CHILLER QUEEN
Why they’re screaming for Liesl
● Liesl Ahlers is a horrifying actress. So horrifying that she is being honoured at the Russian International Horror Film Festival and Awards.
The 26-year-old South African wowed judges with her role in the 2017 film Friend Request, in which she plays a social outcast who has a deadly obsession with her more popular friends.
Next month, Ahlers will travel to Moscow to accept an award for International Contribution to Horror. Festival president Victor Boulankin said Ahlers’s character in the movie was “very unusual”.
“It was ugly and beautiful at the same time. Her part in the film can be compared to the part of Jodelle Ferland in Silent Hill. She did a really great job as a horror actress.”
He said that five to 10 winners were awarded each year and this year’s winners included Jigsaw actor Tobin Bell.
Ahlers is best known on local screens for her portrayal of Zelda in the third season of South Africa’s Emmy-nominated series Sokhulu & Partners. She also appeared in the Afrikaans series Thysnywerheid.
She has had roles opposite US actor William Hurt in BBC2’s The Challenger Disaster, which was shot in South Africa, and in the South African short film Brunch, which screened at film festivals in New York and Seattle.
Ahlers told the Sunday Times that the producers of Friend Request auditioned actors in several countries and “I was the only South African cast in a lead role”.
The film was shot at the University of Cape Town and in Munich, Germany.
It has an international cast, including Alycia Debnam-Carey, who starred in Fear the Walking Dead, Gossip Girl actor Connor
Paolo, and The Chronicles of Narnia actor
William Moseley.
Ahlers said she was drawn to “underdog” characters. “I really like playing characters who are lost souls . . . the ones people can relate to.
“I’ve been asked a lot if it was bad going into that space, but it wasn’t because it was such an awesome creative process for me. People asked me if I didn’t want to play the pretty girl and I said, No, I want to play the interesting girl!”
She said her makeup and prosthetics — done by the team that won an Oscar for their work on Mad Max — had played a big part in helping her feel like an outsider and, eventually, a demon.
“They bleached my eyebrows and made me look so different so that really got me into character.
“When I got to campus all the extras and crew would look at me weird. I felt like the girl no one wanted to talk to.
“The character I play turns into a monster so I got to wear prosthetics, stand on stilts and wear fake teeth. How many films do you get to change into a creature in? I really enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.”
Ahlers studied at the Vancouver Academy of Dramatic Arts in Canada, because it focused on film and TV instead of theatre like most schools in South Africa, and also because she wanted to get international experience.
It seems the thriller genre is quickly becoming her forte. Ahlers has been cast in the lead in the upcoming series Obsession, which is set to be the first South African series to sign a distribution deal with Amazon in the UK and US.
Filming, which has not started yet, is slated to mainly take place at Hartbeespoort Dam.