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| Escape |
Independent film director Howard Ford's next two feature films, Escape and DarkGame, revolve around characters in captivity. In Escape, written and directed by Ford, ten women fight back in the desert against the traffickers that have kidnapped them. Meanwhile, DarkGame, written by Tom George, Gary Grant and Niall Johnson, centres on a game show on the dark web, where the participants are captives forced to play for their lives.
Ford is drawn to characters facing adversity, whether it be a climber stranded on a mountain fending off a group of killers above her in The Ledge or a mother on vacation in Never Let Go, who goes renegade to rescue her abducted son. Escape and Dark Game are a natural expansion of his violent cinematic universe, built around survival.
I first met Ford in-person at FrightFest 2013, when The Dead 2: India, which he co-directed with his brother Jonathan, opened the festival. We've spoken since, and he always effuses an energy that might be essential, considering he balances directing television commercials with helming independent feature films, which he raises the finances for.
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| Escape |
Connecting virtually to discuss Escape and DarkGame, Ford is his usual affable and upbeat self. We find ourselves in the effortless flow of conversation, as he discusses how the two films sit alongside one another and his broader filmography, the uncertain journey of making a film, and the future of cinema.
Paul Risker: Is there a specific way you approach cinematic storytelling?
Howard Ford: As a filmmaker, I've always liked taking people on a journey that goes somewhere different to a room, because most people watching my films are in a room. Hopefully, they're not on a train with bits of plastic in their ears. Sometimes they are and you can't help that. I feel like, "Come on, let's take people somewhere. Let's give them a bit of a sunset. Let's give them a bit of a holiday." That's what I always try and do, and you can love it or you can hate it, but I want to take you somewhere different.
PR: You have two films coming out in quick succession. Escape you wrote and directed, while DarkGame you were hired to direct. Yet, the films are connected by characters that are kidnapped.
HF: You're right, and this is the first time I've had two movies coming out in the space of four weeks. There are similarities in terms of people being kidnapped and tied up, and made to do things they don't want to do. There's lots of murderous activity, let's put it that way. Both of them have that in common, but I also wanted them to be different films in terms of the look.
I hope Escape is a bit bonkers because I know it's about ten girls that are kidnapped for sex trafficking and there's an element of revenge. It was movie number ten, and it was one of my indies where I raise the money, and it's my script, so I can mess around with it as much as I want or make bits up as I go along. These films are generally made on a lower budget because you can't do that with big investor's money.
I just wanted to have a bit of a blast with Escape, and I thought, "Right, movie number ten. Stuff this! I'm going to do stuff that I'm probably not allowed to do or will never be allowed to do again. Let's go to the desert with loads of beautiful women and horrible criminals, put them together and create mayhem." So, that was the idea.
PR: What were the roots of the idea?
HF: I was watching Aussie Gold Hunters, randomly, about these gold prospectors and I thought, "I'm a filmmaker. I go through all this ridiculous trouble, and they just dig up a bit of gold that's worth a hundred grand." I started to write this plot about a bunch of young people that go to a nice place, that I can take you to with me as an audience, where they find this bit of gold worth half a million. They take it to some guy, and he maybe tries to kidnap them… In the end, I thought "Why am I writing such a convoluted thing? Why don't I just have it that these men kidnap these beautiful women, who are kept in horrible conditions, and they decide they're not having this - they're going to take down these guys?" I just thought it was a thing that would be a bit of a laugh. I know the subject is very serious, but I wanted humour in there as well, which is a weird thing to do, and I wanted it to be larger than life.
So, that's what happened with Escape. DarkGame, which stars Ed Westwick, who I remember seeing in White Gold, but I know he's famous for Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl, which I've been watching since I've made DarkGame, and quite enjoyed it. It's very different from DarkGame - no one gets tortured and killed in Gossip Girl, as far as I'm aware.
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| DarkGame |
He laughs.
