Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on October 21, 2011, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
There may be few situations more pleasant than being alone on an island with Thandie Newton or Cillian Murphy. But in the psychological thriller Retreat (opening in limited theatrical release), the actors star as a troubled married couple whose remote home is visited by a mysterious stranger (Jamie Bell) who makes things very much unpleasant. The film marks the directorial debut of British filmmaker Carl Tibbetts, who spoke to Fango about its creation.
Martin (Murphy) and Kate (Newton) are trying to recover and preserve their marriage after their first baby winds up stillborn, secluding themselves in a cottage on the otherwise unpopulated island off the Scottish coast. Their self-therapy is interrupted by the appearance of the wounded Jack (Bell), who claims to be fleeing an airborne virus that has decimated the mainland. He insists that they must seal themselves up in the house for their own safety—but once they have, Jack starts playing dangerous mind games with the duo. Tibbetts gave us the lowdown on Retreat following its world premiere earlier this year at Montreal’s Fantasia film festival.
Prior to Retreat, did you have any experience in short films?
No; I was a practicing fine artist for a few years, and that sort of led me to more narrative cinema. I went from installation work into film, taught myself to edit and became an editor in London for a few years. I was working on commercials and TV programs and all kinds of things, not really wanting to stay an editor—enjoying it, but wanting to be a writer/director. The thing about editing is that it’s like anything—if you want to be a really big editor, that’s all you do, but you can’t do that and also write and direct feature films. So I was working on my own screenplays, and Retreat was the one that broke out and allowed me to make my directorial debut.
Retreat isn’t strictly a horror film, but it does tap into some horrific material. How did you balance the story’s horrific and dramatic elements when you wrote the script and then shot the movie?
There’s a natural kind of descent, for want of a better word, that comes out of the situation. Everything derives from what the characters have to face and have to do. I think the reason those [more horrific] things don’t seem out of place or feel gratuitous is because of the relationship between the characters. Because you care about Thandie and Cillian, and the horror elements in it come from the characters as opposed to anywhere else.
You got a really solid cast for your first feature; how did you land these actors?
I think everyone just responded to the screenplay, and they were willing to give it a go. I had a few meetings with each of them individually, and then we talked about the characters and they were happy enough to go forward.
You did some interesting casting against type; one might ordinarily expect to see Bell as the husband and Murphy as the potentially crazy person. Was that intentional?
Absolutely; it was totally conscious, yeah. We wanted Jack to be someone with an element of vulnerability that would be real, where it wouldn’t be obvious when he turns up and you go, “Oh, he’s the bad guy.” He is the bad guy, but we didn’t want a typical psychopathic type. And Cillian wanted to play an Everyman; he wanted to play Martin as straight as possible, as subtly as possible, as normally as possible, and I believe he did that. I mean, he does end up covered in blood [laughs]; he can’t escape that no matter what film he does. No matter whether he’s playing the most normal person, he ends up covered in blood or in a dress!
The film is basically just these three characters in one location. Was it a challenge to give the film a visual variety that would keep it interesting to look at?
I’d broken the scenes down a while before, for a different location. So when we get to the new location, and I had to start breaking it down again, I just had to make sure that in my shots, the camera was where the story was. If you do that, it’ll always be interesting. You do kind of try to find a way to use the camera to keep things lively, but if you’ve got it in the right place to tell the story, then it’ll always be interesting.
You’ve mentioned that you shot the movie in sequence…
Yes, we had to. Well, we shot the interiors in sequence. All the exterior stuff was done at a different time during the same four weeks, but not chronologically the way we did indoors. That was because we had to start with the cottage in one condition, and we couldn’t demolish it for one shot and put it all back together for another, so we had to do everything chronologically.
Was it a house someone was living in, or was it vacant?
No, it was someone’s house; it belongs to a guy who’s related to the people who set up Portmeirion, this crazy folly in the middle of Wales that they used for [TV’s] The Prisoner. It’s this guy’s home, and we took it over for four weeks, and he was happy enough and kind enough to allow us to do it.
And to partially wreck it?
Well, we didn’t actually demolish anything of his. We emptied it completely; all the stuff that was destroyed, we built ourselves within the place. The walls are very thick and proper stone, so there was nothing to break, other than what we put in there.
Did you do any research into the virus element of the story?
I did a little bit. There is actually something called Marburg disease, which is an airborne virus that actually does attack the respiratory system and dissolves lung tissue. That was as close as I got to doing research about a potentially airborne virus—something that contagious that can carry through the air, is breathed in and then liquidates the lungs.
Do you have any horror-oriented projects in the works?
Yes—again, it’s something that you wouldn’t say is horror, but has elements of horror in it. I always look back to stuff from the ’80s, like An American Werewolf in London; I started enjoying films because of American Werewolf. It was later on that I discovered the Polanskis of the world, but when I was a kid and picking up VHS boxes, it was American Werewolf in London, and Starburst magazine. I saw that classic photograph of David Naughton with his hand like that, and it was about Rick Baker’s makeup and effects. That film is like a comedy, a tragedy, a werewolf movie—a lonely man stuck in a city he doesn’t know, trying to have a relationship, and it’s tragic. I like movies that do lots of different things. It’s very difficult to pull off, but they did it with that one, and it was an influence when I was a kid, for sure. So everything I do will have that in it.
