Horror Favourites – Jonathan Zaurin

Jonathan Zaurin made his directorial debut with the short film Little Acorns and has gone on to direct a number of short films including Portrait(s), Dirt, The Pit and Santa Baby. He has also contributed to anthology horror films Gore Grind, Blood Tales and Dean of the Dead Presents: Holiday Horrors. In 2021, he made his feature debut with the sinister horror Wyvern Hill.

Often known for his horror, his second feature, Derelict, is a mesmerisingly fractured tale of vengeance, grief and disintegrating lives, inspired by true events from Zaurin’s youth. The award-winning drama garnered extensive acclaim from critics and audiences alike on its premiere at FrightFest in 2024, and now, is out on Digital and Blu-ray.

Below Jonathan Zaurin takes us on a fantastic and fascinating deep dive into his five favorite horror films:

“The horror genre has been a part of my life since I can remember. I grew up in France, by the Swiss border where we were lucky enough to be able to receive the Swiss channel TSR. Every Saturday at midnight, Le Film de Minuit (the Midnight Movie) where I was, from a very young (too young?) age, able to discover a huge number of classics. I’d never miss one, recording on VHS every Saturday. Of course this is a habit my parents, and particularly my father, encouraged. My father was an artist, and he was impassioned with the love of everything weird, off beat, with the carnal and the bizarre. This was also the time of the video club and in my little town of Audincourt France, this took the shape of King Video, an oasis in which my father and I would go and find water for the soul every weekend. The VHS covers were all so exciting to my young mind from Peter Jacson’s Bad Taste to the work of Jean Rollin and everything in between, I built an idea of what my taste was early on and saw so many films… too many to count.

The films below don’t necessarily represent my all time favourite horrors, there are too many of those and it would quickly become an impossible, frustrating task. The other factor is that, whilst I am a huge horror fan, Derelict, the feature I am here to promote is in no way a horror film, or rather it is infused with everyday, banal horror but it’s not a film that uses the narrative conventions of horror. Horror is part of its DNA, and it is a bleak experience, but I don’t think it would qualify as a horror film (in spite of having done two major horror film festivals last year!). So, without further ado, I present you with five Horror films that represent and capture, in my mind, the dereliction of modern life in the most potent, scary, horrifying way!

1. Candyman (Bernard Rose – 1992)

Candyman was adapted by Bernard Rose from a Clive Barker novel. Rose made the wonderful choice of transposing the original story from Liverpool England to Chicago US and it is, in my opinion, what makes it so profoundly affecting. Rose reimagines the Candyman as a projection of the urban ills, an urban legend that is born from the social inequities and the everyday social violence of poverty and Urban dereliction. What I love particularly about Candyman is that it is one of a handful of films that can genuinely pretend to be pure “Fantastique”, in that its fantastical nature is preserved to the end. Each scene casts a doubt as to whether Candyman is real or a pure invention of Helen Lyle’s disturbed mind. Candyman only appears to her reality after she is violently assaulted and hit in the head, he appears only to her and she is consistently alone with the victim when Candyman’s violence erupts into frame. Candyman is a confrontation of opposites, with reality and myth being but one of the many concepts the film chooses to mirror. It’s also a film that understands that theme and form are inseparable, they exist together or not at all. The idea of the boogieman existing in a mirror is carried through every level of the film, Cabrini Green a mirror image of Helen’s gentrified apartment complex, Helen herself is the mirror image of Daniel Robitaille’s long lost love (which launches the film into the Gothic realm, bit more on that in a bit) and as Tony Todd himself put it to the Telegraph in 2024: “The Candyman is a living, breathing mirror. That’s why mirrors are so prominent in the story. You shouldn’t see a black bogeyman… there’s no such f–cking thing! What you should see is the rage, the stigma, and the hatred people have for something that should have been welcomed. The character mirrors all of that”.

The film is also carried through by some career defining, wonderful performances. The cast is uniformly great, with supporting actors such as Xander Berkley (playing a wonderfully sleazy and perfectly observed college professor), Kasi Lemmons and Vanessa Williams all giving superb performances, with a fantastic special appearance from horror icon Ted Raimi as Billy. Of course, whilst these are all wonderful, Virginia

Madsen gives the performance of a lifetime in this film, it deserves some notice in my opinion particularly because it was not, by all accounts, an easy shoot, particularly for her and co-star tony Todd (I invite you to further read on the subject, but yeah tricky shoot!). Tony Todd of course became horror royalty after Candyman, he gives the character a sense of gravitas and tragedy that sets it very much apart from most horror boogeymen. He is witty, poetic but tragic in all the best ways.

