Sinister Seven: Neil Marshall

Neil Marshall is a director who understands and respects genre film. That’s not necessarily a rare thing, but what’s impressive is that he actually manages to get uncompromising horror films made without anyone completely fucking them up along the way. Dog Soldiers and The Descent (our cover story for issue #58) are much loved around here, so we’re happy to see him working with a larger budget (nearly $30 million, apparently) for his latest, Doomsday, which opens today.
It’s a post-apocalyptic thriller in which the deadly “Reaper” virus has infected Britain, forcing the government to wall off a big section contain of the country. Thirty years later, the virus breaks out again and a team is sent into the infected area to find a cure. Once beyond the wall, they discover a terrifying, chaotic society. I haven’t seen the film yet, but judging by this trailer, it appears to take place in Rue Morgue’s neighbourhood, with the exception that those guys have better parking available.
Ahem, anyhow, let’s find out more from writer/director Neil Marshall.

My own obsession with post-apocalyptic cinema, for example, started with The Road
Warrior. What sparked your fascination with this type of world?

It would be a combination of things, from films like Road Warrior, Escape from New York, Spacehunter and Battletruck, TV like Threads and The Day After, and even music videos such as Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” or “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was this whole trend at in the early ’80s that came about because we were all living on he brink of nuclear war, or at least it felt like that. Paranoia had reached it’s apex in the Reagan era!

Tell me about the society of the walled-in city; what was your basic concept for how a plague-ridden people would (de)evolve in a lawless microcosm.

It’s not a walled in city, it’s an entire country quarantined and shut off from the outside world for 25 years. The few survivors have become scavengers and split into various warring factions. The leader, Kane, formally a Doctor, rules over a kind of feudal medieval society [while] living in an old castle, like a fortress, living off the land, and in his own words, “out of sight, out of mind.” The younger generation, led by Kane’s rebellious son, Sol, have fled to Glasgow, and live off the ruins of the city, scavenging fuel and clothes, and even turning to cannibalism to survive!

When Rue Morgue interviewed you about The Descent, Doomsday was in development. Is this the same film you originally envisioned, or has it changed since then (perhaps due to the rising popularity of apocalypse movies or the general global angst over bad times ahead)?

It’s still the same film I envisioned, only much bigger and better! I didn’t know anything about films like I Am Legend until we were well into post-production, so I was in no position to change my film in any way at that stage. Besides, aside from a vaguely similar set-up (virus wipes out population…) our film is leagues away from that movie, or any other movie that’s come out in recent years. All the other post-apocalyptic movies of late have been fairly easy going, but our movie is totally demented and savage!

Doomsday isn’t a straight-up horror film, but it obviously has a lot to offer genre fans. Aside from its disturbing premise, what are a few of the transgressions that await horror fans? Is this a particularly bloody affair, for example?

About half way through filming, Paul Hyatt the make-up FX supervisor took me to one side and said “You do realize there’s more blood and guts in this movie than Descent?” I was so pleased to hear that! And it’s totally true. I’m not a director who holds back on the gore. So, yeah, there is plenty here to keep the fans happy. I haven’t strayed that far from my roots.

I Am Legend is the box-office king of the recent post-apocalyptic movies, but genre fans seem to be split on it. To get an idea of where you’re coming from, tell me about your take on the film. Blockbuster rubbish? An intriguing remake? A mixed bag of action-horror? Did it break your Will Smith-o-Meter?

Will Smith is a great star. No denying that. He’s got charisma by the boatload. And for the first half of the movie I was hooked. Smith playing opposite the best dog I’ve seen on screen since The Road Warrior! Empty New York is haunting and spectacular and I’m hooked… . Then suddenly the whole movie is totally undermined when these shockingly bad CGI creatures show up and turn it all into a cartoon. These things are supposed to be human, right? So what on earth could make them think that these cartoon characters were going to be better than using real people for the job? It could have been a great movie, but, unfortunately, unconvincing CGI strikes again and ruins it. When I saw it I was disheartened more than anything, because it’s a great story and could have been a really cool movie. Such a missed opportunity.

As a filmmaker, you’ve explored group dynamic survival horror, but taken it in different directions. Dog Soldiers had male soldiers fighting off werewolves in the outdoors, The Descent focused on a group of women trying to escape creatures in a claustrophobic underground setting and Doomsday has a mixed group battling human “monsters” in a variety of locations. Where to from here?

Not sure. There’s still plenty of darkness unknown out there yet to explore, so who knows where it might lead.

[Days after this interview, it was announced that Marshall's next project will be a horror western called Sacrilege, which he conveniently forgot to mention. Hopefully this isn't the early on-set of Alzheimer's disease, because it'd be great to see him make a horror-western. Read more about it here.]

Disease, nukes, meteors, weather catastrophe, ruptures in the space-time continuum, giant monsters, zombies, vampires: the movies have offered all kinds of End Times scenarios. If you lorded over planet Earth and one day said, “enough of this bullshit,” how would you snuff us out?

I’d have the whole world chewed up and swallowed by a giant interstellar Jack Russell!