So that whole sequence was just him doing what he does, and we just filmed it normally, and it was amazing.

What kind of conversations did you have with your DP, Byron Kopman, about the look of the film?

I hate how in a lot of horror films the dark environments feel overly lit and synthetic. So the main discussion with Byron was about how much light we could not have in there, in order for it to feel real. For instance, we have scenes that are illuminated only by car headlights or flashlights the actors are holding — none of this giant moonlight with smoke going through the air. The idea was that it would be more believable and hopefully create more of a sense of fear in the audience.

Where and when was Demonic filmed?

We shot the film in the early summer of 2020 in British Columbia in an area called the Okanagan. We did volumetric capture in July and it took another eight months to put the simulation scenes together.

Composer Ola Strandh is probably best known for his acclaimed music for the video game TomClancy’s The Division. Why did you select him to write the score for Demonic?

Music is a huge wealth of inspiration for me; I’m listening to music pretty much all the time. So whenever I come across new artists I really like, I make a note of them. I had heard Ola’s videogame scores and thought they were really amazing. They didn’t automatically make me think of a horror film, I just liked what he was doing with a lot of the electronic sounds. So I contacted him to see if he was interested. It ended up being an awesome collaboration. I love the score and think he did a fantastic job. 

​We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.
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The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.

Join me as I take a look back at;

Dream Cruise
Directed by: Norio Tsuruta
Starring: Daniel Gillies, Ryo Ishibashi, Miho Ninagawa, Ethan Amis
Original Air Date: 2 February 2007
Synopsis: A young lawyer suffering crippling nightmares linked to a trauma in his childhood boards a rich clients ship to spend time with the man’s wife, with whom he is having an ill-advised affair.

​Twenty-five episodes down and only one to go and, I’m not going to lie, I’m a little sad to be wrapping things up with this final episode of Season Two (and last ever Masters of Horror episode) ‘Dream Cruise’, by ‘Ring 0’ and ‘Premonition’ director, Norio Tsuruta. It feels fitting that the last episode I watch for this series will be one that I have precisely zero recollections of watching back in 2007 when it aired. It’s almost like watching a brand-new episode! Let’s hope it’s another good one.

When we’re first introduced to Jack (Daniel Gillies) he is having terrible nightmares about a traumatic event in his childhood. We are shown a flashback of a much younger Jack and his little brother Sean as the brothers are out at sea. Sean tips the boat over whilst trying to grab his hat out of the water and the pair go overboard. Jack gets back to the boat ok and tries to grab Sean, but he can’t quite hold on and Sean begins to sink. Adult Jack wakes up before we see more, but it is strongly suggested that Sean drowned, leaving poor Jack with some serious guilt and a severe aversion to going out on the water.

Sucks to be Jack, who is now a lawyer with a major Japanese company. His biggest client, Eiji Saito (Ryo Ishibashi) has run into a spot of legal bother and Jack needs to see him urgently. He speaks to Eiji, who is quite happy to meet up, on the condition that it is on his boat. If Jacks major water phobia didn’t make this a bad enough idea, he is also having a secret affair with Eiji’s wife Naomi (Miho Ninagawa). These three people getting on a boat sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, so I’m all for it.

It’s worth mentioning the context in which this episode first aired. While the genre has lost a little of its mainstream appeal in the West in recent years, back in 2007 we were at the tail end of an explosion of Japanese horror movies. ‘The Ring’ had been a massive success in 1998, spawning multiple sequels, and ‘The Grudge’ had been released just a few years prior to Dream Cruise. We were being inundated with inferior American remakes, which just made the Japanese originals all the more popular. Bearing that in mind, ‘Dream Cruise’ came along at just the right time, offering an authentic J-Horror experience when remakes were becoming more prevalent and the original Japanese content was beginning to wane, at least in terms of availability outside of Japan. There are a lot of J-Horror tropes to be found in Dream Cruise, but we'll get to that later.