The other thing that really sets Bernard Rose’s Candyman apart is that its true identity is that of the gothic tale. It’s all about the new built on a tragic past, about the dereliction of spaces that used to be more, about a lost love and its gothic double existing in a painting, about an injustice coming back to haunt the people inhabiting those derelict spaces. Candyman proves the gothic isn’t just about castles and thunderstorms, the gothic can and should exist in contemporary spaces also. Its narrative modes and conventions are perfectly adapted to the modern abandonment of urban spaces.

And finally it is a stunning film to look at and listen to. Every frame is a painting (sometimes quite literally) as it was shot by Anthony B. Richmond who had previously shot Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Richmond gives the film a painterly feel, shooting Chicago (a city that has a rich cinematic past) like a haunted gothic city from angles that hadn’t previously been even considered. It’s quite powerful in creating this sense of unease and division, most notably the frames of the city from above which continue endlessly into lines and, geometric shapes of urban decay and social division. It’s also impossible to talk about Candyman without mentioning Phillip Glass’s extraordinary score. Yes the way Glass was brought on board may have been dubious, and the master himself felt cheated and, for years, disowned it, but it is a magnificently powerful score, of extraordinary beauty which sublimates the already stunning images into something transcendental, poetic! Lastly, it has, in my opinion the most achingly beautiful final shot of any horror film ever, after suffering through an ordeal, Helen is herself an Urban Legend, her angelic reigns in one of the decayed flats of Cabrini Green, she has passed into legend and myth, her hair is pure fire, her arms opened as we track closer and closer to the crack in the wall. My only regret is that this INCREDIBLE shot (and I mean that as aesthetically AND in terms of being charged with meaning) plays underneath the credits. Someone please, find me a version where the credits don’t play over this shot!

2. Calvaire (Fabrice Du Welz – 2004)

Ok this one is a rough ride! One that I show unsuspecting friends regularly. I always tell them the same thing: “Be prepared to experience something deeply unsettling, very shocking and uncompromising”. Having said all this, it’s also one of those films where, the less you know, the more impact the film has, so this will be a spoiler free introduction for those who don’t know the film. In fact, that’s the first step for me, I am always amazed that this film isn’t more known than it actually is. Provided we accept that this is indeed part of the New French Extremity movement (and there’s a debate arguably) then it, in my humble opinion, represents the height of it. It’s a film that is both shockingly violent and extremely beautiful, it’s a macabre poem that sees a traveling entertainer break down in the middle of a tiny village with some strange inhabitants. If the pitch seems familiar, that’s because it’s a typical crossing the Rubicon story. What sets it apart is its incredible aesthetic sense, its willingness to break every taboo and its pure visual exploration

of the low descent into madness of its protagonist. Think Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, if the second Mrs De winter was actually a male village hall singer…. And yes, the film goes all the way there, and more.

Du Welz is a clear cinephile, he wears his influences on his sleeve. He delves feet first into another Gothic tale of lost love and mistaken identity but does so in a way that is both knowing of its roots (an appearance by Brigitte Lahaie at the start of the film sets the story both into the realm of the Gothic and the psycho sexuality of Rollin and a dinner scene at the end comes straight out of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc) and utterly willing not to play by the rules.

It’s a tricky one to discuss without revealing too much but suffice to say it is not a film that makes traditional, logical sense. It’s a film that plays like a sensorial experience, one that makes sense emotionally more than it makes sense logically. It plays like a pure nightmare, and it forces you to accept madness as a valid way of looking (which is very much reflected in the protagonist’s journey). By the time the film ends, you get the feeling that you have witnessed the pure, unadulterated, transmission of a deranged mind. Although to be clear, the film does heavy work on the feeling of unease from its opening frames, as Mark performs his song in front of an ageing audience, the awkwardness fills every (stunning) frame. Five minutes in and the film takes on an odd sexually charged atmosphere that will never leave it to its very last frame. Every encounter is odd, and the ordeal is long and difficult to witness. This isn’t popcorn horror to be clear, which is why I put it on this list, much like my own film Derelict (though I am in no way comparing the genius of Du Welz’s film with what I do), this is hard to watch, unforgiving and subversive. Like Daphne Du Maurier’s original tale this plays as a shock of culture between rural and urban, between male and female, between sane and insane and it blurs the line between all those things.

Well known French comedian Jacquie Berroyer puts in a formidable performance, in turn funny, pathetic and terrifying, with a physicality and voice that evokes Roman Polanski’s portrayal of Trelkovsky in his 1976 masterpiece The Tenant. A film with which Calvaire shares a considerable amount of DNA, not least of which manifests itself within notions of self-identity and transformation.

Worthy of a huge note is Benoit Debie’s STUNNING cinematography, Debie who is most known for his work with Gaspar Noe, gives the film an astoundingly unique visual identity. It’s textured, grainy, foggy, in turn muted and colourful, in turn stylised and naturalistic, drenched in mud and rain. It’s a volatile yet cohesive method that create a sense of imminent danger in every frame, it’s unpredictable and bathing in high contrast, shadowy mood. Absolutely a work I turn to for pure aesthetic pleasure. My favourite horror film this century.

3. Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter – 1987)

I had to have a John Carpenter film in this list, I had to! The thing about John Carpenter is that any and every horror fan out there knows at least (AT LEAST) one of his films. From Halloween to The Thing onwards, everyone has experienced John Carpenter’s cinema. If not directly then you’ve felt his influence on modern cinema one way or another. Carpenter is a director that essentially is quoted endlessly as an influence by modern directors… and you won’t hear any differently from me.

So why Prince of Darkness? Because I think this is Carpenter at his most experimental! The film treads a fine line between pure pulp and auteurist sophistication (I love both of these things, particularly when they exist together) Carpenter penned the script under the name Martin Quatermass which really should give viewers of good idea of what he was aiming for in terms of tone and style. It’s not the first time a John Carpenter alias gives us a hint as to what type of film he’s making. He is, for example, credited as editor on Assault on Precinct 13 as John T. Chance which is of course John Wayne’s character in Rio Bravo. Here the Quatermass connection is obvious, the story plays like one of Nigel Kneale’s BBC serials where a group of graduate students and scientists uncover an ancient canister in an abandoned church. Upon opening the container, they inadvertently unleash an evil force onto humanity, which awaits its awakening in mirrors. What makes Prince of Darkness such a powerful and masterful experience for me is, once again, the way that it carries its thematic exploration within its form and mise en scene.

Prince of Darkness is a film of reflection, evil comes from a mirror after all, but it carries the theme through every layer of its conception. The film is shaped like a constant division of concepts, where faith is opposed to science, dreams are opposed to reality, poverty is opposed to luxury, male is opposed to female, life is opposed to death, light is opposed to dark, the old is opposed to the new, youth is opposed to age and the film works those very ideas all the way to its bone marrow, where every shot is carefully crafted and thought out to create a reflection of opposites within its frame, a central line consistently dividing those very concepts and the characters who embody them smack bang in the middle. That sense of symmetry permeates every aspect of the picture, with Carpenter ultimately arguing that these opposing concepts need to coexist to understand (and therefore defeat) the very idea of evil. Evil is once again found in a mirror and therefore the film operates like one.

Now I could talk for days about why this film needs to be on this list, it represents the kind of perfect craftsmanship that I’ve come to admire from Carpenter, it’s utterly beautiful, merciless, dark, with a score that ranks amongst the master’s best in my opinion. But the truth is there’s a selfish intent here, because my own film Derelict took quite a bit of inspiration from Carpenter’s mirror like structure, much like Candyman, the thematic obsessions are woven through the script’s structure. In Derelict, myself and the writing team really wanted to create mirroring journeys for the characters of Abi and Matt. We wanted their journey to be reflections of one another, until Abi finally understands that the way she had imagined Matt’s life was not entirely accurate and that his suffering and what he went through is a reflection of her own suffering and vice versa. We wanted it to make sense on a visceral level rather than a purely logical level, we wanted it to both make the audience think and feel. We didn’t necessarily want to spell it out, but we wanted the structure of the film to work on a level where each time Abi or Matt looks in the mirror, we would give the feeling that they’re not exactly looking at themselves but rather they’d be looking at one another.

I don’t know if we succeeded mind, time will tell, but this film was a huge inspiration on that level, because it doesn’t spell it out, because it doesn’t explain its intricate details, because it expects you to pay attention to the form as a vector of its themes. That is why for me, this film is Carpenter at his most intricate. I hear a lot of noise about what Carpenter’s career would have looked like if The Thing hadn’t initially flopped, and I hear it, I hear that logic… my only issue with it is that it would mean that Carpenter’s later, more low budget genre efforts would have never existed, no They Live, no In The Mouth of Madness, no Prince of Darkness… that saddens me even more.

4. The Vanishing (George Sluzier – 1988)

George Sluzier’s The Vanishing is the cold, clinical examination of a sociopathic mind, the void it creates and lives it sucks within it. It’s a shocking, suspenseful, slow descent into madness too. One that its own director George Sluzier remade for the American market a few years later in 1993. Claude Chabrol famously preferred the remake stating something along the lines of “At least the original knows it’s silly!” which really makes me think Chabrol had missed something somewhere since it’s also the film Kubrick stated was the most terrifying film he’d ever seen. I don’t dislike the remake, I think Jeff Bridges does a great job, but it’s completely undermined by its weird, tonally ridiculous ending.

