đ Cast: Marie-Pierre Castel, Mireille Dargent, Philippe GastĂ©, Dominique, Louise Dhour, Michel Delesalle, Antoine Mosin, Olivier François, Dominique Toussaint, AgnĂšs Petit, AgnĂšs Jacquet, Anne-Rose Kurrat, Paul Bisciglia, Jean-NoĂ«l Delamarre âŠ
#RequiemPourUnVampire #sousTitres #cinemaFrançais #CultFilm #EuroHorror #VampireCinema #GothicFilm #ArtHouseHorror #1970sCinema
đ Cast: Jacques Ralf, Gregory K. Heller, Marina Pierro, Françoise Blanchard, Mike Marshall, Carina Barone, Fanny Magier, Patricia Besnard Rousseau, VĂ©ronique Pinson, Sandrine Morel, Jean Cherlian, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Alain Petit, Jacques Marbeuf, Sam Selsky, Lise Overman, Laurence Royer, VĂ©ronique Carpentier, Jean HĂ©rel, Dominique TreillouâŠ
#LaMorteVivante #sousTitres #cinemaFrançais #HorrorFilm #ZombieFilm #GothicFilm #CultCinema #EuropeanCinema #1980sCinema
Interview with Lucy Rose: Gothic Filmmaking
This is the first bonus episode of the new season of Eldritch Girl and itâs a banger! The audio clip played from the film starts at 11min 41secs to if you want to listen to that, you can watch along!
~ Eldritch Girl S03 Bonus Ep 01Meet Lucy Rose
Lucy Rose is an award-winning writer/director for screen and prose/nonfiction writer with an interest in gothic, girlhood, horror, and literary fiction. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Dread Central, Mslexia, and more.
Lucy is represented by Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown (Books)
Other enquiries to hello [@] lucyrosecreative [.] co [.] uk
Go To Lucyâs Website Follow on TwitterTrailer
The Interview
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Ck1cLxIWiuAa6A6bWRdeh
Interview Transcript
CMR: Hello! Welcome back to Eldritch Girl! This is really exciting because weâve got Lucy Rose who is a filmmaker, and weâre going to discuss the indie horror short, She Lives Alone. Lucy, would you like to introduce yourself?
LR: Hello, I am Lucy, Iâm a filmmaker based in the northeast and I am the writer-director of She Lives Alone. She Lives Alone was such an amazing fun project to be able to work on. The development process was really fun. I worked really closely with my producer to explore the rural landscape of the place I grew up, which is a place in Cumbria. And I really just kind of wanted to bring a small facet of our Celtic regions and that tiny little culture to the screen and combine that with my love of Gothic horror and ghost stories and all the stories basically that I heard in Cumbria growing up that used to keep me up at night forever.
She Lives Alone has gone to some really cool festivals and itâs gone to some BAFTA and Oscar qualifying festivals, which is really intimidating but very cool. And then it ended its journey by winning best runner under 100 K at the Northeast Arts awards and getting picked up by Alter, which was the most amazing surprize in the whole world, because now it kind of finally gets to see its audience after a virtual festival runs so thatâs lovely.
CMR: thatâs so exciting Iâm really happy, the whole film is about 15 minutes long and it is available on YouTube and so Iâm gonna play a little bit of it Iâm really excited about, which is kind of at the end, so I mean spoilers, but it is a ghost story, so you can kind of â I mean you canât see it, you can just hear the audio. But we want to talk a little bit about the folklore behind it and a little bit of whatâs going on, so weâre going to start from 11:41 so you get a sense of the music and the dialogue â itâs very much a monologue, isnât it? A lot of it is a monologue because well⊠she lives alone.
[Laughter]
LR: Yeah.
CMR: itâs really dark and atmospheric and I think thereâs maybe like two other characters in the whole film, which is like you know really cool. Okay, so. Letâs see how this letâs see how this works.
[clip plays: an adult woman with a low voice and Cumbrian accent is speaking. The line is âBury you in earth, bury you in mud as thick as barkâ over and over in hushed, desperate tones, with the tense score, whistling wind, and metallic clinking. There is a sharp scream and gasps at the end as the music swells ominously.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlAQGOcVa6Y
CMR: Actually going to pause it there because thatâs like a really good bit. I think the coolest image of that is the iron nail through the Bible through her hand which I was seeing as an exorcism ritual or part of an exorcism ritual, and can you tell us a little bit about that element and the little bit of dialogue that sheâs got as a kind of mantra that is âBury you in earth, bury you in mud as thick as barkâ?
LR: And so I grew up in like the tiniest, tiniest village like. It may be had like six or seven houses. And it was so remote so if you wanted to go anywhere to like a shop youâre looking at least 25 minutesâ drive, and so the sense of isolation and because of that, like the Community, and what the Community felt like, and how we as people kind of used storytelling as a method within our like our tiny, tiny little culture that again â seven houses â I basically took things that Iâd heard in my childhood and sort of morphed them and manifested them into this film.
I used to live by this woman who I will literally remember for the rest of my life, who was very superstitious, an extremely superstitious woman, and she was just the most incredible person and so like unashamedly weird. She was just so in touch with herself, which I think is so difficult in a small community, to be able to just like live your weirdness and like not care what people think of you, because everybody has opinions in those tiny little tight knit groups.
And she used to mess around with all sorts, but she you know she taught me like what ouija boards were and what voodoo dolls were, and she was really, really like spiritual and she often talked about like how connected to the earth and to the planet she felt was like a human, and Iâd sometimes visit her after school. And Iâd sit in a kitchen, while she was cooking dinner, for I was burned, and she just seeing these like really weird songs that she just made up herself like these little folk tunes. I just pulled phrases and lines and words that she was saying, because she did â she â I think she was just sort of⊠in hindsight, as a grown woman, I think I see her loneliness now, and how that connection to the earth and to nature was something that really, really kept her from going insane.
And it was a sort of gravity to her and thatâs kind of what I wanted to give to Maud was this sense of like you might be without a person or people but youâre not on your own, and you can always rely on different spiritual things to sort of find your centre and in terms of the Bible, the nail going through her hand, I think itâs really metaphorical but I really just wanted to talk about the power that was kind of harnessing her, and the struggle between how her mum was treating her. So, for context, people [listening] if you havenât seen it, Maud lives alone thatâs the âsheâ in She Lives Alone. Her mumâs just passed away and sheâs basically like in this normal grieving period and she begins to realize that sheâs haunted by the spirit of her mother and her mother left her one thing which was the Bible, and it was because the mother always thought she was a wicked girl.
Basically, at the end film she casts out the spirit of her mum by bonding herself to this Bible, like physically binding herself to it, and I think itâs in part a metaphor about⊠I think in terms of discussing themes like trauma, like that trauma is always going to be a part of you. You canât separate them, like, theyâre together, and thatâs horrible, but I donât think that thatâs a bad thing. I think itâs like an acceptance that like itâs just one of the bags youâre carrying with you in your life, and one of the items that you keep with you, and it doesnât make you an awful person, itâs just something youâve got in you.
And in a more sort of physical sense like, for me, like one of the staples of rural life is cast iron. You see it everywhere, you see it made making the gates, making the beds, making the keys, the locks, everything.
So I think itâs just bringing that industry and that sense of objects having a space in our community, and it sounds ridiculous, but one of the other things is the red stone and you constantly see some stone in in Cumbria, itâs everywhere you go and all the houses are made out of it.
And everything is red and orange and rust and copper coloured so itâs just one of those things about like bringing the identity of the land and the place and the people, whether thatâs the minerals, the materials and the industry and embedding it in the world of the film, so that it feels real and also acknowledging the spirituality of the place so like, the folk song that is in the filmâŠ
Acknowledging that however small the culture is, it doesnât mean itâs not important, and like that folklore, I think is a hugely, hugely important staple of that place and I just really wanted to like bring that to life in this in this film.
I think it works really well like and I also like the detail when she draws, um, so she has the Bible in the palm of your hand and then she draws a diamond on the front of the Bible around the Cross. Is that from something or is that a detail that organically came about, or is that based in folklore?
