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When you think of horror movies, plenty of directors likely come to mind – Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, James Wan, but probably not Wes Anderson. Nevertheless, the king of eccentric, symmetrical cinema was a source of inspiration for director Samuel Bodin for his debut feature, the horror movie Cobweb.
"There’s a lot of flat movements, like in a Wes Anderson way," Bodin tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features upcoming animated movie Babylon 5: The Road Home on the cover.
He says that the US filmmaker has long been a big influence on him, noting: "You can take some things he teaches us and bring that to the horror genre. He definitely tried to un-ground the movies, and I think it’s a beautiful way to tell stories. When I direct a horror story, usually a lot of the references I talk to the crew about are not horror at all."
The movie follows eight-year-old Peter (Woody Norman), who's haunted by a tapping noise in his bedroom walls and begins to fear that his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Anthony Starr) may be hiding a terrible secret from him.
In bringing the screenplay to life, French filmmaker Bodin deliberately brought an outsider’s perspective to what is an American story. He recalls how, when reading Stephen King books as a 12-year-old, his mental image of the author’s Maine was naturally a distorted one. "It’s how I project the USA on the screen in my head. So when the script came I said, 'Okay, it’s like that. It’s not reality. It’s not the US – it’s my projection.' I really decided to embrace that."
Cobweb arrives in UK cinemas on September 1. In the meantime, check out our picks of the other best upcoming horror movies.
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That's just a snippet of our interview, available in the latest issue of SFX Magazine, which features animated movie Babylon 5: The Road Home on the cover and is available on newsstands from Wednesday, August 9. For even more from SFX, sign up to the newsletter, sending all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.
