JT MOLLNER REMEMBERS THE day his mind conjured up the image that would kickstart the writing of his second feature film. "I just started to see this woman running through the woods," he says, "being chased by this inescapable evil coming towards her."
It's a classic image from a thousand horror films, but not one that usually opens a movie and that's what makes Strange Darling strikingly different. It's a cat and mouse story told in six chapters, but crucially not in chronological order. It's a puzzle, then, with various twists and turns that make talking about it a difficult thing for the writer/director.
"We had these uncomfortable conversations with distributors where people were like, 'Well, we love it, but the things we love about it we can't really put in the marketing material," Mollner tells Red Alert. "So it's been a delicate dance to make sure that people know there's more to this than just brutality and predation, and all the archetypal tropes that you see in the trailer. Those are in there, but there's more to it than that, without spoiling certain surprises for the audience."
This story is from the October 2024 edition of SFX UK.
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This story is from the October 2024 edition of SFX UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Making Alien - Jaws in Space - Forty-five years on from its original release, Alien continues to terrify. We dissect what arguably remains the most chilling instalment in the saga
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