LR: And so, one of the things that came from, that sort of like rhombus square shape, is the woman who used to live next to me â again this incredibly spiritual woman who I, like, everything I learned about our tiny culture I learned from this person.
And, and she used to make these like⊠they were like twigs that youâd like put into squares and then you put different twines around them.
You know one day itâd be like fishing twine that she ⊠her husband used to fish a lot, so sheâd take some of his fishing twine, and sheâd make these little rhombus shapes, I canât do it like that. [shows me with her fingers in a rhombus shape]
And, and she put little flowers in them and she used to just leave them around house, I was never quite sure what they were, but she always used to call them wishing hexes.
Sheâd just leave them around and they were to bring good fortune and it was really beautiful, itâs really beautiful.
CMR: Oh thatâs really interesting I like that melding of that kind of folk tradition and then Christianity and then like, different spiritualities is that you get kind of melded in a place like that.
LR: And I find that thatâs a truth though, isnât it, I think a lot of people find spirituality and no one personâs version of any faith is the same, and thatâs something thatâs actually quite beautiful and thatâs born of our experiences.
CMR: Yes, and I think itâs a flavour of folk Christianity as well because, like I think itâs become⊠from outside perspectives I think itâs a very homogenous religion or a very homogenous spirituality and I think a lot of that is due to, you know, perceptions of modern evangelicalism and that kind of thing. But I think youâre right, in different enclaves people still do have their own traditions.
And itâs really â itâs really cool to see that because itâs a period drama as well, this film, so itâs linking back to a kind of earlier age and an earlier kind of expression of Christianity and folk Christianity, but also, I mean, did you have a year that it was set in, or was it just general?
LR: So I imagine itâs set in mid 1850s but, like the year is quite vague.
But I think like one of⊠actually, speaking of time, one of the really fun aspects of the film is that where itâs based has such an interesting relationship with time. Cumbria, when you look into its background, itâs wild. Itâs been constantly fought over, so its identity is like a complete mishmash of different cultures from like Norway to Roman to old Old English, to everything. Thereâs Germanic in there, and itâs absolutely insane.
And so I think that sense of time, and even though itâs a period drama, one of the things we tried to create was the sense of timelessness to it so it almost exists in its own pocket?
CMR: Yeah.
LR: And that was like really crucial for us because we just wanted⊠What we kind of imagined when we sat and we thought of as a creative team, we were like maybe this is what it felt like because it was so disconnected and its culture was so constantly changing and evolving and adapting new ideas from like people who came and left or people who conquered and then were defeated and⊠yeah.
CMR: I think that works really well in the film because youâve got it centred only on two locations which is her cottage which is miles from anywhere so a friend from the village actually comes to visit her, but you never see the village and you donât see it through her eyes, you donât see it through her friends eyes, you donât see any other people at all. youâre in, and you have a sense that the village is quite a walk away so she has to travel to get in there, however long that takes and itâs just this idea of⊠thereâs no civilization that kind of thing, and even the civilization, that there is itâs obviously not urbanized and itâs obviously like quite far from any kind of urban centre so youâve already got that kind of thing going on, and the cottage itself is this is where the horror is. Thatâs the locus of the domestic horror, because the spirit of the mother is haunting her in the house.
And so the other place you see her is just on the moors or you know that ring of standing stones isnât it that sheâs in.
LR: In yeah. The standing stones were actually based on a real place. We really, really wanted to shoot in the place, but we couldnât because itâs an active spiritual site and it just wouldnât be ethical to shoot there.
But the standing stones are based on a real stone circle called Long Meg and her Daughters.
And, which is place I used to visit all the time, and when you go now itâs just the most beautiful place, itâs in the middle of nowhere, thereâs like ribbons in the trees, bells, and itâs just stunning, but I mean that sense of isolation is like. I think, with it being a short film, you can, from a boring technical perspective, you can explore those worlds, but I wouldnât want to do that anyway, like I think itâs I really like just as a personal preference to how I approach things, again, going back to that word like pockets, I really like to capture like small pockets of hidden histories, quiet tragedies that donât necessarily get written down in the history books, because theyâre not deemed important enough to write down.
And when we think about period dramas which we think of like glitzy giant polished glossy manor houses, sweeping romances, like you know, especially with like the massive Bridgerton fad thatâs going around at the minute, you donât think of the real people and the very real lives and consequences and events and you know, thereâs hidden pockets of laughter with one person to another and realizing that âoh my God thatâs my thatâs my partner and Iâm going to spend my life with themâ or, you know, âI hate my sister because sheâs the worst person in the worldâ, but they had to share a bed, because they had no money.
Itâs those like really tiny moments that I tried to catch on to because theyâre just not explored enough, but I think it really serves horror because horrorâs everything we fear as a society.
And I think you know, I think, in some ways, like rural communities, the way that theyâre treated within our society is odd. You often hear them referred to as sheep shaggers or whatever, or like farmers, and that comes with the added like a sort of thing of like well theyâre not clever enough to have an opinion on this or that, but then on the flip side, though those communities are also beloved for their influence on things like literature, from like every genre you know from you Beatrix Potter to you know, everyone else, so itâs a really â I think thatâs sort of push and pull, and those two opposites can create real conflict, which is why it serves horror so well, because you kind of have to address those conflicts within the subtext of whatever youâre making.
Canât remember where I was going with that. Just monologuing about justice.
[Laughter]
CMR: Yes, but thatâs it isnât it, because youâve got like â rural communities do have those polarized perspectives, that they either idealized and itâs like this pastoral idyll before urbanization when everything was perfect, or exploited because of the natural minerals you know, so youâve got things like the South Wales coalfield, which is where I grew up, and thereâs huge chunks taken out of the landscape thereâs massive scars on the mountains from the quarries.
And then dying communities exist because they were only there for the mines and now thereâs no mines and thereâs no reason for those communities to exist.
And people are like, well the community just shouldnât exist, you should all just go somewhere else. Where are they going to go? You know, I get very annoyed about that because, yes, itâs you know, there are communities that exist and they have their own identities, they have their own deep roots in that place and that sense of place both traps them there and anchors them there at the same time.
I think you get that in this film as well, that sense of both entrapment and anchorage comes across in like she wonât leave the cottage because you havenât got anywhere else to go. Like, thatâs all sheâs got, sheâs not going to⊠what are you going to do, move to the city? With what money?
LR: You know itâs true itâs I mean everything youâve just said it like chefâs kiss, by the way, five stars.
I was just like, yes.
I would listen to a podcast just about that, but youâre so right, and I think you know, I was talking about this.
But I think itâs that split thing we have as humans, where our bodies want to be connected to nature but thatâs what we want in our bodies, in our bones, in our fibres, but our brains are like ⊠I want capitalism!! So youâre stuck in the middle, like I donât know where to go, and Iâve already said this, [laughs] the middle ground is Animal Crossing, because you get that like relaxed beautiful countryside, but youâre doing it through capitalism.
[Laughter]
CMR: yeah itâs difficult as well to see it from a 19th century working class perspective which obviously we are so divorced from now that we have to see it through the filters and the lenses that we bring to it, because everyone sees things through the lens of their own culture, whether you think you do or not, right, so itâs a really interesting exercise in just looking at a little bubble, a little bit, like a pocket of time.
And, and what I love about it as well, is that that quiet domestic drama that we havenât seen, but you start to fill in the gaps for yourself, because a lot of it is the silence and the things that she is not saying, and particularly in the dialogue when her friend comes to visit her, and itâs like Oh, where have you been and sheâs like Oh, you know Iâve been here, living my life. Except she hasnât been, because sheâs been stuck in the house on her own, her mumâs dead, and then I think thatâs when you get the sense that that space of grief and absence is the time when sheâs actually starting to realize how shitty her mother was to her.
When youâre going through it and living it and you donât have any other options but to stay in your situation, you canât go anywhere because thereâs nowhere to go and you have no means to go anywhere and everyone in the village in a community like that anchors you to that community, because theyâre the only people that you know, but also you feel like you have these senses of duty and responsibility to your mother. But that sense, as well, is imposed upon you by other people who think that you do [have a responsibility/duty], right.