So, Jack, Naomi and Eiji are all on the boat, they’ve cast off and they are very much alone out on the open sea. Eiji can’t possibly know about the affair though, right? Wouldn’t that make for a boring episode! It’s pretty clear as soon as they are safely away from dry land that Eiji knows exactly what's been going on and that he intends to do something about it. Before he gets his chance the boat's propellor gets stuck in some seaweed and Eiji goes down to investigate while, on the surface, Jack and Naomi argue about whether to kill him (Naomi is staunchly pro-murder, Jack not so much). Eiji seems to get caught in the propellor, which surely makes this debate moot but, lo and behold, Eiji comes back out of the water, seemingly fine. Something fishy is going on here…

I’m talking a lot of plot at the moment and, in my defence, that’s about all there is to talk about at this stage. It has all been a very slow burn of a start. There have been a couple of early jump-scares but, other than that, this is very much in drama, possibly thriller territory. Certainly not much in the way of horror, but it is pretty tense. It was pretty clear from the second they got on the boat that some kind of showdown was inevitable, and the journey getting there has been very effective at keeping viewers on edge. The question now, is does it pay off?
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So, I think it’s fair to say that I got a little lost at this point. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of exciting stuff happening. I just don’t claim to fully understand it. From what I can gather, there is a ghost on board but it is not Sean, haunting Jack for letting him drown. It is actually Eiji’s first wife, Naomi, who Eiji had murdered (on this very boat no less). Oh, and also, Eiji is dead and is possessed by Naomi, and has been dead presumably since he went down to fix the propellor. There are some awesome effects in these sequences, like when we see Eiji’s face as it truly is (i.e., horrifically mangled), or when Jack thinks he’s gotten the better of Eiji, only for his severed arm to start attacking him. The final reveal of Naomi is also very effective and she looks, well, like pretty much every J-horror ghost from the noughties, but it’s a trope because it works dammit! 

If I have things right, Yuri then gets possessed by Naomi and attacks Jack, who defends himself but stops short of killing Yuri with an axe when Sean appears to him. I’m not quite sure what Naomi’s problem with the pair are, or why ghost Sean has chosen now to make an appearance, but Jack and Yuri jump overboard to escape. Free from the ship and safely ensconced in a life raft, the unhappy couple seem safe, until the (very angry looking) ghost of Naomi starts floating across the water toward them to finish them off. The image of Naomi slowly gliding across to them, in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but empty sea wherever you look, is pretty scary stuff. Dream Cruise may have been low key for the most part, but that image will stay with me.

Out of options and with nowhere to go, Jack and Yuri are surely doomed now, yes?

Wrong.

Sean to the rescue! Ghost Sean grabs ghost Naomi and sinks to the bottom of the sea clutching her, saving the day whilst simultaneously demonstrating to Jack that he doesn’t hold him responsible for his death. Damn Sean, you got me right in the feels with that one.

Dream Cruise is a solid episode and is a rare entry in the Masters of Horror canon in that it is, for the most part, a very slow and atmospheric offering that relies on building up tension as opposed to big set pieces and bold practical effects. Having said that, I can’t help but feel that it is quite a slow-going episode to end the season on, and I would have liked to have seen Dream Cruise swap places with The Washingtonians so we could have ended on a cannibal massacre as opposed to a low-key moment where a man comes to terms with his young brother’s death as he stares wistfully at a photograph as the credits roll. I don’t want to take anything away from Dream Cruise, which is a creepy little thriller with some very well-done supernatural elements. It may not have been the ideal episode to end the series on, but it is a good episode and one that offers something different to the twenty-five episodes that came before it. In fact, I think that sums up Masters of Horror very well. Consistently surprising to the very last.

Thank you for joining me on this thirteen week long look back at a seminal series that is so near and dear to me. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as I have. In fact…

Anyone up for a rewatch?

​We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from.
 Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.
​
The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
Join me as I take a look back at

Poe chases Pluto down into his cellar where Cissie follows to see what all the noise is about. She finds her husband desperately trying to get his hands on the cat that has been taunting him. In an inconsolable rage, Poe picks up an axe, hoping to kill the cat once and for all, takes a swing when he sees it run past him, and misses in quite spectacular fashion, cleaving Cissie’s head in two instead. Cue almost a full minute of poor Cissie, still alive, running around the cellar with a bisected head, trying to pull the axe out while Poe basically just panics and does nothing to help until she seemingly drops dead. It comes out of nowhere (I’ve read the short, knew it happened and was still taken by surprise) and is so ridiculously violent, it is quite a shock since up until now it has been a relatively tame episode by Masters of Horror standards.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that ‘The Black Cat’ is some of Stuart Gordons best work. It is a slower burn than his more famous horror output, although not without its explosively gruesome moments. The period setting is a nice change of pace and looks great on screen, and it feels like a bigger budget production than it truly is. The real MVP of the episode however is Jeffrey Combs, who spends much of the episode as the only character on screen (a writer’s life is a solitary one after all). He throws himself into the role and is a joy to watch. The whole episode, in fact, was a joy to watch and this stands out to me as one of the most watchable and underrated of the run.
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Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode twelve of the second season, Peter Medak’s ‘The Washingtonians’. See you then!

