Adam L.G. Nevill's Blog, page 30

WALKER STALKER – MARCH 10 & 11: I’LL BE TRADING ON AN AUTHOR STAND.

I’ll be joining Matt Shaw and Mark Cassell and trading at Walker Stalker in London (March 10 & 11) on a horror author stand.

This is one of the biggest horror cons going, and I’ve followed the show from the start, so I need to experience this event. New banner is being printed this week and my stock is ordered.

Shuffle, shamble and drag that dead leg hither … Feed on us (or on the other two while I escape out back during the rending and tearing).

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ALL ABOUT THAT CREATURE – EXCLUSIVES WITH BLOODY DISGUSTING.

Maybe it’s one of the genre’s main facets that made us fall in love with horror: the creatures. As an adult, I still crave them. They’re one of the field’s USPs and greatest treasures.

Some reveals and spoilers in this article. One for those who’ve seen the film.

““I think one thing about [Nevill’s] book is that the reader must actively conjure the images the author is describing,” said Bruckner in an exclusive conversation (full interview later). “So you have a hand in co-authoring the design every time you encounter something on the page. No matter how artfully Nevill described the creature, or Moder as it’s called in the novel, it was always shifting a bit in my imagination. For example is it bigger than before? Does it seem more sentient than at first? Also, in the book, it’s female, which we learn later and shades things somewhat differently.”

“With a movie though, one has to get very literal with all that,” he continued.

“And we always knew this was a show-the-damn-monster kind of flick.

So I wanted to preserve my own experience of reading the book, wherein the creature’s design is somewhat shifting. Or at least you have competing ideas about what it might be. We dug into Norse mythology and discovered a Jötnar clan of giants that were known as shape-shifters and would sometimes present with combined human and animal qualities. It felt close enough to what Adam had imagined but gave us a little room to experiment.

To get the look he wanted, he collaborated with the concept artist behind Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, as well as Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Pacific Rim.””

Full interview with David Bruckner here

And more analysis of that creature here (spoilers – article only for those who’ve seen the film).

 

THE RITUAL ON NETFLIX – MORE PRESS REACTIONS

Folks are never short of an opinion and receptions to anything creative seem to oscillate so wildly between love and hate these days. So, for an indie horror film with a modest budget (my favourite films always seem to fall into that category), we’ve all been delighted and even startled by the reaction to the film on Netflix, from Reddit to the fan-art on Tumblr, to the posts and tweets in social media. When I think back on the commitment and dedication of the film-makers, and the exhausting schedule the production team and cast saw through, I’m so pleased to see their work recognised so widely and with such enthusiasm.

From LA Times: “The Ritual” is efficient and highly effective in its style, relying on sound, creepy production design, and the men’s own fear and misjudgment to create the sense of pervasive doom. We don’t see the monster in too much detail, leaving the mystery intact, but the creature design is stunningly original.”

From Alliance Theatre: “The Ritual is just the kind of solid effort that deserves more promotion, especially if you enjoy a small-scale horror film that makes the most of a limited budget. It’s the feature debut of Atlanta native David Bruckner as a solo director. Bruckner previous proved his chops by helming the acclaimed “Amateur Hour” segment from the anthology V/H/S and being one of the three directors of the triptych-style sleeper hit The Signal.”

From Thrillist: “Without getting into too much detail, (but worthy of a minor spoiler warning) The Ritual also reveals a monster in its final moments. It’s a creature connected to lore that’s far more ancient than anything dreamed up by J.J. Abrams. But, even as the exposition piles up, the focus is always on Luke and his fellow hikers. Bruckner keeps his camera locked on their faces as they’re stalked by a mysterious entity they can’t begin to comprehend. That understanding of how to scare an audience shouldn’t be so rare. The tools of suspense on display here aren’t exactly secrets. Still, it’s surprising to see them used so effectively.”

IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW WITH THE RITUAL DIRECTOR, DAVID BRUCKNER, AT COLLIDER

“there was a sense of momentum present in the entire team from the moment that I jumped on, and I read the script that Joe Barton had written originally. That was my first entry into the project, and it inspired me to read Adam Nevill’s book. I fell in love with the whole thing, and, and convinced them to bring me on board, and it moved very quickly. Yeah, that was May of 2016 and we were in prep by early August.”

Right here

 

INTERVIEWS: DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER OF THE RITUAL.

Some really insightful and entertaining interviews have appeared online that concern everything from adapting The Ritual, casting, the challenging conditions, the director’a aims and vision.

