Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 21, 2012, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
After so many generic movies about terrorized innocents in the woods, A Lonely Place to Die is like a breath of fresh mountain air—tainted with the smell of blood. It’s a twisty, nerve-rattling story of survival from British director/co-writer Julian Gilbey, who spoke with Fango about its creation.
A Lonely Place to Die stars Melissa George as Alison, one of a group of mountain climbers in the Scottish Highlands who make a discovery that sends them on the run from relentless, deadly pursuers. Scripted by Gilbey and his brother Will, the movie is a mix of horror and adventure—making it a first for the director (though he was an editor on Jake West’s zombie opus Doghouse), who previously helmed crime thrillers like 2007’s acclaimed Rise of the Footsoldier. Here, he keeps you on the edge of your seat not only through the plot’s many surprising turns, but also via numerous scenes in which the cast really look like they’re scaling cliffs and hanging on for dear life. It’s a remarkable film that’s a must-watch for genre fans.
What is your background in movies?
I’ve been making them since I was 14, with VHS cameras. I made Jaws 4 with a wooden fin on holiday in Portugal at that age. My father swam underneath and he was the shark, and it was great fun. I’ve always been making films, but I’ve never done a horror-thriller before.
Have you and your brother been collaborating on projects for a long time now?
Yeah, absolutely. We write together, we work together, we edit together. We get on very well, we are very open and honest with each other, tell each other if that’s a crap idea or give each other a pat on the back if stuff is working. I get on with him like a house on fire.
One of the great things about A Lonely Place to Die is that it starts out like your typical movie with five friends lost in the woods, and bad stuff happens to them, but then it keeps throwing in new twists. Did you intentionally try to set it up to lead the audience into thinking it’s one kind of film, and then it turns into something else?
Well, I don’t know that it does. It’s interesting you ask that, but to me, the logical conclusion [to the early setup] is that there’s a bigger story, and our climbers have accidentally stumbled into that. So, quite honestly, it doesn’t feel like it sidesteps unnaturally; it does naturally progress. It was always the intention to bring more characters in, and to make the story bigger and more rounded as it goes on, where you discover new bits and snippets as the story branches out and becomes a little bit bigger.
Well, there are many ways the film subverts expectations; for example, when we see the hunters early on and it seems like you’re giving away your villains, but then you throw a twist into it.
That’s the Alfred Hitchcock in there; he was always the best with red herrings. But having said that, we couldn’t work out why our bad guys would have high-powered rifles, so they needed to acquire these weapons. And we thought, “How are they going to acquire them in a way where we can have fun with the audience?” And we made sure that when we cast those two guys, they almost looked meaner than our villains. I mean, we got Douglas Russell, with his face just carved out of bronze and a jawline built of iron, who almost makes Stephen McCole and Sean Harris look like little boys.
McCole and Harris are very effective as your villains; did they come to audition, or did you know them beforehand?
Stephen came in early to read, and I found out he was in Rushmore, which I love. It was funny, because I hadn’t seen it in years, so I asked him, “Who were you in Rushmore?” He said, “I was the Scottish one,” and I was like, “Oh, right, there’s only one.” Actually, he auditioned for the Mr. Mcrae part and the role of the police sergeant; I said, “You can have either one, which would you prefer?” and he wanted Mr. Mcrae, and was just perfect for it. He was a very good ally with Sean Harris—who I initially just met for a chat. I had seen some of his other work and thought he was a very strong actor, and he liked the script. One thing about Sean was, I was expecting him to be into art-house and obscure films, and one of his favorite movies is Point Break. So I thought, “Great—that’s one of my favorite films too; I’m going to like this guy.” He and Stephen had a lot of fun taking what we wrote on the page and taking it further.
How about your heroine, Melissa George?