[People] that youâve grown up with, and so you have to answer to everybody in that community based on your choices as well, and she obviously doesnât want to do that later on.
Not for any bad reason but itâs just sheâs like seems like a very introverted kind of character, who doesnât have that ability potentially to stand up for herself. And you kind of get the impression thatâs very much the motherâs fault.
But yeah, and this idea that sheâs wicked as the mother is constantly telling her that sheâs wicked and then at the end you get that realization of âyou always said I was wicked but it wasnât me it was youâ, and the only time she could have said that is when her mother is dead.
LR: I know itâs sad isnât it.
CMR: Yeah. Just crying here [laughs] like oh my God.
LR: Yeah. Itâs like justice but itâs not the justice she deserves. I think. And thatâs⊠which is what makes it horror, and itâs also what makes it true, right, like itâs so sad, and I think itâs â do you know, one of the things I always talk about this, but I think itâs so, so true and I think if we all just looked at this and acknowledged it, it would really change the way we think about how we express ourselves as humans.
I think, obviously, as a culture, as a society, as a civilization, weâve picked up bits and pieces of our history and weâve those are the bits that survived thatâs what we are now, and I think the bedrock of what weâre doing at the minute is extremely Victorian, which is why I call it a Gothic piece, even though itâs not got the big manor house and, like, the two orphaned children.
But I think thatâs why I call it a Gothic piece, because I think in terms of what itâs trying to say about us as humans now, like we are most directly linked to that time where Capitalism became everything, like mass production, science, medicine, industrialism, all of these new things that started changing the way we experience the world.
Things that kickstarted technology to a new level, things that opened the door to expression, conversation, like newspapers were selling more, books were selling more, people were experiencing new perspectives whether they liked those or disliked them, you know, and I think itâs that thing of expression, like now, when you put a parallel to that.
And you talked about like how quiet she was how she never said says what she thinks, and I think, you know, like especially like we didnât make that film in lockdown. That was a pre COVID film, it was written years before COVID and it is just by chance that, like, everything that we experience when it comes to human expression was just absolutely amplified during the COVID lockdowns. So like, when we look at how we communicate our lives, especially on things like social media, I know it sounds corny, but we never say what we really think.
I think, you know, when people are getting⊠even when people appear to be saying what they think when theyâre being reactionary on Twitter or getting triggered by an opinion and saying something because they just need to get the anger out, like I think theyâre not saying what they actually think because theyâre reacting to something thatâs triggering them and theyâre not talking about the trigger. Theyâre talking about why theyâre angry about the thing that theyâve been triggered by.
And likewise, on the other side of that spectrum weâve got like you know people who thrived in lockdown: Iâm doing this, Iâm doing this wellness masterclass, but really we were all struggling you know, and I think thatâs what Maudâs experiences is just that, like, a journey of learning to express herself, learning to get the words out, the real words, the ones sheâs actually thinking and not just what sheâs been told is acceptable to put out there and to let out of her mouth, and you know, I think that that really links to the Gothic because itâs all about you know repressed desire, whether that desire is for like a person or expression, you know.
CMR: Yeah definitely and I thinkâŠYeah thereâs so much, I mean that thereâs that kind of sense of Gothic isolation as well, like we talked a lot about that and also like the⊠I guess the fracturing of your identity and the rediscovery of your identity, which Maud kind of goes through on this really short journey, but itâs a very intense journey that we kind of go on with her and youâve got that sense of that really intense time of grief and coming to terms with, not just the death of her mother, but also grieving for potentially the person that she could have been.
LR: yeah.
CMR: Which sheâs only just coming to terms with, and thatâs also kind of like a haunting for Maud as well, that kind of the you know, that the spirit of the mother is what we decide is haunting her and then at the end is like the reveal of the you know the actual spirit itself that you see, just very kind of Woman in Black-esque which I love.
But you also get like this⊠I love the fact also that she was also in mourning dress, the mother and presumably you know her husbandâs dead and thatâs why itâs just her and her daughter but you get this dour woman who was sunk in her own grief and that has been haunting Maud also, like her motherâs emotional absence, you know, through her life.
But whatâs actually haunting Maud isnât just the mother.
Itâs a lot of things.
And so you get that kind of rejection and you know that that she tries to reject all of that and bind herself to something positive, and cast out that spirit, but itâs not easy to do and I keep coming back to The Babadook in my head because itâs something that you canât get away from.
LR: Yeah.
CMR: The babadook as a metaphor for grief, you can kind of lock it up somewhere in a room and look at it and kind of acknowledge itâs there and make sure that it doesnât hurt anyone else, and that you donât⊠you know, you donât lash out and you donât let it escape and damage or fracture relationships, and you do that by acknowledging its presence and dealing with it in a mature way, and by communicating with other people about it. Otherwise it gets in the way of your relationships. Which, for me, was what that film was about, in particular, between the mother and son [in The Babadook].
Here itâs Maud. Almost as if thereâs like a hint at the end that she doesnât succeed in that, because it almost overpowers her. So Iâm going to spoil it a bit, but I think these arenât spoilers, these are more like reasons for you to watch the film.
[Laughter]
I think if I could explain the whole film and then you wouldnât want to watch it, like, I donât understand you.
[Laughter]
So yeah. So thereâs a bit⊠so after sheâs sort of nailed her hand to the Bible, the nail then comes out of her hand, and it sort of levitates, and itâs almost like the iron is⊠itâs almost like a rejection of her or a rejection of what sheâs trying to do, that, that bond doesnât work.
And thatâs kind of like, oh is she a which you know, because that sign of cold iron not being compatible with the person of a witch or a fairy or something like that you know youâve got that kind of link to it, which I thought was really cool, but you also have the mother standing there, the motherâs ghost is in the frame behind her where she canât see it, but kind of looming over the proceedings, and youâve got this sense of like what exactly isâŠ[happening]?
Is the mother causing the rejection to happen, and is it the rejection this you know the physical rejection of the nail, but itâs that kind of⊠that [haunting/grief/trauma] isnât going to be healed by a ritual.
LR: yeah.
CMR: That whole thing is not going to be healed by a moment in time. Even, no matter how grounded you are to the place youâre in, no matter how well thought out that ritual is, no matter how desperate you are, that is a process that is going to take years and she is always going to be haunted by numerous layers of things that have come out as a result of her relationship with her mother, so, in a sense, her mother is always going to be there, whether her spirit is physically present or not.
And thatâs kind of the end of the film, it is very ambiguous and quite chilling, because you get that sense that itâs not â itâs not over, itâs not going to be over and that Maudâs haunting is kind of something sheâs going to have to live with â or not â and thatâs⊠thatâs the difficulty of living with grief isnât it, that for me that was very kind of relatable and very powerful and I really appreciated the whole tone of it, and I was like oh God yeah that was very upsetting as well, really upsetting to think about.
But I think thatâs like you say thereâs not a lot of space in a lot of kind of glitzy period dramas that are more about the romance and the upper classes, to look at working class tragedy, and you know, the ordinary people and those pockets of normal domestic drama, and how they deeply impact someone.
LR: For sure. I think more like more biggest tragedy is that itâs⊠You know, the ghost is never going to go, sheâs just going to learn how to live around it, and you did that thing, thatâs kind of how that grief and that trauma works, and I think another thing thatâs quite sad about these experiences, is that, like, you can look at something ugly, whether thatâs an experience or person and itâs really hard to accept that person as a complex human being with their own troubles, because I think one of the hardest things to admit, and itâs something you touched on, actually, is like, when you think about the motherâs character and how sheâs in mourning dress, sheâs lost her husband, sheâs got a lot going on in her mind, and I think one of the things that Maud can look at is the fact that, like it doesnât make it okay, and it doesnât make it acceptable what this woman has done to her, but like pain recycles into pain so often. Itâs horrible and I wish it didnât do that, but it does, it punches down and it punches down, and it keeps going, and keeps going, until someone strong enough to go, Nope, not anymore, and itâs so hard.
Whether Maud does that remains to be seen at the moment because I think itâs thatâs another journey. Just looking at it is the first step isnât it, and then dealing with it in in all its complexity, in everything that it carries with it thatâs like a whole other beast like itâs just so much.
But I think you know, like in terms of like the working class aspect like one of the things that just became so apparent to me when I was doing my family tree. So I grew up in Cumbria, but my family are all from Yorkshire and I realized, none of us really had left Yorkshire since the 1500s, thatâs what I discovered, and weâd always been in like areas like Sheffield and Huddersfield.
Well, I think whatâs so sad is when you look at some of the family trees on like all of these research websites, they have photographs, they have items, they have diary entries they have pieces of those people.
And I still think Iâm lucky, a lot of people donât have names, but I just have a list of names. I donât have church records, I have a couple of sentences that I found.
And I just think thatâs so awful that like, weâve deemed that some people are worthy of being remembered, some people are not, I just find that like horrifying and thatâs, you know, like, oh God.
CMR: yeah I taught a family history course a while back, and it was itâs really hard when youâve got like very limited things to go on.
And one of those things is the access, which people I think take for granted now and donât realize, but the accessibility of things like photographs.
You had to save up for those and maybe there was only one you know one shop in the town that was like three towns over so thatâs a whole day of it and you have to take that day off work and you canât take days off work because thatâs not how it works.
If youâre running a farm you canât just go off.
LR: yeah.
CMR: You know, never mind about the cows today, love, weâre having our photograph taken like.
LR: You canât just book in some holiday.
CMR: yeah so itâs like itâs a very⊠It becomes a very lower middle class â aspiring middle class â kind of thing, but a very middle class kind of thing to have a photograph taken.
But also at least in Wales, you had to pay for a church service but you didnât have to pay to have your relationship blessed on the church steps. So there was a lot of⊠so you wonât have parish records of those blessings for the relationship, because those relationships were not technically legally âmarriageâ.
LR: Wow.
CMR: So in Wales like I know somebody was doing his family tree, heâs retired and he was doing it as a thing you know, and he realized, he was the first legitimate child in about 200 years.
LR: Oh my gosh, thatâs insane.
CMR: And the reason was that it was just too expensive for people to get married so they would that they used to do a thing, where they would take take on the name, Mrs., the epithet and say that they were Mrs Jones. But they never legally changed it and they never legally had the marriage certificate to prove that. They just had, you know, they just moved in with their partner took on Mrs as an epithet and then had the children and the children will have the husbandâs name and everyone just worked around it as if they were married, and that thatâs a lot more common than people think. It was, you know, a lot more widespread, especially if you were poor. And thatâs why itâs really hard to find a lot of the records, but also just the accessibility of things like weddings, things like, you know, things that would leave that indelible mark.
LR: You know itâs honestly insane to me like I think itâs itâs just I think thatâs where a lot of load my characters come from even like I donât have any family called Maud, but I look at a name on a piece of paper, and all I have is letters, and Iâm like, who are you? What did you look like? Was your hair brown like mine, did you have the same sense of humour as me? Like, just trying to really untangle something that you have no information on, and I think itâs just thatâŠitâs just that thing of, like, there are so many humans on this planet, many like millions millions millions, and you know, and just trying to find a way to like honour every life, even if it was small, and I think⊠God what youâve said blown my mind.
CMR: Iâm not sure how prevalent it was in England or different parts of England, but um yeah thatâs certainly the case in a particular area of Wales anyway.
[Takes a breath to get back on track!]
CMR: I wanted to talk about the aesthetic of it as well because youâve got this it opens with that and see and see if it opens with her on her knees on the moors digging earth up. You use such a lot of muted colours and muted tones is that, like, was that a conscious decision from the standpoint of we want this to be Gothic and we want, we want it to look like this, or was that something organic or how did that kind of work out for you?
LR: And so I work super, super closely with my DP [Director of Photography], Lizzie Gilholme, she was amazing, I think sheâs the best cinematographer in the world, I might be a little bit biased, but I do I think sheâs incredible and so a lot of the time you give a script to a DP quite late on, but I literally from the conception of the very idea before itâs written down I WhatsApp Lizzie, and Iâm like âHey, Iâve got this idea, I want to know what you thinkâ.
So sheâs there from day dot and she, bless her, like she shouldnât have to, she reads so many drafts and she really does see a project folder from like you know, bare bones to like the fully fleshed form that it ends up in.
And, but me and Lizzie like we talked for a really long time about how we wanted this film to look we watched loads and loads of different movies that we really loved.
But I think the main, in terms of like creating an aesthetic, building a world, like our main thing was like we want this to feel like it felt for Maud so.
The muted colours and the sort of like the mauves and the browns and the muted greens, like those are all colours she would have experienced and those are the colours of her world.
And even down to like how much light we use so this film itâs very dark like extremely dark and youâve really got to watch whatâs going on, but itâs because they didnât have that much light. If you got up in the middle of the night youâd go to the embers of the fire, youâd light a single candle, and thatâs all you had to see in the house, especially if you didnât have gas lamps, so we really wanted to bring that sense of her world and her, her everyday experiences, in terms of what she saw what she felt.
Even the music, that was like⊠The woman I worked with was called Die Hexen who is an incredible Irish composer just has the most beautiful mind, and it was super important for me to go to find somebody who lived in a Celtic region, because obviously, Cornwall through Wales up through Ireland and then like at the top strip of England and Scotland, like those are the Celtic regions, and like I donât want that piece of that culture to be lost on the film, so itâs really important to me, to find somebody from those regions.
Die was, you know, luckily she was like I really like this project, and I want to work with you and I was like, amazing, and the first thing I said to her was, I wasnât super particular in terms of what I wanted. I didnât send her any music I liked I was just like, this is what you need to know about this film. And I said itâs about trauma and I really want that to be present in the score.
But, most importantly, one of the main sounds that you hear in Cumbria is the sound of the Helm Wind, which is a specific type of wind crafted by the shape of the valleys.
And itâs this really high pitch whistle, but it is so strong it can like literally pull the roofs off of houses, itâs just fierce. And I just said to her that I want that, like I want that sense of like, itâs, itâs flowing past you, and you just have to keep yourself standing up.
And, and I mean she came back with the most incredible score that Iâve ever heard in my life, and I literally think I heard one note, and that was it, and then we were done, and I donât â I donât think that happens.
But um, you know thereâs some â even in the quiet moments where like the score isnât central to the scene, you hear that whistle. And thatâs something thatâs all the way through, and it is just that sense of creating Maudâs world.
I love the Gothic, and folklore, and Iâm obviously influenced by those things, but it just so happens that they were central to Maudâs day-to-day existence, and thatâs why it came through in those creative choices, because she demanded it to be that way, and I couldnât say no.
CMR: I think it really works I love it, I think the music is so good, it really adds to the drama of it and also like itâs just got that right balance. Itâs creepy but itâs yeah and that whistle tone-!
LR: Itâs chilling.
CMR: Yeah, it is chilling yeah, it very much⊠yes, that sense of isolation and nature and just being buffeted and existing in this kind of world that she â because sheâs very much on the cusp of that industrial world in the mid 1800s but also sheâs embedded in the past as well, and like where you get that sense of the Standing Stones scene and the wild moors and that kind of thing, that sheâs trapped by the past of the landscape as much as by her own past, as much as by her familyâs history, and yeah I think that and the music just works so well with it and the colours and the, the, you know, just that sense of darkness.
LR: very dark very, very dark.
[Laughter]
CMR: I really loved it and I would recommend everyone watch it and Iâm gonna put the link in the transcript so everyone can see it, I might actually embed it in the blog post so everyone can watch it.
Do you have anything that you want to plug while youâre here or any other projects that youâve already made that you want to tell people about go for it.
LR: So Iâm currently in post production my next film, which is definitely more identifiably Gothic with the big house, the big spooky house, creepy hallways and Iâm really, really excited by it, itâs kind of honestly Iâve been working on this short film script for years so itâs really nice to see it actually exist and weâre really, really excited about it, where weâre on weâre really, really, I think weâre really close to picture lock it now, but my producer will slap me on the wrist for saying that.
Itâs looking so, so good, weâre so fucking proud of it and and everybody who worked on it just worked so hard so I just they are, they are the best. Thank you if youâre listening to this.
