Black Sunday Confessions – William Brooke from ‘The Alice Paradox’

What happens when science opens a door to another reality, only for you to discover that the world on the other side is far more terrifying than your own? That’s the unsettling idea behind The Alice Paradox, the ambitious debut feature from writer-director William Brooke, which screens today, Saturday 24th October, as part of the Black Sunday Film Festival‘s special Halloween event.

Blending science fiction, psychological horror and dystopian noir, The Alice Paradox follows two physicists who create a wormhole capable of transporting them 15 minutes into the past. However, when Alice makes the journey, she finds herself trapped in an alternate reality where history has taken a very different path. In this strange world, shaped by the ideological divisions of the Cold War, individuality has given way to collectivism, and Alice must navigate a society that challenges everything she understands about identity, freedom and existence.

Starring Jessica Kinsey and Gwithian Evans, alongside Madeline Smith and Jeffery Kissoon, the film draws upon genuine theories of quantum mechanics to explore some of the biggest questions imaginable. For Brooke, a former physicist who turned to filmmaking to communicate the wonder and uncertainty of modern science, the project is an opportunity to make complex scientific ideas both accessible and deeply unsettling. Drawing inspiration from classic film noir, dystopian literature and the work of filmmakers such as Orson Welles and Ridley Scott, The Alice Paradox promises a journey into a world where reality itself can no longer be trusted.

As Black Sunday celebrates its Halloween special, we caught up with William Brooke for our latest Five Black Sunday Confessions, discussing the scientific discoveries that inspired his filmmaking career, the cinematic nightmares that shaped his imagination, and why losing our understanding of reality might be the most frightening prospect of all.

William Brooke, director of the Alice Paradox

1. Tell us about your film and what brings you to the Black Sunday Film Festival.

The Alice Paradox is my debut feature, based on a famous quantum mechanics thought experiment, which is the starting point for the plot which turns into a nightmare. Alice travels back in time, but instead of landing in her own past, she ends up in an alternate version of it: a world that values the collective over the individual. I was a physicist before I made films, so the science is real, and it is one of my favourite thought experiments, with mind-bending implications for the nature of the universe. With the amazing team we had we could communicate this experiment to a broad audience and then explore the consequences of it for what the world is and how we fit into it (and also just have some fun).

What I really wanted to capture, though, is the feeling you get when you first come across these types of huge ideas. It’s a mix of awe and something uncanny. That uncanny side is what makes Black Sunday feel like a great fit. It’s sci-fi with a dark, unsettling heart, and it’s made for an audience that appreciates genre films with something strange underneath.

2. What moment made you realise you wanted to create films, not just watch them?

Through my experience in physics as it happens. There are moments when an abstract idea or picture of the universe “clicks” which is incredibly powerful and makes you see the world in a different way. It’s life changing in the sense that it stays with you and colours the rest of your experiences with the world. I wanted to communicate that feeling to people without the same background in the sciences, and I started with non-fiction based on different concepts in Physics, before moving to fiction filmmaking with sci-fi and horror films. Emotionally speaking there are a lot of parallels with my work in science and filmmaking.

3. What was the first film that truly unsettled you?

Dark City, directed by Alex Proyas. A nightmarish world where it is always nighttime but no-one realises this is the case (except our protagonist). No matter how much he explains to other people that something is wrong, it doesn’t get through to them. I’ve always found not being able to see things the way other people do, or not to be understood by other people properly, one of the scariest ideas.

4. Who would be your dream collaborator, living or dead?

Orson Welles. His films still feel ahead of their time and are my biggest influence. Too much to dive into but his way of shooting long takes with camera and character movement to arrive in different meaningful compositions is second to none. Still the best ever for me.

5. If your worst fear became a film, what would it look like?

Slowly slipping out of being able to make sense of the world or communicate with others: stopping being able to recognise other people as people for example, or the command of language leaving me. The worry that my grip on ‘reality’ is incredibly tenuous and could go at any moment, leaving me alone and adrift in a world that I cannot make sense of or navigate.

The Alice Paradox screens today, Saturday 24th October 2026, at the Black Sunday Film Festival’s Halloween special. For those who enjoy science fiction that challenges the mind as much as it unsettles the nerves, William Brooke’s exploration of alternate realities offers plenty of intriguing possibilities.

Keep checking back with Love Horror for more exclusive interviews, filmmaker insights and coverage from Black Sunday’s Halloween celebrations as our Five Black Sunday Confessions series continues to uncover the creative minds behind the festival’s most unusual and unsettling films.