INTERVIEW: Howl & The Seasoning House director, Paul Hyett

- By Lisle Henderson

It was a pleasure recently to be given the opportunity to speak to Paul Hyett about his latest directorial release HOWL. I was particularly excited as Paul has previously created special make up effects for 2 of my top films: The Descent and Eden Lake, so forgive me if I get a bit star struck!

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Hello, Paul! I expect it’s ‘HOWL FEVER‘ at the moment for you?! How have you found initial reactions and feedback to the release of the film?

So far, we seem to be getting a good reaction, lots of positive reviews, and it has played really well in the festival audiences. As always there’s some that don’t like it but that’s the beauty of films, music and art, that everything’s subjective and not everyone is going to like what you do, but its always heartening when someone posts that they liked the movie.

Werewolf films are a particular favourite of mine, although they do range from ‘incredible’ to the ‘what the fuck?!’. Are there any films in this sub-genre that particularly influenced you?

To be honest it wasn’t really the werewolf sub genre that influenced me on Howl, more the 70’s disaster movies like the Posiedon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, mixed in with John Carpenter, films like The Thing, The Fog, and there’s references to Elm Street and even Irreversible. I tried not to be influenced by other werewolf films but wanted Howl to be a retro type creature feature with a classic feel.

I’m a huge fan of The Descent. I had the pleasure of meeting Shauna Macdonald at a small screening of the movie in a local pub a few years back. Some red wine and a ropey selfie later (star struck!), I became an even bigger fan of the film, and Shauna as an actress. Were you keen to work with her again on this movie? Was that planned?

As soon as I read the script I instantly thought of Shauna for Kate, the strong career woman, who has a strength and a vulnerability, I think she plays her perfectly, the layers coming apart, the bitterness at Adrian but also the realization that it’s this event that has made her realise that she’s wasted her life at work rather then watched her kids grow up. But Shauna is a great actress, lovely to work with, so professional, so prepared, I would work with her again in a second.

When I’m not watching horror films, or stalking celebrities, I work full time in the rail industry, so the geek in me got particularly excited about the thought of late night passengers stuck on a train while being stalked by werewolves. What gave you the idea to use this as the setting for the film? Did it pose any challenges from a set and filming point of view?

Well the writers Mark and Nick were the ones that come up with the idea. 10 years ago they were on the last train out and stuck with all these annoying passengers and the train just stopped, for ages. It was in that moment that they thought ‘what’s the worst that could happen? Yep, werewolves attack’. I loved the idea of doing a film with a bunch of people trapped in a train, harking back to my love of disaster pics. It was hard to shoot, being stuck in one set and always trying to give the film a visual aesthetic that didn’t feel stale and static. We had looked into shooting on a real train, but it soon became obvious that wasn’t going to work logistically so we built the inside of the train with the thinking we can shoot outside of a real train, but that became difficult because of all the health and safety issues as well as the continuity issues, so we ended up building the outside of the train as well as a mini forest! It actually gave us a lot of control over weather, lighting, etc, so it was the right way to go.

In HOWL our lycanthrope friends have quite a human appearance in that we can even tell what gender they are. Can you tell us a bit about the creative process which led to these creatures and why they appear to have a tad more ‘were’ in them than many other cinematic werewolves?

I wanted to get away from big furry werewolves with big snouts, they’ve been done before and done brilliantly. Also I wanted to get away from the mythology of silver bullets and instant transformations. My idea was that it takes years to transform, from a bite, that it was a virus like disease, bones would take a long time to transform, breaking and then reforming, muscles snapping and refusing. I wanted to try to give it a contemporary twist, more in keeping with the grounded tone. Also I wanted them to be big, gnarly, ugly feral things living in the wild. But also give them a gender and a character, after all, there’s so many interesting characters in the train that I wanted the creatures to have their own characteristics too.

SPOILER: Poor Sean Pertwee once again bares his guts post werewolf encounter. Is this in anyway a homage to Dog Soldiers? Or just pure bad luck for Sean?

Paul (right) and Sean Pertwee… the man he loves to kill!

I’ve killed Sean so many times in my career, I just wanted to kill him again. No, to be honest, we had talked about a bigger role for Sean but then Gotham came up and he literally was about to go the next week to New York, so I had to have him in. And it’s a nice nod to Dog soldiers too, that Sean gets killed by pesky werewolves AGAIN!

I’m a massive fan of your first feature, The Seasoning House - also starring Mr Pertwee. What attracts you to the more macabre side of cinema?

I love exploring the dark side of human nature, probably because I’m so chilled and laid back, a vegetarian, love animals, etc. So I suppose going to explore that dark and macabre world that some people live in is interesting. It’s the same when people watch films about serial killers, it’s a ride in a place we’ll (hopefully) never have to experience outside of a movie theatre.

I liked the back story that sneaks out in HOWL about passengers that were found mutilated years back on a missing train. So…these guys have been at it before! Tell me….are they likely to be at it again?? (Or is sequel a bad word?)

Howl 2 : The Eurostar! Who knows, lets see how many DVD’s we sell.

So what is next for Paul Hyett? Can you give us a clue about what you might be working on in the future?

I’m developing a few projects, hopefully going to be announcing the next one very soon! Keep an eye out.

Now I know this might sound like trashy teen mag stuff, but it is nearly Halloween so forgive me…..tell me Paul, what is your favourite horror movie of all time?

John Carpenter‘s The Thing, in a time where I was watching Nightmare On Elm street, Friday the 13th, and all the cool splatter movies. Suddenly The Thing came along, it’s dark, bleak, nihilistic setting, music, tone. It just blew me away, every character well developed, amazing make up effects, Kurt Russell’s anti hero MacReady. Pure brilliance.

Thanks so much for your time and chat today, Paul, and good luck with HOWL!

Thank you, absolute pleasure.

@LisleHenderson

Read @TheBlueTook‘s HOWL review HERE, and buy your Blu-ray from Amazon below: