“I want to do a horror movie that’s different”

After the singular success of The Love Witch, director Anna Biller exclusively dishes on her next film: a feminist horror with a bite

“THINK REBECCA MEETS The Red Shoes meets Hammer horror,” teases Anna Biller. “With shades of Frenzy.” The lockdown may have paused plans for Bluebeard, the filmmaker’s follow-up to The Love Witch, but her vision for the film seems crystal clear.

Her third film will be loosely based on the gothic folk tale of the same name. Originating from French legend, Bluebeard tells the tale of a woman who marries a nobleman

— one who, it turns out, is not only a philander but harbours a murderous secret (hint: there’s a magic key, plus a room bursting with blood and corpses). Biller has chosen this narrative, she says, to shake up the genre for a modern audience. “I want to do a horror movie that’s different from anything out there,” she explains. “You see these women getting slaughtered in horror movies and it’s usually by some sort of entity or stranger. But in real life, most women are murdered by an intimate partner, and that to me is the scariest thing.”

An avid cinephile who delights in classic Hollywood, Biller found her inspiration for Bluebeard when she realised a lot of her favourite films share a common theme: women in peril. “Dial M For Murder, Gaslight, Rosemary’s Baby,” she lists. “They’re satisfying because they’re mysteries in which men are the mystery. They show women using their superior skills of empathy and intuition to solve a problem.” As with The Love Witch, Biller will be applying her distinct visual flair to Bluebeard with an aesthetic she likes to call “gothic Technicolor”.

“The imagery draws on gothic-romance novel covers which feature women with great hair running from castles at night,” she explains. “And Technicolor movies — namely horror films from the 1950s through to the 1970s — created this gothic atmosphere with lurid colour, using reds and blues to capture blood and moonlight.”

With the script and concept art complete, Biller is hopeful that the film’s development will roll forward as studios gradually begin to reopen their doors. Until then, the filmmaker promises that, despite being prompted by women in peril, Bluebeard will hold an important message of empowerment.

“I think that the film will validate women today,” she says. “It tells them that their fears and fantasies are not silly, and that they as audiences are worthy of films made for them.” Here’s a modern female horror hero sorely needed. Keep the fake blood on standby.