There is one with screenwriter, Joe Barton, and director, David Bruckner here.

And another with David at Daily Dead here

“To shoot in the Romanian wilderness was super challenging, though. We were racing winter because we never knew when the snows were going to come and once the snows come, you have serious continuity problems. We intermittently had to deal with hail, thunderstorms, and snow. We had an earthquake, and we had a bear problem, too.”

The third interview David takes with Bloody Disgusting here

“I always find that horror works best when it’s tethered to real-world anxieties and this felt especially relevant to me, both personally and as a broader exploration of masculinity in crisis.”

 

 

THE RITUAL SOUNDTRACK ALBUM (BEN LOVETT)

The Ritual film soundtrack will be released by Lakeshore Records and can be pre-ordered here.

I can also offer you a sneak preview from Ben Lovett’s affecting, often sinister, and atmospheric score. You can listen to ‘To Hell With This’ from the soundtrack over at Dread Central, and a second track will appear on Dread Central on February Thursday 8th too: ‘To Hell With This’

And from Ben about the composition and recording of the score:

“I wanted to make The Ritual sound like it looked.  Almost every shot in the film is exterior and the landscape is such a major factor in the experience of the characters, so it seemed natural to start by saying, “I think we should play instruments made of wood for this score.”  I needed exceptional orchestral players to tackle the size of complexity of what the film required.

The story is really about a guy losing friends, and how the dynamics of our relationships with our peers change as we all get older and become different people . . . The horror movie structure is just a container for that conversation — the opportunity to exaggerate these metaphors about masculinity and the male ego as a means of exploring it.

I knew the score needed to help establish the presence of something else out there with them — long before you see anything onscreen we wanted to create a clear sense of this inevitable obstacle, something in the woods aware of the guys.  I started out by creating this “stalker” theme to define the core musical elements that would represent that threat for the rest of the film.

I wanted the tragedy that sets the film in motion to follow our characters into the woods. The motif related to that incident is the only area of the score where I used synths instead of the orchestra — it was simply an effective way to separate the emotional story of what was happening within the characters from everything happening around them in the physical environment of the forest.”

[image error]The Ritual Soundtrack album, Ben Lovett

THE RITUAL ON NETFLIX – REACTIONS

“It gets as far as it can on suggestion, wisely restraining itself until the suggestion of dark forces at work in the Swedish woods is almost unbearable, then explodes into a chaos of horrors. The Ritual is both the evocative, psychological horror of occult implication and, in some ways, a creature feature, combining tonally separate horror sub-genre trappings into a cohesive whole.”

Full review here

“Mother Nature is ferocious, and she’s hungry.”

Nice precis of David’s other work here; all of which I liked (highly recommend The Signal). But soilers later on in the review if you haven’t seen the film.

Full review here

 

NEW RUSSIAN EDITION OF LAST DAYS FROM AST

My Russian publisher, AST, has gone into a LAST DAYS reprint, and even produced new artwork.

Reminds me of some of my Dad’s old book covers that I used to gaze at. A spectre of vintage Arkham House.

The Blood Friends scurry in seven languages.

 

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THE RITUAL (NOVEL) – AND OTHER “DOOMED TRAVELERS” AT UNBOUND

And The Ritual makes this fine list of “Doomed Travelers”. Only one of these I haven’t read (Koontz), but I adored the others. In fact, three of my favourite horror novels are on here.

Full list here

 

 

UNDER A WATCHFUL EYE MAKES THE LOCUS 2017 HORROR LIST

Just when you thought you were getting on top of your reading pile. But delighted to see UNDER A WATCHFUL EYE project itself onto this list.

Long may it “hinder” out there …

Full lists for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror here

But here’s horror:

NOVELS – HORROR

Ill Will , Dan Chaon (Ballantine)
Universal Harvester , John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Scribe UK)
After the End of the World , Jonathan L. Howard (Dunne)
The Grip of It , Jac Jemc (FSG Originals)
Food of the Gods , Cassandra Khaw (Abaddon US; Abaddon UK)
The Night Ocean , Paul La Farge (Penguin Press)
The Changeling , Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
Red Snow , Ian R. MacLeod (PS)
Under a Watchful Eye , Adam Nevill (Macmillan)
The Dark Net , Benjamin Percy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Behind Her Eyes , Sarah Pinborough (Flatiron; HarperCollins UK)
Mormama , Kit Reed (Tor)
Fever Dream , Samanta Schweblin (Riverhead; Oneworld)
Ubo , Steve Rasnic Tem (Solaris US; Solaris UK)