Horror Favourites – Lawrence Fowler

A killer clown is on the rampage in knockout chiller THE JACK IN THE BOX: AWAKENING, and we got a chance to grill the director Lawrence Fowler on his favorite horror film.

Move over Pennywise – creepy clown The Jack’s back, and this time he’s here to slay – in the sequel to the 2019 horror favourite The Jack in the Box. This time round The Jack makes a dreadful deal with a dying woman to ensure he gets his six victims.

Written and directed by Lawrence Fowler, the creator of the original film, that Geek Legion of Doom said gave “Annabelle a run for her money”, it stars Matt McClure (Penny Dreadful), Nicola Wright (Devil Djinn), and James Swanton (Host, The Banishing) as The Jack.

Mixing elements of Hellraiser and Killjoy with The Conjuring universe, and featuring outstanding creature design, shocks a-plenty and some fantastically spooky locations, this a cracking standalone sequel in what promises to be a long-running and popular horror franchise.

Terminally ill heiress Olga Marsdale acquires a mysterious gothic box containing a captured demon – Jack. The powerful entity within makes a deadly deal with Olga and her devoted son Edgar – deliver six victims to Jack and Olga will live. They trap several unsuspecting victims for him within the vast crumbling mansion – but can they deliver all six before it’s too late? Or will Amy, the young and innocent woman recently hired to look after the estate turn out to be more than a match for both the family… and The Jack?

Below THE JACK IN THE BOX: AWAKENING director Lawrence Fowler talks horror:

“My favourite horror film is The Shining, I feel this is a film that needs no introduction. I was a fairly late-comer to the world of horror, only truly getting into the genre in my mid teens. My preconceptions of horror were that they were almost all outlandish stories about monsters, vampires and werewolves. How wrong was I?

The Shining proves people can be the most terrifying of all. Set in the mountains, in a giant hotel in the middle of nowhere, the sense of isolation and cabin fever runs deep. We feel Jack Torrance’s slow descent into madness, each new day comes with its own caption, feeling like we, the viewer are also counting down the days until the family can return to their home and normality. But will they ever make it back?!

If you haven’t seen this Kubrickian 1980 classic, why are you still reading my ramblings?! Watch it, as soon as you can! If you are an aspiring Writer / Director as I was when I first watched it, there are few better examples of the power of the moving camera (The first major film to implement a Steadicam I believe), how a horror film doesn’t have to be an assembly of unlimited jump scares to be effective, and how music, set design and performances can all work together to create a film that is relentlessly creepy and foreboding.

I have certainly tried to apply these lessons to my own work. With my latest project ‘The Jack in the Box: Awakening’, we too situate our characters in an isolated mansion in the middle of nowhere. Despite the titular Demon Jack earning most of the attention and I assume the main reason people choose to watch the film, like The Shining perhaps the scariest characters in the film are human, in our case they use the immeasurable power of the demon to their own gain. How do they do that you ask? Well you will have to watch and find out for yourself…”

Spine-tingling horror sequel THE JACK IN THE BOX: AWAKENING is out now.