CALGARY-SHOT HORROR MOVIE USES MOOD TO PRODUCE CHILLS
Film focuses on new mother’s battle with psychosis, depression
There is a scene in the Calgaryshot horror film, Still/Born when an increasingly desperate mother Googles the sentence “something is trying to take my baby” in hopes of figuring out what she is up against.
It turns out a very similar scene played out when writer Colin Minihan and director Brandon Christensen set about doing some research for the film.
They were looking to ground their horror story in some sort of existing mythology.
So they also searched Google for information about demons that steal babies.
They quickly landed upon a nasty creature called the Lamashtu, a female demon from Mesopotamian lore that apparently ter- rorizes expectant mothers before making off with their babies.
“While they were doing research, they found out that it is a real thing,” says Kurtis David Harder, one of the film’s producers.
“They ended up taking all the mythology. I mean, it’s crafted to be more filmic. But it is based on real mythology of a real demon that supposedly existed.”
The above revelation is not really a spoiler.
The main tension in Still/Born springs from the ambiguity of where the horror originates. The Lamashtu could very well be just a red herring, with the real culprit being our protagonist’s loosening grip on reality as she suffers through postpartum depression, psychosis and deep grief.
The “is-this-real-or-is-she-just- crazy?” theme is a well-worn hallmark in psychological horror and Still/Born takes more than a few cues from classics such as Roman Polanski’s 1968 chiller Rosemary’s Baby and Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 curio Don’t Look Now.
Christie Burke (Strange Empire, Van Helsing) plays Mary, a young mother who gives birth to twins. Only one survives and the resulting grief makes the already-difficult task of adapting to a newborn even more trying.
It doesn’t help matters that her otherwise devoted husband Jack (Jesse Moss of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Final Destination 3) is mired in work to help pay for the new baby and massive house the couple has just bought in suburbia.
He installs cameras throughout the spacious abode to keep tabs on his wife, who is largely left alone in the creepy new home and neighbourhood with her new baby.
As with many effective horror films, the chills rely on mood and atmosphere rather than gore.
The terror comes from magnifying relatable down-to-earth anxieties, specifically those that come with being a new parent.
“Brandon is a parent, so he comes from that aspect of knowing what it’s like to go through having a child and being scared of what it’s like afterwards,” says Harder.
Shot a year ago in the Calgary’s Lake Bonavista neighbourhood, Still/Born unfolds quietly and creepily.
Christensen gives the swanky surroundings a Stepford Wives feel and the inclusion of grainy, black-and-white surveillance taps into the popular found-footage genre.
Still/Born, which will screen Sunday at the Plaza, comes from a loose collective of filmmakers including Calgarians Harder and fellow producer Chris Ball.
Both were involved in last year’s Calgary-shot sci-fi mindbender InControl.
Harder directed that film, while both Ball and Minihan were among
the producers.
Minihan has an impressive track record in horror films, having directed and co-written the cult movie Grave Encounters. He put Harder and Ball in touch with Christensen, a former Calgarian currently living in Las Vegas.
In fact, Still/Born was initially meant to be shot in Vegas, but Harder and Ball pitched Calgary as a location. Christensen actually grew up in southeast Calgary, not far from where the film was shot.
“I think there’s a really cool community here that is a bit smaller than Vancouver or Toronto,” Harder says.
“The people here are really passionate. It feels more like the people in Calgary want to make something cool and there is a real community base here.
“It feels like there is a lot of potential here that could ( grow) into something like Vancouver and Toronto, but is still in it’s really early stages. So bringing a project here is really cool and we definitely want to do more here as opposed to the bigger cities.”