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If you missed any of Richard's previous Revisting The Masters of Horror articles, you can find links to them all here on our handy landing page 
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THE MASTERS OF HORROR ​

Last year we interviewed Steve Urena about his amazing comic book creation Slow Pokes, a brilliantly funny and violent comic about killer psychotic Sloths.  Yeas you read that right.  Today we are excited to brig you news of Steve's latest project which if Slow Pokes is anything to go by will be a must read for horror fans.  

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From the messed-up brain of Steve Urena, the guy who brought you fast killer sloths, (Slow Pokes) comes a romance horror-comedy that is full of zombies, romance and even a grandmother fighting a horde with a chancleta.

Drawn by Sergi Domènech, colored by Joe Jensen and edited by Allegra Calderaro, this unforgettable reimagining of the zombie genre is a hilarious action-packed thrill ride that will sink its teeth into you while leaving you on the edge of your seat.
“I want to give my take on a zombie story while doing something a little different than what people are used to”, says Urena.

“We’ve all been on awkward first dates. But what if you were trying to put your best foot forward and a zombie outbreak happened? What would you do? Zombie Date Night helps me answer that question in the craziest and most fun way possible.”

If you like Zombies, over-the-top-violence, and a love story for the current age then…

​Click the link and pre-order now!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/steveurena/zombie-date-night-a-zombie-romance-horror-comedy

Follow us on this crazy comic journey on Instagram and Twitter for more updates and bonus content!
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@TheSteveUrena
@ZombieDatenight
@Sergi_Domenech_comic
Or you can email us at Zombiedatenight@gmail.com

Lush and chilling, with razor-sharp edges and an iron core of hope, this bewitching, powerhouse novel of two girls fighting back against the violence the world visits on them will stun and enchant readers.
Girls have been going missing in the woods…

When Natasha’s sister disappears, Natasha desperately turns to Della, a local girl rumored to be a witch, in the hopes that magic will bring her sister home.

But Della has her own secrets to hide. She thinks the beast who’s responsible for the disappearances is her own mother—who was turned into a terrible monster by magic gone wrong.

Natasha is angry. Della has little to lose. Both are each other’s only hope.

From the author of Ghost Wood Song, this eerie contemporary fantasy is perfect for fans of Wilder Girls and Bone Gap. 
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Praise for Ghost Wood Song:
“A gorgeous, creepy gem of a book.” —Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn and Sawkill Girls

"It will make your heart dance." —Jeff Zentner, Morris Award-winning author of The Serpent King and Goodbye Days
"Strikes the perfect balance of atmospheric chills, dark familial secrets, and a yearning for the warm comforts of home.” —Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows
“Waters' debut features a bisexual lead with both male and female love interests, an atmospheric southern gothic setting, and, for the musically inclined, lots of folk and bluegrass references.” --Booklist
“Haunting and alluring.” --Kirkus

The debut novel from Erica Waters, Ghost Wood Song, has a unique position in YA horror; the first I have ever read which features bluegrass music as a major theme. Hell, how many mid-teens even know what bluegrass is? I just asked my fifteen-year-old daughter and she responded with “that weird hillbilly banjo music that kid from Deliverance played” so perhaps a few might! Shady Grove is named after a famous bluegrass tune and longs to follow in her late father’s footsteps by playing old school bluegrass music and part of the conflict comes from the fact that the other members of her band, including Sarah (who Shady has a thing for), want to play more modern or mainstream tunes. Although Ghost Wood Song was terrific, I doubt it will transfer to the UK teen audience easily, with the combination of bluegrass, family problems and trailer park small town American life distant from our lives on this side of the pond. However, for older teens looking for a slow-burning drama with a strong musical theme and supernatural overtones there is much escapism to be had in these pages.
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Family dynamics play a key part of story after a death in the family, whilst Shady struggles to get over the death of her father, continually returning to one of his favourite songs. She believes that her father’s fiddle had the power to conjure up the dead and is set on finding it and although the supernatural story was interesting, I was more drawn to Shady’s relationships with Sarah and others. The music scenes genuinely sparkled, as they should in novels with this kind of vibe, and I thought Shady was very cool in sticking to her guns and not selling out. Ghost Wood Song also had an outstanding ending and although it will be too slow for some teens, those who enjoy a thoughtful read, with well-drawn characters are in for a treat. AGE 14+