Horror Favourites – Damian Mc Carthy

Written and directed award-winning Irish filmmaker by Damian Mc Carthy and starring Ben Caplan (Band of Brothers, Call the Midwife), Jonathan French (A Soldier’s Voice) and Leila Sykes (Missing Something) CAVEAT is an unnerving cat and mouse thriller our review called “a dark, demented delight.”

Filmed in Cork, Ireland, CAVEAT is Mc Carthy’s feature debut following a string of successful short horror films and it is released exclusively on SHUDDER and available now.

Lone drifter Isaac (Jonathan French) accepts a job to look after his landlord’s niece, Olga (Leila Sykes), for a few days in an isolated house on a remote island. It seems like easy money, but there’s a catch: he must wear a leather harness and chain that restricts his movements to certain rooms.

Once Olga’s uncle, Barrett (Ben Caplan) leaves the two of them alone, a game of cat and mouse ensues as Olga displays increasingly erratic behaviour as a trapped Isaac makes a series of horrific discoveries in the house.

With slow building tension, CAVEAT balances creepy interiors with the beauty of Cork’s countryside to stunning visual effect. Playing out like a thoughtful, long-lost 80s chiller, CAVEAT leads the audience on a path of twist and turns to an unforgettable resolution.

Damian Mc Carthy is an award-winning filmmaker based in Cork City, Ireland. His films to date (He Dies At End, Hatch, Hungry Hickory, Never Ever Open It, How Olin Lost His Eye) have screened in many prestigious film festivals worldwide including Film4 Frightfest in London, Screamfest in LA, the New York City Horror Film Festival and the San Sebastian Horror & Fantasy Film Festival. Damian is a two time winner of the Melies d’Argent Award for Best European Short Film, the Delta Film Award, the International Indie Short Film Award and the Cutting Edge Award for Best Emerging Horror Director.

Below Damian talks about the scary movie he loves the most:

“My favourite horror film is John Carpenter’s The Thing. I must have been seven or eight when I first saw it, which is very young but my parents ran a video rental shop so I think my Dad must have brought it home. Now, it’s the film I come back to over and over again.

John Carpenter creates incredible tension and intense claustrophobia amongst the men stuck in this camp in Antarctica with an alien virus taking them over one by one. While watching the film, you try to figure out who’s acting differently, who’s been infected at which stage? It’s quite a relevant film during a pandemic because everyone is paranoid and they don’t want to get too close to each other.

The cast is perfect. They’re all regular looking guys and every single one is an incredible actor. I find Kurt Russell’s character really fascinating. He’s clearly gone to Antarctica to get away from something. He’s then moved out of the research facility into a little shed to get away further. All he does is get drunk, so he’s even trying to get away from himself. In his first scene he’s drinking and playing computer chess. He loses the chess game, so he destroys the computer. The last thing he does in the film is to destroy the facility. It’s so self-destructive. On the one hand it’s a monster movie where the characters get killed off one by one but, looking at the film from Russell’s character point of view, it becomes something far more complex and satisfying.

The film wasn’t a hit when first released in 1982. ET had been released that Summer and everyone loved its hopeful uplifting story and then The Thing came out and it was the complete opposite – nihilistic and downbeat. But then, over the years, its reputation has grown so much. When Quentin Tarantino was making The Hateful Eight, a film about a group of strangers trapped in a snowstorm and they don’t know who the criminal is, The Thing was the film he showed to his cast and crew for inspiration. I was watching It Chapter Two recently and there’s a scene where a guy’s head comes off and it sprouts legs and it’s running around the floor. It’s a direct tribute to The Thing.

As a director I admire The Thing because Carpenter had a big cast of 12 key characters, many of them sharing the screen at the same time in a confined space. The way he was able to choreograph the shots in such a way that you know who’s leading the scene is incredible. It’s influenced me in terms of the horror genre in that you never really know what the Thing looks like. It’s not like Alien, where it has one shape and one design. Or Predator where it looks like this dreadlocked monster. I’ve always liked that concept that they never know exactly what they’re dealing with which is very unsettling.

Rob Bottin, who designed and created the special effects, worked seven days a week, and sometimes through the night, creating these incredible practical effects that still stand up today and look better than most CGI-laden modern horror. He pushed himself to the absolute limit, and he ended up hospitalized with exhaustion, but without his talents it wouldn’t be a film that people are still talking about today. While making my own film, and you’re really struggling, and there’s not enough money, and it’s really exhausting and you start to lose faith that what you’re doing is any good, I often thought of his work on The Thing. He just kept pushing and pushing to create something that’s going to stand the test of time. And it has – the film is amazing, still.

People often talk about the downbeat ending. At the end, you’re left with two guys just sitting there amidst the destruction, not knowing if either of them has been infected or if they can trust each other and the final line “Why don’t we just wait here for a little while, see what happens?” is such a perfect conclusion.”

Caveat is streaming exclusively on SHUDDER now. Read our review HERE and watch the trailer below: