Wild Country Director's Notes
My best hope for Wild Country is that it should be a horror film in the tradition of Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chainsaw massacre (1974), Halloween (1978) and The Evil Dead (1982). The critic and author Kim Newman has described these films as “headlong rush” horrors, because of their single-minded intensity and pace. Their plots, like Wild Country’s, are simple, rooted in primal storytelling forms – the campfire tale, and especially the fairy tale.
Although I cite American antecedents, and Wild Country is a horror film featuring teenage characters, I had no interest in making an ersatz American teen horror flick. I wanted to make something distinctive, and distinctly Scottish – the first Scottish horror film since The Wicker Man. The teenagers in Wild Country are younger teens from the Glasgow area, and we have cast them to elicit naturalistic performances. The set-up of Wild Country suggests a social-realist drama about teen pregnancy, and the film looks like a social-realist drama – photographed digitally, entirely on location, in a documentary style, eschewing thriller techniques. The soundtrack, as far as possible is location sound, and there is very little score or incidental music whatsoever. These techniques signal “reality” to the audience, which should make the switch to full-blown horror all the scarier!
You’ve been there – in a spirited group of teenagers, youthful and invincible, walking together at night in an unfamiliar place. You’ve heard that rustling sound, caught that fleeting glimpse of something out there in the darkness. You’ve screamed, clung together for comfort, frightened and exhilarated in equal measure. You’ve bolted headlong through the night, terrified you’ll be separated from the group and left behind to be picked off by the thing you are sure is right behind you, clamouring for your blood!
You’ve been there. Wild Country will take you back.