But other than that, weâre developing our feature film as well, which is very âŠ
CMR: [gasps and claps]
LR: I know and itâs somewhere between like She Lives Alone and, like the sort of more Gothic leaning âTasteâ, which is the film thatâs in post-production, so itâs kind of like a nice little lovechild between those two which Iâm really, really excited about and itâs also based off a local folklore called the Croglin Vampire.
CMR: Oh, my God.
LR: I know, Iâm really excited, so if anyoneâs listening, please manifest like crazy, so that we can make it.
CMR: Is there a kickstarter any kind of⊠can anyone contribute or?
LR: NoâŠ
CMR: Youâre doing it via grants and things right?
LR: Hopefully, yeah so. Weâve just finished a talent lab called Edinburgh Talent Lab Connects, which was a year long program with an amazing woman called Kate Leys, and also we got a mentor who was incredible.
And weâre hoping to move from treatment stage to draft stage next and itâs quite a slow process because with larger projects it just takes so much longer to really refine the story, but I think youâll really like it, I hope you like it.
[Laughter]
CMR: Iâm pretty sure that I will like it.
[Laughter]
LR: But other than that Iâm just vibing you know, and manifesting like hell.
CMR: I think thatâs enough though isnât it. Like pre production and then a feature film is a hell of a lot of work.
Yeah Iâm so happy Iâm so excited for that. I canât wait. So everyone watch the space. Go follow Lucy on Twitter.
LR: Please do, I post hilarious memes.
CMR: Yeah.
LR: Oh thank you so much for having me on, Iâve genuinely loved this conversation.
CMR: Feel free to come back anytime.
LR: Iâll be knocking on your door.
CMR: Obviously excited to watch the films that youâve got coming out. Just really, really thrilled for you, so yeah lots of manifestation.
CMR: And thatâs all weâve got time for, so thank you very much for listening and we will see you again next week bye now.
LR: Bye!
Listen to the interview #AuthorInterview #cumbrianFolklore #featured #gothicFilm #gothicHorror #historicalFiction #horrorPodcast #lucyRose #sheLivesAlone #WomenInHorror #workingClass
In Praise of Non-Anglocentric Frankensteins
The World Will Hunt You and Kill You For Who You Are
First off, letâs get this out there: I donât like Mary Shelleyâs Frankenstein. I get it, but I donât like it. Del Toro talks [positively] about the bookâs âfidgetey energyâ, like a teenager questioning âwhyâ to so many things, from capitalism to the meaning of life, and I think thatâs also what doesnât work for me, in the same way I canât get on with the frenetic energy of Sterneâs Tristram Shandy (which is basically ADHD: The Novel).
That said, I have two versions of it that I really, genuinely enjoy, and this post will contain spoilers for both: one is Guillermo Del Toroâs Frankenstein (2025), and the other is ĂaÄan Irmakâs Yaratılan/Creature (2023).
This will be a long post. I apologise for nothing.
They are both completely different, and focus on very different aspects of the novel and the themes within it. Neither is completely faithful, but both do really interesting things with the source material.
âI am more attracted to making movies about people that are full of villainy, because ultimately itâs a more real way of seeing the world.â â Guillermo Del Toro (quote from the documentary Frankenstein: The Anatomy Lesson 2025)
I really love both adaptations for the very different things they say and are in conversation with. While Del Toro is making a film focused (among other things) on the nature of villainy and monstrosity, Irmak is making a mini-series about (among other things) the redemptive nature of community and its power to engender and shape Selfhood, and the corrupting effects of isolation upon the soul, body, mind, and spirit.
I love both those things, and I find them both really compelling ways to tell the same story.
[One is also telling it within the confines of 2.5 hours, and the other is an 8-part mini-series, so they also have completely different formats and storytelling frames.]
Check out the trailers to get a feel of them side by side!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WZllcEgWrM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKl1QlR7P4U
Let me share some things I really love, comparing and contrasting the two versions.
CONTENTS
Naming (and Not Naming) the Characters
Framed Narrative Device
Victor/Ziya Comparison
Victor/The Creature vs Ziya/Ihsan
The Women
The Lab Setting
Religious Themes
Isolation & Redemption
Whatâs In A Name
Del Toroâs Victor & the Creature and Irmakâs Ziya & Ihsan are very different characters. Del Toro wanted to focus on the dialogue between fathers and sons, the isolation of those broken relationships and perpetuating abusive cycles. This is a story of rejection of a child, someone created from death then forced into monstrosity and to discover himself against this perception, because of the makerâs arrogance and hubris. Irmak wanted to tell a story of pushing the boundaries of science for the benefit of his family and community, the pain of losing members of that family and community, and the resurrecting of a parental figure (also rejected in horror) rather than the creation of an unwanted son. The themes are the same, but as it set in Ottoman Turkey, it has a distinctly Islamic cultural flavour, and is more grounded in communal relationships.
Even the names are meaningful: Victor, of course, has the meaning of the noun; the one who is victorious. In the end, he is defeated by his own arrogance and hubris, and broken down by the very victory over death he strived for. A victor is a singular person, often; many can run a race, but only one can win. Victor is a lonely, singular character â out in front of the scientific community, too far ahead to be fully appreciated or endorsed, and also too far gone to hear the words of warning and caution from behind him. Yes, he can achieve what he wants â he can triumph â but at what cost to himself, and others drawn into his orbit?
Del Toro plays with these themes with his Latin interpretation of Victor, whose passion cannot be stifled by cries of obscenity and blasphemy, and who does not understand why people, including his own brother, are frightened of him. Del Toro, I think, plays with the singularity of the victor as an image innate within the name of his protagonist, and the singularity of the monstrum, something strange and singular that gives warning or instruction of evil and the unnatural.
He embraces the original vision of Shelley in having Victor as the real monster, and this is the path he forges for his audience through Victorâs arc, and the explicit acknowledgement of his monstrosity in the dialogue with other characters like William and Elizabeth. Victor is âfull of villainyâ, and Del Toro enjoys playing with this on screen, and leading up to Victorâs suffering and death as his only means of redemption.
Having the Creature constantly repeat Victorâs name is not only to emphasise the bond of father/son between them, but serves as a statement of fact: Victor is indeed the victor, he has won, he has conquered death, and now there are no more horizons for him to chase. The Creature repeats his name as a statement of fact, of not just who Victor is, but what he is, and Victorâs horror and irritability stems not just from the fact that this is all his creation can say, but serves as a constant reminder that, now he has won, he doesnât like it.
The Creature does not name himself Adam in this adaptation, nor does he receive a name from anyone else; the only word he can initially say is âVictorâ, his creatorâs name, which he repeats in various emotional states, until Elizabeth teaches him to say âElizabethâ, also. The soft way the Creature pronounces this name drives Victor into a jealous frenzy and increases his disgust. Yet the Creature at no point confesses or professes romantic love for her â in these early scenes, he repeats the names as a child might say âfatherâ and âmotherâ.
As Del Toro emphasises the Creatureâs composite makeup throughout the film, and the question is asked, in which part lies the soul, the question of in which part lies the name is absent. The Creature is a being without a name, on purpose, because he has surpassed the singularity of his creator. It is also a way of showing the audience that names are not necessary â for Victor to name his creation would be an act of conquest, of colonisation, of ownership, but Victor does not do this because he does not want the responsibility that goes with it. He does not want to be associated with the âmonsterâ he has made, because it doesnât live up to his expectations, his ideals, and he has to reckon with the fact that he is its maker regardless.
To name something also means giving it and others a means to understand itself, and Victor withholds this, perhaps as another form of control. Yet in this, the Creature demonstrates that profound and mutual human connection is possible without names; he never learns the name of the old blind man, and yet his speech takes on the old manâs accent and patterns. They share a connection that does not require names or labels; it simply is, and it is understood through action and mutual respect and understanding. Similarly, the audience is invited into empathetic communion with the Creature through the perspective shift, just as in Shelleyâs novel, and they can connect with him through his story, without a need for a name. This absence does not even feel like an absence; it simply is, and ultimately, no name or label needs to be placed on the Creature by others or by himself in order to come to an understanding of his own nature, and his self acceptance. He is known, and that is enough.
In Irmakâs adaptation, names are also important.
Ziya is a unisex Turkish name that means âlightâ, which reflects the characterâs desire for enlightenment, fulfils part of a prophecy about the resurrection ritual required to get the machine to work, and also creates a sense of contrast to his inner darkness and character development journey. This signals that the story is not about a victor, a winner, but about a man whose passionate pursuit of knowledge and scientific boundary pushing for the sake of his community as much as for himself, leads him to some dark places.
Ziya begins by confronting three major medical horrors: first, finding out his motherâs friend, whom he has known from childhood, has leprosy. His immediate instinct is to touch her, and he is frustrated by the stigma and ostracisation she is experiencing, and the lack of effective treatment for her condition. Secondly, the pain that Ayise feels at the death of her mother in a contagion, and the fact that he cannot bring her mother back, has a profound effect on him. Thirdly, the horror of a cholera epidemic which takes his mother, and during which he personally works with his father, Dr Muzaffer (with whom he has a loving, if occasionally fiery, relationship) to provide limited medical assistance to the town.
Ziya goes to train in Istanbul, only to find that the academy has narrow views, and does not want students to go beyond the limits of currently understood medicine, which Ziya argues is anti-Islamic. He is thrown out for challenging his tutor, but Ihsan blackmails the principle into letting Ziya resume his studies. It turns out that the professorâs reluctance to allow students to investigate anything stems from his own insecurities at having a forged diploma, rather from any actual religious conservatism, which he hides behind. Ziya sheds light on the academy, but also on Ihsan, whom he first encounters at night. Ihsan is presented at first as the shadow-side of Ziya, but as the series progresses, it is clear it is also the other way around. Ziya tricks Ihsan into working alongside him, and even drugs Ihsan to get to the bottom of his secret machine. When it all goes wrong, it is Ihsan who pays the price, and Ziya resurrects him out of guilt and desperation, but then tries to hide what he has done by burning down the lab. He doesnât try to burn Ihsan with it, but instead dresses him up as a leprosy sufferer and abandons him on the roadside. But hidden things keep coming to light, whether Ziya wants them to or not, and the consequences of his actions pursue him relentlessly, no matter how he tries to escape them.
Ihsan has a whole wealth of meaning, from simply âkindnessâ, to the deeply Islamic principle of showing your faith in actions, beautifying, or to do beautiful things. Ihsan helps people on the margins of society, and has a conscience about using dead bodies in his experiments â he covers himself from shame, but Ziya is more brazen and less concerned with morality. Ihsan extends to using a dead boar (pigs are haram), and drinks alcohol to excess, but he has lines which Ziya encourages him to cross. The result is his own horrible death, and resurrection, whereafter he is constantly referred to as a ghoul. Even so, he shows kindness and compassion to people he comes across, and seeks to protect other powerless people whom society has rejected, like him. In this way, he still lives up to his name, and ironically more so after his unnatural rebirth than when he was alive.
Ihsan and Ziyaâs perversion of the natural order and use of forbidden texts pervert their very names and natures, but the narrative allows for them to return to those meanings, and explore (especially for Ihsan), how one can still enact kind and beautifying deeds as part of his social responsibility, even when he has been rejected by society and does not know how he fits into it anymore.
After a while, he re-names himself Ihsan, once his memory patchily returns, but he no longer knows who Ihsan was, or what that name means to anyone who might have known him. He has to find a new way to be Ihsan, and find a way back into himself, as well as a new way to understand his current existence. This forms Ihsanâs character arc, one rooted in Turkish drama as much as it is in Shelleyâs novel. The result is that every episode is a banger, but Irmak manages to avoid a lot of the usual Diziler cliches, while making Frankenstein fit into a Turkish mould to be enjoyed by audiences used to certain formulae and conventions.
BACK
The Framed Narrative: Preface
Del Toroâs story begins in the Arctic, reset to 1857, but focused on a Danish expedition to the North Pole. There wasnât really a Danish expedition at this time, there was a British one which aimed to find Franklinâs lost expedition, and the opening of Del Toroâs movie definitely gave me The Terror vibes. The framed narrative goes from here, and I really liked the opening being in Danish, rather than English, as that located it for me as a much less Anglocentric Frankenstein and set the tone.
Irmakâs story is prefaced with Captain Ămerâs narration, and he asks why are people so afraid of ghouls? It is because they are afraid the ghoul will start talking, and they will learn there is nothing after death. It is set on the snowy mountains in northwestern Turkey, and the city of Bursa which lies in the foothills. In the mountains is rumoured to be the treasure of a long-dead Byzantine prince, and so the mountains are frequented by treasure hunters who often lose limbs to frostbite. One such party, led by Captain Ămer, discovers an unconscious man in the snow, who seems to have been carried there by a mysterious figure. Thus sets off the framed narrative, initially shot as backstory.
Both these framed narratives have the same function as the book â the tale is told to men obsessed with their own horizons, their own chasing after legends and making something of themselves, and the tales serve as a warning against their overreaching, dangerous ambitions. Except, of course, Victorâs tale is told only to the Captain of the ship, but Ziyaâs tale is told at first just to Captain Ămer, but then to the whole group, and is a warning not to one man, but a warning that benefits all the hearers of the same story. Even in this, we have the contrast of the singular and individual versus the community and society.
BACK
Victor & Ziya
Victor saws into a limb â Frankenstein (2025)Victor is scarred by his motherâs death as a young boy. She dies giving birth to William, his little brother, whose appearance favours their father, and makes him the favourite child. I can see the Latin American racial layers coming into play here, superimposed on the European aristocracy, and I really liked that dimension. I really enjoy the passionate Victor, much more than the cold, aloof, Germanic version who whines and complains a lot.
Ziya, on the other hand, is a grown man training under his father to be a doctor. He was deeply moved as a child by Asiyeâs pain after she loses her mother, but his own loss comes when a cholera outbreak takes not only a large number of people in the village, but his own mother, too. Ziya is arrogant and hot-headed, but he has a close and loving (if tempestuous) relationship with his father. It is not the desire to supercede him that drives Ziya, but the determination to overcome death.
BACK
Victor & the Creature / Ziya & Ihsan
Victorâs relationship with the Creature is that of a bad father, procreating without woman, and not understanding either his creation, or how to have a relationship with him once he is made. This is the source of Victorâs horror and disgust â he has made something he doesnât understand and cannot control, cannot unplug, cannot contain. Victor drinks milk, not alcohol, arrested at the point of his childhood and claiming an innocence he no longer has. He is searching for the secret to life to break the last barrier of science, for his own hubristic ideals, but he has no plans beyond this initial goal, which becomes all-consuming. When he does finally succeed, he immediately chains his creation to continue his control over it. He is encouraged in this endeavour by Harlander, a man riddled with syphilis, wanting to preserve his own mind in the new body of a new man.
Harlander reminded me strongly of both Basil and Henry in The Picture of Dorian Grey, and Del Toro himself described him as both antagonist and sympathetic. Yet he is not a corrupting influence â Victor is doing that all by himself. He also exceeds his own fatherâs cruelties, and the whole film is very much grounded in that central premise of broken father/son relationships.
Ihsan hooking up a body to the machine â already looking like a cross between the Igor characters of some versions, and the Creature himself.Ziyaâs relationship with Ihsan is very different â from the first moment they meet in Istanbul, there is a sense of both attraction and repulsion. Ziya is afraid of Ihsanâs strange behaviour at the University, and then Ihsan begins leaving him notes to let him know that he saw him spying. He behaves the way Shelleyâs Creature does to Victor at the end of the novel, mirroring this relationship, and foreshadowing what is to come.
The horror here comes from resurrecting Ihsan as a deformed, blank slate â no longer Ihsan as Victor knew him in life, but something else, a ghoul, that cannot communicate in the same ways. When the newly resurrected Ihsan says âbaba?â at the marketplace, it reinforces the horror at that relationship being reversed, and now being unfamiliar and fundamentally broken. That is not something that the embittered, lonely cynic with a secret heart of gold would ever say.
