IN CONVERSATION WITH ANDY EDWARDS

After working in the low-budget horror field since his debut IBIZA UNDEAD, writer and director (and producer and sometime editor) Andy Edwards has the distinction of having his latest feature receive its world premiere at this year's closing film at Glasgow FrightFest. RUMPELSTILTSKIN, a folk horror inflected take on the sinister fairytale, also counts as his most ambitious film yet. Gore In The Store chatted with Andy to discuss the genesis of the project as well, the current trend for fairy tale horror and the state of British genre filmmaking and how important FrightFest is to the genre nowadays.

What was it that made you choose Rumpelstiltskin to adapt into a full blown horror film?

ANDY EDWARDS (AE): Because I produced this as well, I was trying to think of what was big in the market right now, what was selling, and that was obviously this kind of fairy tale horror, which is doing so well off the back of things like Winnie The Pooh. And then, in terms of thinking of the actual character, it was about trying to think of something that hadn't been done in this kind of new wave of horror movie fairy tales. I've got a young child and not long ago, I was reading him these fairy tale stories, and some of them, you kind of think, do I have to kind of skip over this? They are pretty dark, and so I didn't want to do what the Winnie The Pooh guys are doing, take a cute character and turn them evil. I wanted to take somebody who was already quite evil and make them even more evil. So as soon as I came up with Rumpelstiltskin it was like, well, he's the one who hasn't been done recently. The last movie with him was a movie in the 90s where he travels to modern day America! So I thought if we keep it period, keep it kind of fantasy, then that will be a new spin on this trend. So we're part of the trend, but where everybody else is making modern day slashers, this is a fairly faithful retelling of the story because the story itself is creepy.

There seems to be a bit of a folk horror influence in the film as well. Was that a conscious decision from the producer part of you?

AE: One hundred percent. The stories are several hundred years old, but, you know, they're much older than that. I wanted to have a really big kind of folk horror influence in it. And the thing with these stories by the Brothers Grimm especially, you know, with the Disney stuff, you know, selling something human and making it nasty, this stuff was nasty in the first place. This is going back to the roots. You know, with the Disneyfying of these characters, doing a Brothers Grimm story, especially some of the lesser known ones,, there's people getting their heads chopped off. All kinds of weird, dark stuff happens that's gonna scare kids. So I wanted to go back to that and make Rumpelstiltskin a proper folk horror movie.

Was the folk horror influence a decision in choosing to film in the 4:3 aspect ratio?

AE: Yeah, it was about trying to make this distinctive. And the idea that I had, because I'm an egomaniac, was how can we make Robert Eggers' Rumpelstiltskin on a budget of three pounds, fifty. So, yes, I personally was looking at those kind of movies like the A24 horror stuff, things like Robert Eggers had done, because I really wanted that sense of history really, and sense of place and authenticity, even though we're not set in a particular time or a particular country, this is a fairy tale world. But I wanted to make it feel lived in, believable, dirty and grimy, but then completely independent of that.

Dominic Hopking, the DOP was like, have you thought about shooting it at four three ratio? Because so much of it is going to be our girl trapped in the dungeon with Rumpelstiltskin. We want to make it feel kind of enclosed and entrapped, so that ratio would help. He said, "Why don't we do it like that?" And I was thinking about it already!

You mentioned Robert Eggers. Was there anyone or anything else that influenced you, in the directing and writing of the film?

AE: I mean, for the writing, that was the challenge because the actual Brothers Grimm story of Rumpelstiltskin is about a page long. You have all of these characters just doing things. "Oh, I will say I can spin straw into gold, I will give my child away!" And you don't have any kind of rationale for anything. So the challenge was keeping the story, but then kind of thinking of the reasons why these people would do the things that they do, and trying to make them seem like real people so that the motives would make sense for why they do all these mad things in the story. That was the main thinking in the story.

In terms of directing, me and the DOP, we were looking at all different kinds of things. Lots of folk horror stuff, lots of European cinema as well, trying to get these interesting framings in there and stop zooms in, just to try and tell the story in quite an interesting way. To give it both a folk horror sort of edge and a kind of medieval European edge, which is obviously where the stories come from originally.

You were saying that with your producer brain, you're influenced by the wave of copyright free stuff that's really taken hold these last few years. So how long from conception, choosing Rumpelstiltskin to having the film ready to show, how long did that process take for you?

AE: I think I started writing in the summer of '23. Then I started talking to people about it. I remember approaching Dan Martin at FrightFest 2023. Dan Martin is a special effects guy. He's an absolute genius, and he works a lot with Brandon Cronenberg and Ben Wheatley. I originally asked him if he could do the Rumpelstiltskin prosthetics for me. And initially he did say yes, but in the end, he was too busy and he couldn't do it. But he recommended the person who did do it in the end, and he helped with the design as well. And he also recommended the actor Joss Carter to play Rumpelstiltskin. So prep was kind of underway then, thinking about how we can put this together in the summer of 2023 then we actually shot it in March last year.

Eight months, that's quite quick, but obviously, you know, speed was of the essence, because you think of these characters who are in the public domain that haven’t been done yet. You can do it well, but you know that everybody else is kind of looking at the same pool as well. So I knew I had to do Rumpelstiltskin fairly soon before somebody else did it.

I did a film called Cinderella's Revenge a couple of years ago. That wasn't something I produced, that was a direct for hire job, but about three weeks after we finished shooting, some of the same people from that casting group went on to do another Cinderella movie for another company. So it is fairly cutthroat and competitive out there. There's obviously about four or five Mickey Mouses, and three or four Popeyes coming out right now, so we kind of knew I had to move relatively quickly.

