Dan Allen fills us in on his new creature feature IT CAME FROM BELOW, on digital September 7 from Uncork’d Entertainment. Jessie and her friends go deep underground to find out what happened to her father who claimed a monster lurks in the caves and has killed his friends. Wanting to uncover the truth, they will soon be hunted by a deadly creature from another world. Megan Purvis, Tom Taplin, Jake Watkins, and Georgie Banks star in a truly creepy but fun film.
Where’s home for you, Dan?
London England. I am from the countryside in Essex though!
And is that where you shot the film?
We shot the film in a couple of spots – Wooky Hole in Somerset and also north Yorkshire in a few spots including Ingleborough caves. Almost all the locations were either in and around the caves or we used the youth hostels we were staying in and essentially rearranged the furniture to suit the scene.
Did you shoot during the pandemic?
We did yes! Which was oddly a gift and a curse. Without the pandemic we wouldn’t have gotten a pub to use for our bar scene within 48 hours of needing to find one (we’d chosen one of the hostels because it had a bar, but the bar was locked and we couldn’t us it). We also wouldn’t have gotten free use of a train station if people were actually using the trains. But when all our HDMI cables were breaking due to the humidity and shooting conditions in the caves… it was very hard to find replacements on short notice.
You’re probably releasing the film at a good time – with so many people still stuck at home!
I guess so! It’s very different around the world. We didn’t want to make a COVID movie, because suddenly your film gets time-locked and horror is timeless (although always societally reactive).
Do you feel it’s the perfect ‘pandemic distraction’ film?
If people getting their faces smashed in or chests crushed sounds like a good distraction then definitely! Some might want to opt for a romantic comedy. Its funny though isn’t it, I genuinely thought there’d be more of a reluctance to watch horror when the world is so dark. But I think horror on film is very visceral whereas the threat today is very invisible. It’s hard to conceptualise. Giving evil a face and a form and then smashing over the face is probably the catharsis people need. That said, our monster is actually very much doing it’s own thing. It’s the meddling kids that get all up in its business that puts them on a disaster course.
Horror has an effortless ability to help us escape, doesn’t it?
Exactly! It’s twofold though, it’s an escape, but it’s also a microscope. Horror and evil are rarely mindless (unless you’re doing zombies but that in itself explores our animalistic nature). I think the power in horror, or at least good horror, is that it can be completely immersive, allowing you to loose yourself in a story because it plays powerfully on fear. If you can come away having thought about something new and different then I think that makes for great horror.
And, gotta ask, how did you accomplish those effects – everything practical?
Yeah everything was practical, including all the fake rocks we used. There is some basic CGI removing of things in shots and then I animated the monster’s face to give it some expression beyond what the mask would allow. Dave did such a good job designing and making that mask too, it was just about taking it to the next level.
Any films play music, or inspire this one?
Always. I generally build a private playlist for each new project, so I can go back to that world easily, for this it was a lot of etherial and droney-soundtrack music. Dark, the German Netflix show was a key influence stylistically and tonally, because it handles the magic and the realism so well. The film also plays off social realism throughout as well, not through the colour and lighting but the kinetic energy and handheld camera work.
Did you write with a budget in mind and therefore couldn’t film everything you would’ve liked to?
I tried to write a list of all the things that might be impossible that we could achieve. The flash flood was one of those. Having some swooping bats was another (although didn’t make it). There were obviously quite a few things we couldn’t do, like a full on water sequence and dropping from a high cliff within the caves. I think it’s best to have these big set pieces come out of where the characters are at and their personal needs in the story. Those moments end up getting scaled back, especially when we are shooting in real caves and we can’t hurl someone across a cavern, but it means we never end up with a scene that doesn’t serve the story.
Favorite horror film of all time?
Psycho