Ihsan and Ziya are reflections of each other, mirrored images, dark and light, death and life.Ihsan in life is already Othered â a disgraced ex-faculty member of the medical school, a drunk with aural hallucinations, acting erratically. Ihsan is both Creature and Harlander, the instigator of Ziyaâs resurrection discoveries, and the resurrected who pays the price for his own ambitions as much as for Ziyaâs.
In fact, Ihsan is in the parental or mentoring role, specifically asked by Ziyaâs father to keep an eye on him. They are, from the outset, mirrors of one another, presented explicitly throughout as two parts of one whole, two sides of the same coin, life and death, Self and Other, monster and man. This is not a story about bad fathers and damaged sons, itâs a story about all the facets of a person, and how community is essential in shaping them and guiding them back to a sense of themselves.
Ihsan is already a recluse conducting haram experiments, despite having a kind and caring heart, and persuading himself he is doing questionable things for the right reasons. The lady with leprosy, living in a colony of fellow sufferers, kills herself after learning of Ziyaâs motherâs death from Ayise, and reportedly falling into a depression (off-screen). Ayise learns about the degrading and detrimental impact that being cut off from mainstream society with a stigmatised disease can have, while Ihsanâs ostracism has left him lonely, bitter, and falling into heresy. Ziya doesnât see this â he leans into it, and cuts himself off from the world with Ihsan in order to pursue their dangerous goals.
BACK
The Women
Then there is Elizabeth and Asiye. Again, two very different characters, playing very different roles within the same story. Also bear in mind that Del Toroâs story is a deeply Gothic piece, while Irmakâs pays homage to the European Gothic elements of the story, but is more rooted in Turkish drama traditions.
I loved Mia Gothâs portrayals of both Elizabeth and Clara Frankenstein, I loved the costuming and the colours, the relationships she had with William, Victor, and the Creature. I also appreciated that she wasnât murdered by the Creature, as she is in the novel, to hurt Victor. Elizabeth Lavenza is the adopted sister and wife of Victor in the novel, following the pseudo-incestuous Gothic trope, but sheâs also a mother-figure for him, and that is brought out in Del Toroâs version as sister-in-law with spurned romantic tension, and the fact Mia Goth literally plays Victorâs mother, so the fact that both he and William are subconsciously drawn to Elizabeth adds another pseudo-incestuous dimension by visual associations. I really enjoyed all those layers.
Elizabeth and Victor bonding over the beauty in death â Frankenstein (2025)I love that Elizabeth turns Victor down to marry his brother in this version, and that Ayiseâs rejection of Ziya prompts the start of his redemption, where he pledges to do better, and give up his obsessions, arrogance, and pretensions, and live a simpler life. At this moment, a plate smashes, an omen that a crisis has been averted. Victor has no such redemptive moment â he ends up shooting Elizabeth and blaming the Creature. His crisis is not averted, but his moment of forgiveness comes on his deathbed. Unlike Ziya, Del Toroâs Victor is not afforded a chance to redeem himself, but only given the opportunity to suffer on the ice as hunter becomes hunted, and creation masters the creator. Elizabeth is not his redemption or his conscience, sheâs a character given her own personality and space on screen, and sheâs really well played.
It is very deliberate that the only women in this adaptation are Victorâs mother and love interest, and they are played by the same actress. This really reinforces a lot of the character notes and themes of the film, and again, I loved Mia Goth in this so much.
The women in Irmakâs adaptation are many and varied. There is Ziyaâs mother and his grandmother, both of whom are great characters, and the neighbour with leprosy, who plays a part in both Ziyaâs arc and in Ayiseâs. There are the women in the circus where Ihsan finds a temporary family and home. There is Esma and the old lady in the village where Ihsan flees after the circus, and there is Ayise herself, the main female character and Ziyaâs bride-to-be.
I could talk about all of them in detail, but Iâll focus on two of them, to match the two female characters in Del Toroâs version. Rather than it being Ayise and Ziyaâs mother GĂŒlfem, I will talk about Ayise and Esma.
Ayise and Ziya after the death of Ziyaâs motherAyise is raised with Ziya after her mother dies, and Ayiseâs father declares that there is nothing for her in the village, where many others have also died. She and Ziya fall in love, and Ziyaâs mother gives them her blessing on her deathbed. I donât personally believe Del Toroâs Frankenstein should pass the Bechdel test, which is something Iâve seen Internet Discourse about (because it doesnât), but this adaptation does â Ayise shows herself to be a good-hearted, independent, and community-spirited woman, who continues to comfort and visit a family friend with leprosy, just as Ziyaâs mother did. Ayise is the peace-keeper in the home not by capitulating or being quiet, but by shouting at Ziya when heâs wrong and making him apologise to his father when that is warranted. She is not his mother, but his partner, with a life of her own while he is in Istanbul, and I really loved that for her. She has her own lessons to learn about love and suffering, her privilege, and her place in the community and the world, apart from Ziya.
Esma is Ihanâs love interest â it takes him until he resurrects to have one of those, so arguably he only really comes to know a family and experience love after his short sojurn in Hell. Esma is the equivalent of the young girl (Safie) who lives with her blind grandfather in the book, who isnât given space in Del Toroâs version. In this one, Esma is pregnant â her fiancĂ© raped her, then refused to accept the child was his, and she ran away. She is in hiding with an old lady who took her in, and now Ihsan is offered the life of a father with a wife and child, but this is snatched from him when the baby is born, and Esma is murdered in an honour killing. The baby is given up for adoption, and Ihsan is once more without a family, but he wants Ziya to resurrect Esma for him so she can be his companion and bride. He decides against this at the end, to not condemn her to the life he is living.
BACK
The Lab
In Del Toroâs Frankenstein, the lab itself is an absolutely amazing set piece, with so many visual homages and great details. The colours are in dialogue with the costumes, the lighting works with everything, and itâs genuinely an amazing feat of set design. Itâs very much a phallic feat of engineering, the kind of thing a certain type of man builds to compensate for the size of his estate⊠The storm is the catalyst, but so is the death of Harlander. There is a crucified Creature waiting rebirth, and there is beauty in the monstrous make-up. There is also the implication that the first thing the Creature must do is get himself off his cross (albeit one laid on the floor), and this is the opposite of Christâs resurrection; even his birth is a blasphemy, and this is Victorâs fault, not his own.
Corpse parts are everywhere. When the Creature is born, Frankensteinâs first instinct is to chain him up and leave him below the lab in the tower, frustrated with the slowness of his intellectual progress. He threatens and abuses the Creature for being afraid, and for only being able to say âVictorâ, the way an infantâs first word might be âDadaâ.
The lab explodes with amazing pyrotechnics, and we see how Victor escapes first, then the Creature in the Creatureâs point of view section of the film.
In Irmakâs version, the lab is within Ihsanâs house, a hidden secret, and this makes everything more contained and dramatic. It is in the woods outside Istanbul; lonely, unassuming, just like Ihsan himself. However â it is Ziya himself who gives life to Ihsan, not just via the machine and galvinism, but because he fulfils the prophetic conditions of the Book of Resurrection and understands it is his own blood, from his palms (on which, his grandmother told him, are engraved the 99 names of Allah), and he is willing to bleed and sacrifice himself to regain Ihsan. He initially took blood from an ethnic minority community in exchange for money, the same ones he defended against racism from a guard, but it is his own blood that is required.
There is no beauty in the horribly burned corpse of Ihsan â and when he rises, he is a blank slate, and bears no resemblance to the man Ziya loved. Ziya begs the resurrected Ihsan to speak to him, to give him some sign that Ihsan is still there, that he remembers who he was before he died. Ziyaâs horror and rejection of Ihsan comes from his belief that Ihsan has come back wrong and empty. Ihsan is no longer a Professor, but needs to be toilet-trained and washed like a baby. His fear of fire leads him to nearly strangle Ziya, who chains him to his divan, horrified and not knowing what to do. Ziya recruits his friend Yunus to help him burn the lab down and get Ihsan out, planning to abandon him like an unwanted dog.
