THE FACE OF HORROR
35mm, color, 120 mins.
Written and Directed by: Anna Biller
Produced by: Mike Goodridge, James Bowsher, and Anna Biller
Starring: Jonah Hauer-King. Kristine Froseth, Ellie Bamber, Leo Suter, Ben Radcliffe, Bella Heathcote
Cinematography: M. David Mullen, A.S.C.
Exective Producer: Jared Sanford
Production Design: Pavel Vojtíšek
Costume Design: Anna Biller
Comsposer: Gabriel Andrés Gallegos
LOGLINE
A ghost in medieval England rises from her grave to seek revenge on her husband, in a gory tribute to classic Technicolor horror films.
SYNOPSIS
Shot gorgeously on 35mm film, Anna Biller (The Love Witch) delivers a lavish medieval nightmare evoking the lost grandeur of 1950s cinema. The film opens on Eleanor (Kristine Froseth), a young woman dreaming of her lover, Edward (Jonah Hauer-King). But romance curdles into horror when Edward slaughters Eleanor’s father in a sudden fit of rage. Trapped by circumstance, Eleanor and her sister Beatrice (Ellie Bamber) are forced to marry Edward and his accomplice Richard (Leo Suter), and live with them in an isolated, wind-swept mansion. When Edward cruelly abandons the sickly Eleanor for a wealthy noblewoman (Bella Heathcote), an act of unspeakable cruelty of the part of the lovers transforms the sisters’ bond into an engine of bloodthirsty supernatural vengeance. Based on the most famous Japanese ghost story of all time, Yotsuya Kaidan, The Face of Horror is a stunning homage to classic blood-soaked Technicolor horror films.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
The Face of Horror is based on a famous Japanese Kabuki horror play called Yotsuya Kaidan, about a vengeful female spirit who returns as a ghost to destroy the faithless husband who wronged her. The play has been popular with Japanese audiences for two hundred years, and has spawned countless film adaptations. Part of its enduring popularity with Japanese audiences is due to its graphic violence and special effects (it was the first horror play produced in Japan), and part of it is due to its biting commentary on gender roles. And although I’ve moved the story from feudal Japan to fourteenth century England, the material adapts seamlessly, largely due to the enduring nature of patriarchal power over time and place.
We captured the story on 35mm film in the ancient castles and medieval churches of Prague, drawing our visual language from the operatic staging and color of Michael Powell, Visconti, and Kurosawa. We have rejected the flat, naturalistic desaturation of contemporary digital filmmaking in favor of a vibrant, hyper-saturated 1950s Technicolor palette, using vivid color to convey psychological dread. The actors, while retaining their own styles of naturalism, give heightened performances which nod to the styles of both Kabuki theater and classic Hollywood melodrama, to depict the heightened emotions of extreme entitled cruelty, deep suffering, and rageful revenge.
Visually inspired by colorful paintings and illuminated manuscripts of the Medieval era (the film is more historically accurate than most films about the medieval period, which was full of dazzling color), I have attempted to highlight the strangeness of that magical, death-obsessed world—a world of knights and ladies, Troubadour songs, demonic imagery, sex, violence, plague, guilt, intrigue, and religious horror—while also anchoring it in currently urgent concerns about gendered power imbalances.
Many people initially see the film as camp, due to its heighted visual quality and big performances; but if it is, it’s the type of camp that operates with total sincerity. For, despite many moments of deliberate satire and uproarious humor, the movie never winks at the camera. And, as a commenter pointed out with another controversial movie, “Enjoying it as camp seems rather callous.” I agree. While the movie is entertaining, and the men’s entitlement can be both heartbreaking and hilarious, domestic violence and marital enslavement are no laughing matters. The film takes Eleanor’s and her sister Beatrice’s pain very seriously; it’s only the audience’s self-awareness that turns it into a joke. The film operates instead as a Gothic melodrama—a pageant of sublime terror and beauty crafted for an audience that still demands cinematic grandeur.
World Sales: Embankment Films
