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The new wave of British horror filmsLow-key concepts and limited budgets have given British horrorfilms a gritty realism that is the envy of the industry – but can theyever really compete with their US rivals?

Ryan Gilbeyguardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 June 2010 22.29 BST

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Bill Nighy in Shaun of the Dead. Photograph: Rouge Pictures/Everett / Rex Features

Unlike the western or the musical, the horror movie never seems to be under threat of

extinction. The occasional phenomenon – a Blair Witch Project or a Paranormal

Activity – helps to fortify its commercial appeal, as do hits like Scream or Hostel,

which refresh the familiar conventions. But horror remains in perpetually good nick,

not least in its UK outpost, from which some of the most inventive shockers of the last

10 years have emerged. Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later kicked off a new wave of Brit

horror in 2002, but it fell to emerging film-makers to properly paint the town blood-

red, from Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) to Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The

Descent), Michael J Bassett (Deathwatch, Wilderness) and Christopher Smith (Creep,

Severance).

In 2008, Johnny Kevorkian set his creepy debut The Disappeared on a Nil By Mouth-

style housing estate, where hoodies stalk the concrete walkways like delinquent Grim

Reapers, while Steven Sheil's Mum & Dad was a brilliantly grubby scare story about

the sort of depraved family who might have enjoyed wine-and-cheese evenings with

Fred and Rosemary West. Paul Andrew Williams didn't skimp on the gore in his rural

monster movie The Cottage. And this year brought the release of Lawrence Gough's

Salvage, which relocated the zombies and political commentary of Night of the Living

Dead to the Merseyside cul-de-sac formerly known as Brookside Close. Then there are

those titles that may have fallen below the radar of all but the most dedicated horror

nut, such as Wild Country (werewolves in Scotland) or Gnaw (cannibals

in Eastbourne).

"It didn't feel like a new wave at the time," says Christopher Smith. "I was always just

trying to get the next film going. But with hindsight, it's clear something was

happening. It's extraordinary to think that Shaun of the Dead, The Descent and Creep

all opened within a year."

With the UK release schedule and production calendar spattered with horror movies,

that momentum shows no sign of abating. The producers of Shaun of the Dead are

behind Attack the Block, the directorial debut of Joe Cornish (of Adam and Joe). A

resurgent Hammer Films (which has co-produced Let Me In, the US remake of Let the

Right One In) has announced it will turn Susan Hill's modern gothic novel, The

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Right One In) has announced it will turn Susan Hill's modern gothic novel, The

Woman in Black, into a 3D extravaganza directed by James Watkins (writer of My

Little Eye, Eden Lake and The Descent Part 2).

Then there is Monsters, about infected creatures on the rampage in Mexico, and the

bizarre Devil's Playground, which will sidestep the age-old horror-nerd question of

"can zombies run?" by portraying a species of the undead who dabble in parkour, no

less. Even non-UK talent is moving in for the kill, with J-horror pioneer Hideo Nakata

directing a largely British cast in Chatroom, scripted by Hunger writer Enda Walsh,

which premiered at Cannes this year.

The UK film industry is understandably anxious to produce internationally appealing

products, but one of the key qualities of the best British horror is the skill with which it

turns cultural specificity to its advantage. Simon Sprackling, who co-wrote and co-

produced The Reeds, a Norfolk Broads-set chiller pitched as "The Shining on a boat",

believes this our trump card. "We're very different from the US because we have a

proper gothic tradition," he says. "And we have a fatalism to our view of the world,

knowing that things can't possibly work out well in the end."

One of the inspirations for The Reeds was the case of Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer

who was imprisoned for shooting dead a teenage burglar. "Part of what informs British

horror is the old adage of 'write what you know'. Those things on the news or in the

papers that scare us tend to reverberate through our films, which is how you get a lot

of horror now that is urban-based."

Kevorkian agrees. "With The Disappeared, I had the idea of taking something many of

us pass every day — a council estate — and turning it into a haunted-house setting.

Despite the fact that these estates are in central, built-up locations, I wanted to create

a sense of isolation and abandonment."

