house of pain
The Orphanage writer makes his haunted house directorial debut
“i think of the film like a russian doll,” Spanish director Sergio G Sánchez tells Red Alert. He says he’s tired, having been at the premiere of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom the night before with his old friend and frequent collaborator, director JA Bayona, but you wouldn’t know it from our effusive chat. “At first it’s a creature, then you peel off a layer and it becomes something else. And you keep opening these Russian dolls until you get to the heart of it. And at the heart of it is really a story about love, but not romantic love, the bonds that you make with other people and how you become a part of the people you love and the people you love will always be with you forever.”
He’s talking about The Secret Of Marrowbone, his directorial debut, an English language horror-fantasy that contains a lot of, well, secrets. If you recognise his name it’ll most likely be from his work with Bayona – Sánchez penned the screenplays for both The Orphanage and The Impossible and he says his own film is a similar mix of drama, horror, thriller and fantasy.
Set in 1969 the movie sees an English family of a mother and four kids uproot and move to rural America into a beautiful old mansion known as Marrowbone, adopting the name of the estate as their surname. But when the mother falls ill and a mystery visitor arrives, the kids have to fend for themselves in a house which holds mysteries of its own.
dark touch
Reminiscent (unsurprisingly) of 2007 gothic horror The Orphanage we wonder if Sánchez thinks the movie has a certain Spanish sensibility about it?
“I wonder if you had seen the film with no credits you would have thought it has a Spanish sensibility,” he laughs. “It’s weird because when we made The Orphanage here in Spain it was perceived there was something English about it in terms of the camera moves and the haunted house, there was something very gothic about it that’s not 100% Spanish. And yet when we travelled with the film abroad a lot of people said there was a distinct Spanish characteristic about it. It may have something to do with a sense of being in touch with something more sentimental or emotional.”
Tugging at the heart strings here are a cast of bright young things including George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, Charlie Heaton and Matthew Flagg. Though the film is set in the US, it was shot on the north west coast of Spain – an area where Sánchez grew up. Sánchez says he thinks horror and fantasy is the purest form of film – and the closest you’ll get to a real haunting.
“If there’s something in the world that really resembles a ghost it’s a movie,” he says. “It’s not something you can touch it’s just light and sound coming briefly to you from another dimension to vanish as soon as it’s over, to convey a message from another world to let you know you’re not alone.” Prepare to feel truly haunted. RF