Horror Favourites – Joss Carter

You may not know Joss Carter by name – yet – but chances are, you’ve seen his work. As a creature performer, stunt artist, contemporary dancer and all-round physical chameleon, Carter has moved and morphed his way through everything from The Mummy and Morbius to Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and The Expendables 4. Now, in Miracle Media’s brand-new fairy tale horror Rumpelstiltskin, he takes centre stage – beneath layers of prosthetics, latex, and a wicked gleam in his eye – as the titular terror himself.

It’s a dream role for Carter, whose work as a physical performer draws from traditions as diverse as Japanese Butoh, black metal, immersive theatre, and extreme physical endurance. His approach to horror isn’t just about jump scares or shock factor—it’s about transformation. Visceral, disturbing, boundary-pushing transformation. In Rumpelstiltskin, that philosophy seeps through every twitch, turn, and whisper of the film’s grotesque imp, making for a performance that’s equal parts uncanny and unforgettable.

So what inspired such a dark and kinetic career path? For Love Horror, Carter dives deep into the murky depths of his psyche to share the films that have most influenced him—not just as a performer, but as an artist of body and spirit. From cursed VHS tapes to black metal-laced dreamscapes and the cinematic equivalent of a decaying myth, his selections are as unnerving, poetic, and unflinchingly intense as his performances.

Joss Carter – Horror Favourites

I must confess that when I agreed to speak to Love Horror on my favourite horror films, all the creepy crawlies inside my stomach wriggled and tickled and jiggled inside with excitement and after much overthinking I have settled on this…

I was obsessed with watching The Ring (2002) when I was about 14, fascinated with the images depicted on the VHS tape along with the peculiar sensation that creeped around my nervous system and this led me to encounter the original Japanese film Ringu (1998). My taste turned heavier and darker and my ability to withstand the nightmares that these horrid delights had burnt into my retinas became strong.

One day I remember first listening to the Norwegian black metal band Darkthrone and my life was complete. The low fi gritty vampiric like noise, the corpse paint and the costumes and all the history of “satanism” and church burning really got my juices going.

This led me into a hole trying to find a film that encapsulated all the things that my soul was craving, the missing piece that joined all my inner fascinations above. Then I discovered Begotten (1989). Watching this raw, lo-fi, experimental black and white film for the first time not knowing anything about its origins it was like I had just discovered something extremely unnatural and almost too real. It was as if I had found my own unsettling, cursed artefact, making me feel rather uncomfortable at the thought that this could be an incriminating piece of evidence.

Riddled with deliriums of grotesque suffering and sacrificial brutality it evoked the darkest seeds of all my nightmares combined. The images hit me as if I had been poking and prodding at a reeking, worm-infested, decaying carcass of my own self-inflicted suffering. This film taps into something far more primal.  Watching this feels like witnessing something older than storytelling itself. It is uncomfortable yet strangely peaceful at times channelling a curiosity to further understand and appreciate the physical body in a transgressive performance state of horror itself.

Upon writing this self-reflection I now understand how influential this film has been to me over the years though my artistic career. As an experimental performance artist, contemporary dancer turned creature actor, my work is rooted in the Japanese performance art of Butoh. And later reading about the true origins of the film’s history being conceived as an experimental theatre work featuring dance and live music that draws on paganism, religious and cultural mythologies this avant-garde film has been the embers to my fire that has led me through the discovery to encounter, experience, express and appreciate my own internal insanity.

I hope that my words have struck your own curiosity to watch and witness this film if you have not done so already!

Rumpelstiltskin is on digital from 7 April 2025 courtesy of Miracle Media

www.JossCarter.co.uk