Smith also highlights cultural idiosyncrasies in much of his work, from Creep, set in

the tunnels of the London Underground, to Severance, about a team-building exercise

gone wrong, and his gory new medieval thriller Black Death, which is in the grungy

spirit of Witchfinder General. "Contemporary British horror automatically feels grotty,

but in a good way," he says. "Look at Mum & Dad, which is such a horrible film, but

also really great."

Budgetary constraints obviously have an effect on the look of UK horror movies: they

simply can't compete with the good-looking US model populated by, well, good-

looking US models. "We do gritty and realistic better than anyone else," says

Kevorkian. "I don't think we have the budgets to do big elaborate horror films here, so

we turn to a more reality-based horror, which is a hell of a lot more frightening."

"Money definitely has something to do with it," says Lawrence Gough, who financed

Salvage with £250,000 from Northwest Vision and Media. "A big budget production

here can mean £10m-£15m, whereas $40m (£28m) in the US would be considered

cheap. There's also a tendency in British film-making toward realism, which I don't

think the Americans share."

In common with TV counterparts such as Being Human and Psychoville, much of the

new wave of horror celebrates uniquely British elements. You can practically hear the

glottal stops in a concept like Dead Cert, a low-budget, gangsters-v-vampires movie

shot in Dagenham with Guy Ritchie regular Jason Flemyng, and the smell of livestock

and ale hangs around Alex Chandon's horror-comedy Inbred, in which Yorkshire

teenagers on community service are preyed on by sinister villagers.

More unsettling to financiers and distributors than anything supernatural is the matter

of whether such films will travel beyond UK borders. "The US is a consideration when

you're putting a film together," says Sprackling. "You don't want it to be, but it is. It's

much easier to sell a film internationally if you have American characters in it. It's a

simple fact. The value of your movie is reduced without that." He cites the model of

Adrift, a thriller released in some territories as Open Water 2. With its English-

language script, highly marketable stranded-at-sea premise and US cast, most

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language script, highly marketable stranded-at-sea premise and US cast, most

audiences didn't even realise it was German. Sprackling's next script, he tells me, will

feature two American characters. "If you can get someone from Glee in it, you can

make the film at a level where you can pay the crew properly."

"If your characters are British, there is already a subtle problem for some US

audiences," says Smith. "We should remember that films which we consider classics,

like The Wicker Man, didn't travel well. The exceptions are usually US horror films

made here — The Omen or An American Werewolf in London. They can come here

with their stars, but somehow we're not able to export it."

Smith moved away from straight horror with his last film, Triangle, while he describes

Black Death as "more of a horror story than a horror movie – it doesn't set out to scare

you, but it's about a scary world". Still, he is already planning a return to the genre in

which he made his name. In the scale of his vision, there might just be a way for

British horror to compete commercially with its Hollywood equivalent.

"It's about the brand," he says. "You need a great costume, a great monster, a Freddy

Krueger. To make one of those is an ambition of mine. I feel now like I imagine Wes

Craven felt before A Nightmare on Elm Street: he'd proved what he could do, so it

became all about moving up a gear. The way we'd have to do it would be to get one of

our English brands and put that into a polished kind of product. How Richard Curtis

and Guy Ritchie have done so well is to give a polish to something very British.

Without the polish it doesn't travel, and you don't get the breakout franchise. Get Jack

the Ripper, say, with the right stars and budget level, and you could definitely sell that

in America."

But even among the film-makers responsible for the future of British horror, there is

some disagreement over whether this country could ever produce a megahit on the

scale of Paranormal Activity. "I think we could do it," says Kevorkian. "People are

making horror films more easily with the smaller cameras that are out now. I really

believe that one of those will become the next Blair Witch or Paranormal."

Smith isn't so sure. "I was asking myself that question the other day. I came to the

conclusion that it couldn't happen. One thing you need is that huge platform to release

it on; it needs to come out in America first to have that degree of impact. And it

wouldn't work somehow. Nicole Kidman in a mansion in The Others felt right because

she was posh. If you haven't got posh, then forget it. I don't think we could make a film

with some Londoners in a house going, 'Oi, 'ang on, there's a ghost 'ere.'"

The Disappeared is out now on DVD. The Reeds will be released later this year.