Hairy scary
HOWL Lycanthropes on a locomotive...
Entering a warehouse in Croydon, South London,
Buzz is stopped dead (no pun intended) by a pack of werewolves sprawled out on chairs, smoking. Soon they’ll be sprinting on two legs, all prosthetic muscle and tufts of coarse hair, as they attack a broken-down train.
Director Paul Hyett wanders over to us. “I didn’t want to do big, furry werewolves,” he says. “And I wanted to avoid the mythology of turning on the full moon. My feeling was that these creatures transform through a bite, like rabies, and it occurs over years; the muscles, the skin, the bones – all break and re-heal in a grotesque way.”
Hyett established his name doing prosthetic effects on movies like The Descent, Doomsday and Eden Lake, and made his directorial debut with 2012’s The Seasoning House, set in a war-torn Balkan brothel. That featured gruelling rape and revenge. This is a lot more fun...
“It’s a direction I’m very pleased to go in,” he says. “The Seasoning House was nihilistic, and I felt responsibility – there are people suffering those horrors in the real world. Howl is exciting and everyone can enjoy it. Werewolves rampaging on a train!”
The cast includes Shauna Macdonald from The Descent, Rosie Day from The Seasoning House and Sean Pertwee from Doomsday, with Hyett saying they “bring everything to the set”. Given a bunch of characters are trapped in a cramped space, the dynamics are vital: “It was fun to develop who would be cowardly, manipulative, useless, resourceful, brave...”
One thing’s for sure: werewolves are here to stay. Hyett nods. “Whether it comes from that fear of getting bitten by a huge, ravenous dog, or fear of the beast within, or whether it’s the more romantic mythology of the gothic, Hammer type of werewolf film, it’s a sub-genre that will always be loved.” JG
ETA | 16 Octo ber Howl opens next month.