Is there anything else in the public domain that you'd be interested in tackling?

AE: It's definitely a place to play in, because, essentially, there's so much content now on streaming. There are so many streaming sites that if you make an original movie, unless you've got a piece of marketing budget behind you it's very difficult to get it to stand out. So working with these existing IPs, whether it's fairy tales or even just things like vampires, werewolves and things that already have a kind of built in audience, that's kind of where your kind of producer brain leads you. But then the director brain is going "No, no, no, I want to tell original stories!" So can you think of a new spin on it, really? And when I thought of Rumpelstiltskin I also thought well how do we do it? Is it gonna be a modern telling? What is it? And then I thought I've always wanted to do a kind of historical medieval thing, like The VVitch or Game Of Thrones, or something like that. You put those two together, your creative idea and your commercial idea. So that's what I'm looking for at the moment; ideas that are using IP, but doing it in an interesting way. Keep your creative brain engaged, as well as your financial brain.

You mentioned the prosthetics and the makeup, and they certainly are impressive. If you had the resources, would you be using more practical effects across not just this, but all of your other productions as well?

AE: I'm an old school horror fan so always practical, if possible. But time and money doesn't always allow for that. You can't always do what you want to do, but for this, I knew he had to be prosthetics really. In other monster movies, you can hide the monster to the end, and if you're hiding the monster to the end, maybe it can be just a guy in a mask hiding in the shadows, but with Rumpelstiltskin, he's got a huge amount of dialogue. He's the main character, really. So I knew it couldn't be just a mask, because as soon as he comes on screen and he tries to talk it would be rubbish, so I knew he had to be prosthetic. So hence approaching Dan Martin in the first place, he recommended Joss, who's a creature performer. He worked in a movie called Tarot, which came out last year. And then in the end, Dan couldn't do the actual prosthetics. He recommended a guy called Will Harvey he worked with. He came on to do the prosthetics.

It was a proper three hour job to put it on each day, and an hour to take it off. Which on a low budget independent film is pretty taxing, but we scheduled it as smartly as possible so that we always had something else to shoot in the mornings of every day.

Do you think this is your most ambitious film that you've tackled, yet in terms of resources, cast, extras and the period setting?

AE: Yeah. I mean, it was madness. It was tough as well. Actually, we had fun, but it was a tough shoot because of the period shooting on what was a very low budget, it's difficult. You can't just go to Primark if you suddenly need an extra bit of costume. You can't just shoot in the street if you just suddenly need an extra shot. Obviously all the extras have to be kitted out in their outfits.We had horses on this. There's a child. There's obviously the prosthetics. So, yeah, very, very ambitious. It's a testament to the cast and crew, really, that we managed to get it done. There's various things you can do to help yourself, such as a lot of the extras we use were people who did LARPing. They could bring some of their own costumes up. So there's you can do to help yourself. A lot of the extras are crew as well. The guards are generally our first AD and our sound guy dressed up, so they had to do their job whilst wearing chain mail. So there's various things that we did to try and make the most of the budget. But yeah, it was tough, it was ambitious. Hopefully it pays off. But there were times when I was like, why am I doing this? The next one will be contemporary and set in a flat!

Making a film is a challenge in itself. But how do you find making genre film in Britain, as a whole, just now? Is it more challenging than ever for you?

I think we're in a weird space right now because of technology. It's kind of never been easier to make a film. It's still really, really hard, but with the kind of cameras, lighting and everything. And there's never been more places to get shown either. There's never been more streaming services. What is kind of missing is that pipeline in between the two, which is where we could kind of make very much money from it at the moment, due to the way the distribution industry works with how marketing is what the streamer is paying everyone. I don't think it's gonna ever stop anybody. People will always make movies. And I think horror movies are something that people love. And I think even if people can't make any money out of there will be people making them for the sheer love of it, because people love horror to an unhealthy degree.

If we can figure out that pipeline to distribution, then, we could be in a very healthy place, because there's some very talented people working in the UK right now. It's good seeing people are helping each other out; sharing crew and sharing resources. There's potential for some good things.

Genre film doesn't get any help from the likes of the BFI or anything like that, which is another issue, which is a shame, really, because obviously, if you're looking at the US, horror is big business. Things like Smile 2 and Terrifier, they're getting to number one at the box office despite being on tiny budgets. And if the powers that be in the UK were a bit smarter, we could be taking part of that. The talents here and the ideas are here. We just need a bit more money.

You've had quite a few films play at FrightFest before. How important has the festival been to you, as a filmmaker and even as a fan? 

AE: I mean, FrightFest has been a huge part of my filmmaking journey. I was there as a fan before I had a film there, my first feature, which was Ibiza Undead. I’d always kind of had FrightFest in mind somewhere that might be great to show it. And they did. And since then, I've had a few more films play. And every time it's been incredible., It offers a focal point, I think to UK genre filmmakers,which we need. For example I started my conversations about Rumpelstiltskin at FrightFest in 2023 with Dan. So it's a great networking place. And I now see people that I know who went as fans first, then had shorts and are now having features play, and we all kind of know each other. That's the community there, really.

I think that can only be a good thing, because I think we do all need to talk to each other. I think there is a certain extent of people operating in little silos in different parts of the country, but I think the more we get together and talk about the realities of filmmaking and share hints and tips and help with each other, then I think the better it will be, and FrightFest can be a focal point of that, and long may it continue. And the more that they can support British horror films, the better really, because I think they can become a real launch pad for British films and show that we can do horror as well as anyone.

Iain MacLeod