Into the Woods with ‘Binding Eva’ Director Conscian Morgan and Star Ryan Gerrard

There are already plenty of reasons not to follow a kidnapper deep into the woods, but Binding Eva adds another particularly compelling one: sometimes the forest itself has plans of its own.

Screening as part of FrightFest’s First Blood strand, Binding Eva comes from director and co-writer Conscian Morgan, whose psychological horror follows the morally questionable Felix after a botched deal leads him to take a mother and child hostage. His attempted escape takes the trio deep into the Forest of Dean, where their situation begins to change in increasingly disturbing ways.

“It follows an immoral character. And he has taken a mother and child hostage, which is not a good thing,” Morgan told Love Horror when we caught up with him at FrightFest. “And then he takes them through the forest, a forest, to try and get to where he needs. But the forest has other plans, and I think I’ll leave it at that.”

That forest was more than simply a backdrop. Morgan wanted the location to function almost as another character, contrasting its daytime beauty with something considerably less welcoming after dark.

“The Forest of Dean is beautiful during the day. Although it’s got pine trees but at night it’s absolutely terrifying,” he explained. “So I think I was able to kind of bring both the beauty and the fear of it.”

Actually making the film there proved almost as punishing as the events unfolding on screen. Cast and crew trekked for up to an hour carrying equipment to reach some locations, while Morgan found himself constantly “chasing the cloud” to maintain the film’s gloomy visual atmosphere. At one point, the director even spent hours physically digging a hole required for a scene.

For actor Ryan Gerrard, who plays Felix, the experience involved spending much of an eight or nine-week production outside, shooting both day and night. He admits he hasn’t exactly been rushing back into the woods since.

“I’ve not really been in a forest since we wrapped, which was about a year and a half ago,” he joked. “So maybe that tells you something about that.”

More interestingly, Gerard is reluctant to simply label Felix the film’s villain.

“Felix is a very complicated, layered character. I would not say that he’s the villain of the piece,” he explained. “It’s certainly not. The hero of the piece is kind of in between. It’s quite ambiguous.”

That ambiguity is just one element the pair discuss in our full FrightFest interview, alongside working with young actress Darcey Wood, Gerard’s collaboration with Catherine Deevy, improvisation on set and the practical realities of dragging a horror production deep into an unforgiving forest.

Watch our full interview with Conscian Morgan and Ryan Gerrard below to discover more about the making of Binding Eva, the challenges lurking behind the camera and what happened when this ambitious independent horror headed deep into the woods.

Into the Woods – Binding Eva interview