Cornish Folk Horror Starring ‘The Witcher’ Breakout Emma Appleton Wraps Production, First Look Revealed
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EXCLUSIVE: Emma Appleton (The Witcher, Everything I Know About Love) is among the cast leading a currently untitled indie British folk horror from debut feature filmmaker Dean Puckett, which has just wrapped production on the southwest coast of England.
Appleton leads the cast, which is rounded out by Jodhi May, Lewis Gribben, Barney Harris, Oliver Maltman, James Swanton, and Toby Stephens. The film is produced by Rebecca Wolff of Grasp the Nettle Films and Jude Goldrei of Lunar Lander Films. Logline reads: When Magpie’s husband dies in mysterious circumstances, a brutal witch-hunt threatens to tear apart an isolated religious community.
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Production took place on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, an expansive rocky moorland. The Cornish region has a long and rich history of horror filmmaking. Alfred Hitchcock’s second du Maurier adaptation Rebecca is set in Cornwall, and more recently, the region’s distinct landscape feature heavily in the work of Mark Jenkin’s cult duo Bait and Enys Men.
Executive Producers on the pic are Piers Holdsworth Hunt, Kate Byers, Linn Waite, Malik Ali, Badie Ali, Hamza Ali, Evan Leighton-Davis, and Rupert Hanbury-Tenison. Co-Producers are Daria Nitsche and James Brant, with Ella Turner as Associate Producer.
The project was developed as part of the BFI, BBC Films, and Creative UK’s iFeatures program, which has developed successful indie pics such as Lady Macbeth and Apostasy. Support was provided by Cultivator Cornwall’s Screen Growth Production Fund, Falmouth University, OnSight, HH5, Heatseeker Media ELD, James Brant, and Primary Visual Effects.
The film will mark the feature debut of Puckett, who is based in Devon, southwest England. After a decade of working in documentaries, Puckett transitioned to fiction filmmaker with three Creative England and BFI-funded Horror-based shorts. His folk-horror pic The Sermon premiered at BFI Flare, while Satan’s Bite played Cannes. He is also a lecturer at the UK’s Falmouth University.
MPI Media are handling sales on the pic. Check out the first look pic featuring Emma Appleton above.
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