In both cases, there is a deep sense of fear and horror and profound disappointment in their creation, but for very different reasons. Frankenstein is appalled that he has begotten someone who cannot match his measure of intelligence, but also lacks the patience to teach him properly. He is horrified at the monster he has made, seeing only the unnaturalness of him, the imperfections; yet he intervenes in the market when Ihsan follows him there, and prevents the people from attacking Ihsan and hurting him. Ziya cannot do more than this, however â he runs away and abandons Ihsan again, and Ihsan stands there, confused and bereft, saying, âBaba?â (âDad?â in Turkish). This is not the relationship that they ever had, and itâs not something Ihsan would ever say. In fact, he had a bad relationship with his own father, who rejected him, and now he is going through this abandonment again in his afterlife. Ihsan is about to be rejected and ostracised all over again, just as he was in life, but without the tools to deal with it, or the understanding of himself to cope.
Ziya is devastated at the loss of Ihan, but also wants to cover his tracks. He is afraid that Ihsan had been returned from Hell, and this was the reason for his fear of fire, his total amnesia, and his regression. He doesnât want to be responsible, and so he abandons Ihsan on the road disguised as a leprosy sufferer, selfishly demands forgiveness, then runs away and leaves him there.
BACK
Religious Themes
I really like the religious questions and intertextual elements of (book) Frankenstein, and how this is echoed in Del Toroâs version with questions of the soul, forgiveness, and the final moment of embracing the sun â the moment that appears at the end of Cronos and Pinocchio, a favourite image for Del Toro that encapsulates his ethos. Itâs the antithesis of Shelleyâs ending, where the Creature walks out into the darkness, and yet it provides that ending, and imagines beyond it, to the sunrise of a new moment, a new beginning, a new man. Not only new, but accepted and seen, wholly and completely, and loved for who he is. This is contrasted with the monstrosity of Victor, condemned for playing God, and in whom a God who rejects and abandons His creations is held up as monstrous. Victor is criticised as being obscene and blasphemous â all of which he turns on his creation, who says, âTo you I am obscene â to me, I am simply myselfâ (paraphrased).
In the book, of course, the ending is not as explicitly hopeful and optimistic, but in the book, the Creature murdered Elizabeth and has become âan instrument of evilâ. Walton discovers the Creature mourning Victor. The Creature walks off into darkness to die, trying to reclaim his sense of self in the process. I prefer the adaptations that end on a note of hope, or those which really dive into the tragedy of the human existence and the central relationship.
In Irmakâs version, Ziya uses the teachings of the Prophet (pbuh) and the Quâran to justify pushing the boundaries of science, and is spurred to find cures for everything from his experiences in Bursa. His communityâs cholera epidemic, seeing Ayiseâs pain at her motherâs death, and seeing his motherâs friend with leprosy, all spur him onwards, but the crucial thing is finding a picture book in his fatherâs study disguised as âStories for Childrenâ, but actually relating the tale of the âBook of Resurrectionâ, a forbidden and lost tome. Ziya memorises the book even though his father punishes him for having taken a key and getting it out of its locked hiding place, and here we get some Necronomicon vibes/references, with alchemy. Ihsan, meanwhile, has been desperately seeking this book to push forwards with his own experiments (decidedly not halal, as his machine uses wild boar). Yet Ihsan tries to persuade Ziya and himself he only wants to use the machine to revive diseased and damaged organs, and cure bad diseases, not to raise the dead. It is Ziya who whole-heartedly sets out with the resurrection goal from the start, and shows Ihsan that he is lying to himself. This sets the experiments up as haram, and mirrors book Victor using animal bones and parts from the abbatoir in order to make his Creature, as well as human parts.
Neither Del Toro nor Irmak use the pick ânâ mix approach with their Creature, but I think this is Irmakâs reference to it, as well as using this to really underline the obscenities of the experiments for the audience. This is contrasted with Ziyaâs enthusiasm â he doesnât condemn Ihsan, but instead acts as a living version of the forbidden book, as the pictures and captions now exist in his head. It is fitting, then, that Ihsanâs accidental and tragic death makes him the prime subject for the machine, and turns him from Professor to Creature. The questions here centre also on the soul, but from the perspective of folklore and Islamic teaching; what is Ihsan now he is resurrected? Is he a ghoul? Do ghouls have souls? Can they be redeemed like living humans?
The machine in Irmakâs version is described as a sentient thing â mocking Ziya, looking at him. Ziya tells Cpt. Ămer that it was then he felt Shaitan beside him; this is the first time this pursuit has explicitly been aligned with the demonic, and it is by Ziya himself, who has now grown enough to recognise this.
BACK
Isolation & Redemption
What I love about Del Toroâs version is that every character is part of a self-contained Gothic world, where their very clothes are in dialogue with each other, with the sets, and with the story â but they are still all seeking some kind of human connection, with varying results. The Creature learns some very bleak lessons â everyone he cares for is taken from him, both the old blind man and Elizabeth, and his âfatherâ abandons him and rejects him. He learns self-acceptance at a terrible cost. This version of the Creature has no animal comforter, but kills wolves and comes to understand his place in the food chain and the dispassionate nature of the natural order: âThe world will hunt you and kill you for who you are.â Yet, at the end of the film, he comes to an optimistic moment of embracing the sunrise, and stepping into the light. This is an important moment, but he does so on his own â this is a film about self-acceptance and self-discovery, about breaking generational cycles, and stepping into oneâs own future, unshackled by the past. I like this, but for me, these types of stories lack the added dimensions of community.
What I love about Irmakâs version is that every single character has at least one friend, even if they are not part of wider society. They all have a hook to bring them back into community, if they can bring themselves to use it. Ihsan is so close to being restored to his living community when his only friend Hamdi lets him rest at his restaurant, but doesnât recognise him, and Ihsan cannot communicate at that time, nor can he fully recall who Hamdi is. Ihsanâs living choices led him to reject society, and the family and care that Hamdi represents, and now after his rebirth, he is not able to reclaim what he rejected. Yet he is nevertheless provided with other companions and people who encourage him to find his own truth, his own sense of self, even as that is measured once more in loss and suffering. Even so, while human (and animal) connection is not necessarily sought after, it is given freely. People can be bad, but they can also be good; they can be cruel, but they can also be loving and generous. People are always simply people. Ihsan relearns all these lessons, and relearns his own compassion in the process, but at the cost of deep suffering. Yet, there is always the hope and the desire for community, for connection, for love, and that is what resonates with me so deeply about this whole piece. I love how Ziya deteriorates in the process of his flight, until he and Ihsan remain reflections of each other. I love how they get back together after a great struggle, and are only whole when they are reconciled. Only then are they free to go their own ways.
I think what sums up both adaptations is the idea that if you stop searching, stop seeking, stop striving, for something better than you have, there is no hope left. And the message of both versions is to ultimately embrace that hope, whether that comes from self-acceptance and understanding, or if it comes from religious redemption, or if comes from a return to community and a hope for closer connections. And whatever that is, that really resonates with me, too.
BACK
I think Iâm going to leave this comparison alone for now, as this is already far too long, but if you have made it to the end, thank you for sticking with me.
I have so much more I could say â but perhaps another time.
In the meantime, I would highly recommend the two adaptations.
Like This? Try These:
#gothicBooks #gothicFiction #gothicFilm #gothicHorror #longread
âGothic Cinema: Towards a Definitionâ is today (online and free)! I have thoroughly enjoyed and gained a great deal from the talks in the Virtual Winter Lecture Series from the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. #GothicStudies #HorrorStudies #horror #gothic #GothicFilm #GothicCinema #Film #Cinema
Https://www.eventbrite.com/o/research-amp-knowledge-exchange-arts-amp-humanities-4168900447
The theme song from classic horror movie #Suspiria (1977)
One of my favorites written by the progressive rock band Goblin, known for their collaborations with Dario Argento.
The theme is haunting and ominous yet super catchy and whenever I hear it I'm overwhelmed by the impulse to chant along out loud with it like some demented child who was dropped on his head one too many times.
#supernatural horror #gothicfilm #ItalianCinema #Suspiria #DarioArgento #Goblin
*click download to listen*
French Cinema & Subtitles
cmrosens
popgeeks.com
Dr. Amy H. Sturgis đ
Pretty Gnostic Machine