The original The Vanishing not your typical horror, there’s no zombies, no masked killer, no ghosts, no monsters, just an absence. A disappearance, the vanishing of a loved one which sends the protagonist onto a quest to find out what happened. Slowly his mind unravels. Some would argue that the terrifying aspect of the film is its uncompromising examination of a sociopathic mind, and they’d be right, it’s icy and (as the reflection of the mind itself) unsentimental. But what terrifies me more is the journey of its main protagonist. For a while the film lures you into thinking that his quest is a quest of love, a quest to find a woman he has loved. But slowly the truth becomes clearer and paints a picture of obsession that blurs the lines between the normality of loss and grief and the psychopathic mind. There’s a film writing theory that states (in simple terms here) that to be truly effective and meaningful, a great script needs to operate around the idea that every character is a projection of the protagonist’s psyche. It is very much the case here, with Lemorne’s character being a physical crystallisation of Rex’s obsession. After a while, Saskia is no longer a person, she’s an idea, one that Rex has become fixated about, there’s no doubt he once loved her but that’s no longer what drives him, what drives him is the need to know, where that takes him is unforgettable.

The thing that also makes this film an unforgettable one is the precision of the mise en scene. Not a shot out of place. Every single frame has a specific purpose. The set pieces are ferocious in the way that they explore the idea of absence, through objects left behind, through slow, deliberate pacing. The film is constructed around a particular event that is then re explored later on, giving the film an odd feeling of unravelling that culminates in an ice-cold finale.

It’s the everyday, banal nature of most crimes that is explored here and it is very much what also interested me with Derelict. In fact, Derelict’s structure was very much inspired by the core idea of this film. Something happens that changes the entire direction of one person’s life, we just don’t know what it is. Then halfway through the film we are exposed to it in every detail, and it gives new meaning to everything we were shown before. I think this is somewhat the most accurate representation of loss for the medium of cinema, because the loss of a loved one creates a gap in one’s narrative, it creates a gaping hole that needs to be filled, most people look through photos and family films and try to piece together some semblant of explanation that will allow them to carry on. That’s what fuels The Vanishing and that’s what fuels Derelict, though in both cases the loss is so traumatic that moving on becomes an impossibility. The point is the form and the structure itself becomes an impressionistic rendering of the feeling of loss.

In any case, this film is also carried by a trio of stunning performances, all equally brilliant with Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu in particular creating a chilling portrait of normalised, rationalised evil. He dares to make him human. Considering his actions, that is a huge and very successful task.

5. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto – 1989)

I’ll keep this one short and simple. To me this IS PUNK.

We’re talking about a super low budget film, fuelled entirely by invention and the desire to create. It’s a hyper violent thing that carries its violence in every frame; it’s as interested in inflicting violence upon its viewer as it is interested in depicting it. It’s body horror in its purest form too, once again making pure visceral sense rather than logical rational sense, it’s a story of urban alienation and decay projected onto one man’s body, it inspects it, lingers on every detail of this salaryman’s transformation as his physical appearance progressively takes on the shape of his own metallic, urban psyche. It’s also a huge source of inspiration, the perfect example of a film made with very little that transcends easily its meagre origins through inventiveness and an intricate, intimate knowledge of its tools. It’s a film that uses a wide scope of cinematic techniques and forms, stop motion animation, overlaying of images, over cranking and under cranking, strong lighting decision and grainy aesthetics!

Tetsuo is pure rage. Its story explored through a series of increasingly violent vignettes which culminates into an overcharged, hyper stylised black and white explosion of flesh and metal. Describing it is difficult, there’s nothing quite like it. In my case, there’s a further personal connection. My father Gérard Zaurin was a painter, an artist, who spent his life building a wonderful, rich body of work that sadly isn’t known by many at all. Towards the end of his life, he started giving his lifework away, which has made it incredibly difficult to trace. Tetsuo was the first time that I saw the possibility of what my father’s work could possibly look like on film. (see example below) Watching it today, I see it as both a phenomenal work in its own right, but also as an eternal spiritual connection to my father’s work which I can revisit anytime I want.

Whilst Derelict isn’t necessarily comparable to Tetsuo, I think the spirit of “We don’t have much but we’re doing it anyway” that is so key to Tetsuo is carried through into Derelict. Derelict is also dedicated to my father, who passed three days after seeing the first cut. I think somewhere down the line, it became a regret for him to not have been able to explore his own art as film. I think he would have wanted to try film as an art form, he was not able to, but Tetsuo is as close it gets somehow.

So, that’s it! I hope I gave readers a desire to discover or rediscover those films, as always with any art, the association of works end up (in my opinion) creating an even wider tapestry of themes and forms. These films all have in common a beautiful, uniquely cinematic desire for form as carrier of form and meaning. To me, whilst I love all forms of cinema, there’s something uniquely cinematic about films that make more visceral sense than they make logical sense. I can only hope that Derelict also has that effect on someone somewhere. They say every film is someone’s favourite film, these are five of mine and I live with the hope that perhaps one day Derelict makes it to someone else’s list!”

Derelict is on digital now from Miracle Media and on Blu-ray from 101 Films

Derelict trailer