OUTCAST
Dir. Colm McCarthy, 2009, WORLD PREMIERE
Visit OUTCAST’s SXSW Page HERE!
We naive Americans know little about Ireland or Scotland, much less the darkest corners of their supernatural mythology. Prepare to be mercilessly schooled on the latter in this vicious-but-intelligent film from native filmmaker McCarthy.
OUTCAST establishes a bold and very new variation on shadowy, monstrous horror by weaving ancient witchcraft-tinted nightmares into very real urban decay. The characters all live in the red, battling against impossible odds and unstoppable enemies until they’ve been reduced to animals.
A unique and unusually intense UK horror feature, OUTCAST declares that there are no heroes or villains in inhuman war.
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We had the opportunity do ask writer/director Colm McCarthy a few questions about the film, and his answers shed a whole new light on the project…
OUTCAST is your first theatrical feature. How did the project come up?
Well, in the small scale, OUTCAST came out of an initial idea that Tom (McCarthy: co-writer and brother) and I had. On another level it came out of the experience of being brought up by a storytelling father versed in the Irish Seanchaí tradition, spending my teenage years in an ’80s poverty-stricken housing estate in Edinburgh and loving properly fucked up horror films and literature. One of the producers (John McDonnell) and I had made a couple of shorts together and we developed the script over a few years, during which time I was directing various television drama. Eventually the stars aligned in the correct way and a collection of brave individuals gave us the cash to go and indulge my strange imagination. Thanks guys!
Can you tell us about some of the lore that inspired the plot?
Well, as I mentioned, my brothers and sisters and I were brought up with Irish myths and folklore from birth, pretty much. The Sidhe (pronounced: She) are an integral part of the mythology of Ireland, though the version in this story is not really taken directly from any particular legend. Tom and I have always loved the idea of wisps of an old magic left behind in the modern age. There are certainly tastes – Bran was the name of one of Finn MaCool’s hunting dogs, shapeshifting was often seen as being a curse of the Sidhe, in the fury of battle the warp spasm would decend on certain warriors – these elements come from the stories I suppose. Also Little Red Riding Hood and the Brothers Grimm influenced.
It’s a unique story. Were you deliberately attempting to work within a horror genre that hadn’t been traveled before?
Well, I was definitely trying to take people somewhere that I know, and know to be scary and interesting…create an atmosphere and narrative that I thought might be engrossing or different. Someone once said that good filmmaking was about taking people somewhere they’ve never been before and showing them something they already know. It would be great to think that this has been achieved to some extent. Hopefully it’s unsettling, dark, scary and enjoyable for people who like that in a film, but in a way that is a little bit original. That would make me very happy.
The director (right) with one of the lucky characters in OUTCAST.
How would you classify the creatures, witches and hunters of the film?
Misunderstood. Real. Friends. You know, behind all the sleazy leather trouser satanists and new age bores, there might just be a bit of real magic, and it might just be like this.
It feels like the film is a massive clash between the ancient supernatural and the modern world. Can you talk about that, or shoot it down if it’s inaccurate?
Um…I suppose part of the point is that “modernity” is transient. White trousers and lattes are just the current security myth. Everything decays and rots. In doing so it feeds the soil and fruit bearing trees grow. Everything has happened before and will happen again. So the ancient supernatural is maybe part of the modern world, just a part that we don’t want to face or see. The same as the estate itself is the part of the “modern” city that we don’t want to see. Like the projects in America or the shanty towns of Mumbai. These areas are the dark forests of here and now. The part at the edge of town where the stuff-that-doesn’t-get-reported goes down. The street lights are a bit further apart here and in the shadows lurk… the unwatched ones. The old powers. The outcasts.
Its one point of view anyway.
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Get OUTCAST and the rest of our SXFantastic titles on your SXSW calendar, starting HERE!
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