Interview: Natasha Kermani on THE DREADFUL's Folktale Horror and Dreamlike Visuals
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By Shannon McGrew
In Natasha Kermani’s latest film, THE DREADFUL, set in medieval England, Anne (Sophia Turner) and her mother-in-law, Morwen (Marcia Gay Harden), live in a solitary, harsh life on the outskirts of society. But when a man (Kit Harington) from their past returns, he will set off a sequence of events that becomes a turning point for Anne.
For the release of THE DREADFUL, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with writer/director Natasha Kermani (Imitation Girl). During their chat, they discussed everything from the film’s folktale inspirations and complex female relationships to its immersive sound design and dreamlike visual language.
Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Natasha. I read that THE DREADFUL draws inspiration from Obinaba (1964). What specifically about that film stayed with you?
Natasha Kermani: That film is pulling from a folk tale that is really like a morality play that centers around a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law. I was so interested in that relationship; it’s something that you don’t see a lot. You don’t see an older woman and a younger woman who are not mother and daughter, thrust into coexistence. That was really the seed that I couldn’t let go of, and I kept thinking about the image of these two women against the desolate landscape.
Horror often casts women as either the pure final girl or a monstrous villain. Both characters are flawed and struggling with their own heartache. How did you want to complicate that binary to show that it’s okay for these characters to exist within the gray space?
Natasha Kermani: I don’t think that’s even where my mind would ever go to paint them as caricatures. It’s always about what this character wants or needs. What are they struggling for? Once I identified what both of these women needed and realized that their two journeys were in opposition, that’s when it really became interesting. We have this younger woman, and what she needs is independence. But the older woman wants only not to be alone. That’s always going to clash. There’s going to be an issue there. So, it’s really much more about the relationship between these two women. There’s a place and a time for caricature as well, like, we all love Carrie’s mom, but that just wasn’t the story. I was more interested in the pulling apart of that relationship.
I was really drawn to how sound was used in this movie, particularly in the film's more fantastical portions. How important was sound design in building this world?
Natasha Kermani: Really early on, I worked with a sound designer named Aj Pyatak at Tunnel Post. One of our first conversations was to figure out what the sound of this sort of mythological figure is, because otherwise it’s a pretty grounded story. There’s not a lot of supernatural sound effects happening. We started figuring out how the sound starts and then evolves, becoming like a beast’s roar, heard in the music as a thread through this magical, dark-fantasy element that’s becoming more and more dominant in this otherwise very grounded world. I love sound design; it’s so much fun, especially for a horror movie.
The film's visual language feels very dreamlike and almost fuzzy, as if we are suspended between reality and fantasy. How did you and your cinematographer approach that look?
Natasha Kermani: This was another collaboration between my DP, Julia Swain, and Panovision. We shot it all primarily on Panavision anamorphic T-series lenses. But the lens you’re talking about [for the fuzzy look] is actually a vintage portrait lens. That blurring along the edges is actually part of the lens itself; it’s not an effect or anything like that, it’s all an optical part of the lens itself. We had been looking at that lens for several projects and never found a place for it, but for this film, it felt right. That’s what genre does so well: you can free yourself creatively to use some colors and paintbrushes that you wouldn’t normally use. That said, my DP and I are also very strict about the rules within it. If you’re using a wacky lens, we want to be consistent about when we use it and why we’re motivated to use it. It’s the right balance of setting rules for yourself, but also letting yourself make some big swings.
Ultimately, what do you hope lingers with audiences after they leave the theater?
Natasha Kermani: I think this is a really unmined space. There are very, very few movies that sort of explore this dark fantasy, folktale, horror collage. I hope it sends them back to other really cool movies that also explore this space, and that they feel like they were really transported somewhere they haven’t been before, somewhere that isn’t quite of this world.
THE DREADFUL is now in theaters, On Demand and on Digital.
