Interviews
‘The Hole in the Ground’ Used Little CGI and a Finnish Contortionist for the Monster [Interview]
Some spoilers follow.
Most of The Hole In the Ground (read our review) follows the A24 minimalist aesthetic. In the film, Sarah (Seana Kerslake) suspects her son Chris (James Quinn Markey) has been replaced by something else. He acts really creepy and there are a few violent scares, but it’s mostly buildup. And then Sarah enters the titular hole in the ground to try to save him, and that’s where you see the changelings in their true form.
Director Lee Cronin spoke with Bloody-Disgusting this week about the film’s creature design. His monster is practical, performed by someone with scary flexibility.
“In terms of practical elements, it’s actually a contortionist performer in prosthetic,” Cronin told us.
“It’s a European co-production. It’s Irish, Belgian and Finnish. Some of the casting came from Finland so there are some great circus performers in Finland actually so I lent on my Finnish producer and put the call out. We found this guy, Miro Lopperi, he was just so game for it. We only really had a day with him to get what we needed but he was all over it and he brought a lot of value to it as well.”
Okay, maybe it’s not 100% Lopperi, but it’s mostly him. “There’s not a lot of a creature in the movie, not a lot of monster, but what you do see, I would say 90-95% of it is real,” Cronin said.
“There’s very, very little CG. There’s a little bit of CG assistance in some parts and some comp work obviously.”
Star Seana Kerslake never got to work with Lopperi, however.
“For some of the shooting we did with Seana, we used a more temporary solution,” Cronin said. “We shot a lot of those monster elements separately but there was definitely something for you to interact with at the time.”
The mythology behind the creature is somewhat vague in the film. Sarah doesn’t know what she’s dealing with, so she can’t just microfiche it in the local library. Cronin knows a bit more than his lead character does, but the point wasn’t to establish a deep mythology.
“I wouldn’t say it goes crazy deep,” Cronin said. “I’ve got my own mythology that I built using existing lore.”
“I utilized that to spike in moments throughout the story. The myths that I lent on are maybe a little bit lighter and more airy than The Hole in the Ground actually is so as I said, I lent on some of that Irish stuff in terms of changeling mythology and some of those other darker corners. Really, because it’s such a singular POV in the film, Sarah’s journey, I didn’t want there to be a mythology that she could grasp onto. She’s falling headlong into this situation. I do think what’s interesting, what reflects James’s behavior when he’s altered in the film as such would be the want of those that live in this darker place to have the glamour of being human and to do all and anything possible to just fit in and be normal in a lot of ways. That’s why his reactions are actually instinctive to protect from the thread of Sarah maybe unmasking him.”
The Hole in the Ground is a DirecTV exclusive starting January 31 and opens in theaters March 1.
Exclusives
Doug Bradley Would Love to Play an “Older, Darker” Pinhead in a ‘Scarlet Gospels’ Movie [Interview]
Demon to some and angel to others, Doug Bradley achieved horror icon status for his portrayal of Pinhead in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser and its first seven sequels. Although he hasn’t reprised the role since 2005, the consummate actor wouldn’t rule out a return. “I certainly never say never. I’ve never said I was done with it. I’ve never said I’m retired from it.”
He continues, “I’m sensible about these things, too. I was in my mid-30s when I first played the character, and I was just turning 50 when I played him the last time. I ain’t in that age range anymore. I’m now in my 70th year, and to some extent I think special effects makeup is a younger man’s game.”
Bradley’s ideal circumstances for a return would be an adaptation of Barker’s 2015 novel The Scarlet Gospels, which concerns the end of Pinhead. “If we did that, we could maybe present an older Pinhead to be aware of the fact that I am the age I am, that time and gravity does what time and gravity does.
“An older, darker Pinhead would intrigue me, one not so much in love with the flippant one-liners and the witty comebacks and so forth.”
He notes that The Scarlet Gospels‘s vision differs from that of Hellraiser. “Christian theology was very much avoided in relation to the way that Hell was talked about in the first Hellraiser movies. Clive typically blew that wide open with The Scarlet Gospels. It’s very theological on a cosmological scale.
“That would be the perfect bookend to my life in latex, if I can put it that way,” he says before reiterating that no such thing is in the works to his knowledge.
“I’ve never turned my back completely on the character, but realistically, I think that’s probably that, and that’s fine. I’m proud of what we did with the movies, and I’m proud of my work in it. I’m cool with being where I am now.”
Pinhead was most recently portrayed by Jamie Clayton in David Bruckner’s 2022 Hellraiser reboot, to which Bradley had “a positive response, coupled with a slight disappointment, to be honest. That’s not a judgment on her at all.”
He explains, “I thought that the design elements of the remake were really the star of the show. I loved what they’d done with the redesign of the box. That metal grid around the house, I had no idea why it was there, but it was certainly very cool. And all the stuff going on up in the ceiling, great!”
Bradley perked up when Clayton’s Pinhead came on screen. “I thought the redesign of the makeup was very cool. It was a bold thing to take on redesigning such an iconic makeup, and I thought they did a very good job with it. I loved the change of pallets. I loved those intestinal pinks and pale purples and so forth.
Jamie Clayton in ‘Hellraiser’ (2022)
“Jamie is very slight. She’s tiny across the shoulders. I was immediately intrigued by it and kind of sat up. When Pinhead first appears in Hellraiser, it’s very in your face. In spite of the fact that I’m wearing a skirt, it’s very macho. It’s very masculine. It’s, ‘Here we are. We’re Cenobites. We do this, we do that. Fuck with us, and we’ll tear your soul apart.’ It’s very clear.
“[Jamie] looked rather doll-like, a little bit childlike, and I remembered Clive’s original description of the Pinhead cenobite from The Hellbound Heart. It — gender unclear — had a light and breathy voice like that of an excited girl, and that was what I wanted to hear. We didn’t get that. We got a voice that was rather close to the original Pinhead voice. I wanted something that matched the image; something quiet, delicate, a little bit playful, but still with the threat riding through it.
“She wasn’t really asked to do very much. There were some wonderful shots. There’s the distance shot where she’s standing on water outside the house; beautiful, beautiful shot. But I felt she wasn’t asked to be terribly proactive thereafter. So I was excited, intrigued, and ultimately a little bit disappointed — but not by Jamie’s performance at all.”
Although his time as Pinhead may or may not be behind him, Bradley can next be seen in Thorns, a Hellraiser-inspired movie that melds themes of religion and science with practical special effects. It opens in select theaters in Michigan, Missouri, Kansas, and California on February 23 with an expansion aimed for later in the year.
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Doug Bradley in ‘Thorns’
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