I love Melissa; I think she’s great. Looking at the film now, I couldn’t visualize anyone else doing that role. What I love about her is although she’s tough, she also has a wonderful vulnerability, and still looks quite frail and delicate next to these raging, dangerous characters. And she was willing to do the climbing stuff—as much of it as the insurance people would allow, she wanted to do. She took the bull by the horns, and I’m very proud of her. She’s also an amazing actress; she did not fluff a single line once, and she did not even give a bad delivery once. You know, if I needed to shoot it again, it was just to make sure or to change the angle or whatever, but we never did more than three takes with Melissa. Never needed more than two. She was a total pro.
Holly Boyd as Anna, the little girl at the center of the story, is terrific too. How did you find her?
That’s so kind of you to say, because a lot of people, with all these characters, forget to mention her. But a movie like this stands or falls on its child performer, and if that actress is not good, it takes away from everything. We had a massive casting process; we went to Edinburgh, we went to Glasgow, we went to England, and eventually we found Holly, who was just 10 years old the day after her audition. We got down to the last three girls, and I had a clear idea of who I thought it was going to be, and then Holly just blew the other two away. She was brilliant; I’m really proud of her.
One of the funny things was, there’s a scene where Melissa has to lower her off a cliff, and I was like, “Holly, this might be a bit scary.” And she was like, “No, not at all, we’ve done rock climbing at school, I know all the rope work.” She was very enthusiastic about it, actually.
Were she, her parents or the insurers ever concerned about her taking part in the film’s precarious situations?
Well, I have to say at that a certain point, we did have a very small stuntwoman to do a lot of Holly’s stuff. And the old trick there is to dub the stuntperson with a screaming actress—that helps. Holly was most definitely not put in any positions that were too dangerous; when push came to shove, the stuntpeople came in. The rest is editing and movie magic.
One of the other effective things about the film is the way it keeps changing locations. Was that part of the thought process while writing, to vary the locations to keep things interesting?
Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, it’s based on the geography of Scotland, really. You’re always looking for an interesting place to stage your scenes, so that was my attitude, to naturally take them into interesting environments.
(SPOILERS follow…)
What inspired the idea of having a pagan celebration in the town when the characters eventually get there?
Well, that’s interesting… It was fun, because Robin Hardy, the director of The Wicker Man, turned up at the [Fantasia] screening and said he really enjoyed the movie, which was great. I was born on May 1, I’ve seen the May Day celebrations down in Cornwall many a time, and actually, when I was studying film in Edinburgh, there’s this crazy celebration they do on the 30th of April, up on Carlton Hill, put on by the Beltane Fire Society. It’s this naked, pagan fire festival, and it’s mad. I saw this thing in 1997, and since then, I’ve wanted to put it in a movie. It was just a matter of where and in what film, and this one presented me with the perfect opportunity to create a really interesting environment to stage it for the finale.
It also allowed you to put some naked women in the film, which I’m sure your investors were happy with.
Well, they’re not naked, are they? They’re painted red. And so are the men. On a serious note, it wasn’t a cynical attempt to get nudity in there. It’s this crazy pagan festival, and I wanted to stay true to that. We also had some great costumes; it’s all about fertility and regeneration, and I felt it would be an intriguing backdrop to set the drama in.
Are those the actual festival participants on screen?
We actually got a local group who staged these incredible fire gags. And then Hayley Nebauer, the costume designer, got to work on creating what she referred to as the white warrior women, the Green Man, the May Queen, the handmaidens, this crazy goat demon, all these different things. She came to me with some of these designs and said, “Julian, I hope you don’t think I’ve gone over the top,” and I said, “I love these designs. Go build them.” She had quite a healthy budget for that, and I love seeing them on screen. It was a mixture of that group and some of our extras, and they worked together to choreograph and set up a play fight, etc.
There’s been a bit of a renaissance for British horror films and thrillers recently, with your film, The Descent, Black Death…
I really enjoyed that. Such an underrated film. Badly treated by the distributors; they just didn’t see that they had something much better than they thought. That’s the story of independent film, isn’t it? But we’ve had The Descent, Dog Soldiers, yeah. There are a lot of really good directors having a lot of fun, and giving audiences a lot of thrills.
