Afflicted a low-budget, high-impact film

The Canadian horror movie Afflicted was written and directed by Clif Prowse and Derek Lee, two 35-year-old filmmakers from Vancouver who had never made a feature before. It also stars Clif Prowse and Derek Lee as two guys named Clif Prowse and Derek Lee. The friends, who met at 13, have been making movies since they were 16. Afflicted was at the Toronto International Film Festival. Postmedia caught up with the filmmakers by phone. Q: How did you come to this movie? Derek: It came to the point where we needed to make feature films but the first script we wrote was a $20-million sprawling international action film, and no one was going to fund that for two unknowns.

Then Clif threw out the idea of ‘ supernatural documentary.’ I wasn’t initially excited about the idea but the more I thought about it, I thought, going found-footage and documentary style to make something as surreal as a creature movie was a cool idea and rich creative ground. Q: It must be challenging to be the directors and actors at the same time. Clif: Most of the time one of us is holding the camera on the other which allows you to step back at that point and be the director. The toughest scenes where it was the two of us on screen at the same time. At that point you have to leave your directing-assessing hat at the door and just be in the scene. Q: And you did it with a pretty small crew? Clif: There were seven people, most of them doing the job of an entire department. The cinematographer had to light nighttime action sequence on a street with four small lights. Q: And yet you managed to go to Europe to shoot it. Derek: We had the audacity to shoot a $300,000 action horror film on location in Western Europe. It’s actually an idiotic concept. Clif: If you’re shooting a $300,000 Canadian movie, that often means you’re in a house, shooting in 15 days. We had 30 days in Western Europe.