HF: DarkGame is not written by me, which is why it's a more intellectual script [laughs]. I'd wanted to work with Tom George, the writer and producer, for many years. We've seen each other at Cannes and Berlin, and we've had a drink in a bar and a laugh. We used to come up with an idea for a film together, and then we'd have another drink and that would be the end of it. So, one day he messaged me and said, "I have this script, and I'd love you to read it." I thought, great, I'd finally get the chance to work with Tom - that would be fun. I started reading, and I thought there was no way I was going to do this film. It's got a girl who's going to have her head cut off by a chainsaw on page one. I thought, "This is one of those torture porn movies - why does Tom want to do this?" Then I started getting a few pages in, and I realised it's actually a cool thriller with a character that has the potential to give it a bit of heart, and it was also kind of noirish. I thought I could make something totally different to the other films I've done, and that's why I jumped in.
PR: To pick up on your point about merging humour with the serious subject of Escape, this can create a feeling of guilt or shame. However, there's nothing to prevent a film being serious with a fun and escapist side. Films can be layered and provoke conflicting emotions.
HF: You're right, and I have a theory about that. I remember we showed The Ledge at FrightFest in Glasgow, and it was like the most hilarious comedy anyone had ever seen. There was murderous stuff going on - people getting whacked in the head with a pickaxe. The audience were laughing and when we did the Q&A after, I said, "I had no idea I had made a comedy, and I'm really not offended at all, but please tell me why you were laughing..?" I had a lovely chat with the audience, and we reached the conclusion that when people are uncomfortable with what's going on, you kind of laugh - laughter releases the tension.
PR: When we watch a film, we are denied control. We respond impulsively, forcing us to be present in the moment.
HF: You are the boss! You can laugh, or you can hate it, but either way, it's your journey. It's a weird thing, because for all the films I've made there is someone that's going to say, "This is the worst piece of crap I've ever seen" and give it a 1 star, and then there's always someone who absolutely loves it. Someone had watched Never Let Go 37 times. They said it was their favourite movie, and they cried every single time. It's all in the eye of the beholder.
[…] As a filmmaker you do not know the end result. You do your best, and I always want to give you a good experience, but I don't always get it right.
PR: When I interviewed Vincenzo Natali, he said, "The art of directing is the art of compromise, but it's when the compromise is not less than your objective. When the compromise is additive, that is the art of directing." Would you agree?
HF: I would and here's the thing: unless you've made a film and gone through the whole process and delivered it to the distributor, it is such a mad journey that it is so much harder than anyone thinks. I'm not trying to say, "Hey, it's really difficult." It's a journey into the unknown and there are so many layers to it.
I love that spark of an idea, and I try to keep those bits of paper with my original ideas written on - ten girls kidnapped, sleazy bad guys, violence and action. One layer is this organic idea, and then you start to flesh it out. You have to go on location with all these other artists, and the actors have to interpret their characters. There are now all these other ideas, and so, as the director, you're technically the one that has to make the decisions, but the film becomes its own beast. And once you've shot a certain amount of it, and you look at it, you might think that's not necessarily what you thought you were doing. But now that it has gone that way, you have to get with the programme and service this thing to its fruition.
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| DarkGame |
PR: DarkGame gave you an opportunity to challenge yourself. What did the experience teach you about the way you see storytelling and how you might approach it differently in the future?
HF: It's multifaceted because one of the first things I realised about DarkGame is that it's different from what I normally do. I'm going to say my films have more of a journey. You're moving around more, but not in DarkGame, because you've got the presenter of this show, where there are live murders on the internet that the detectives are trying to solve. The characters are not in the same location as each other, and so there's a barrier to the drama between them. There's a lot of looking at screens or reacting to things, or the other characters are playing to the screens. That was one of the things I liked, and while I wouldn't normally do that because it ties me down to doing too much of that stuff, I thought it was a great challenge.
I had to bring out so much more in the eyes of the actors, and I had to work with them more on DarkGame. That sounds weird, but I try to have a hands-off approach, and by trying to take the pressure off, let them do their thing while I create a frame. With DarkGame, they're all brilliant actors, and they didn't need my help, but I found myself having to talk them through things because it was so complex.
When you look at Escape and DarkGame, cinematographically, they're completely different. The DOP on DarkGame has done a fantastic job with very risky lighting. It's dark and noirish, and I tend to light things quite bright in these large-scale environments.
So, I loved the challenge of DarkGame, and I feel you have to. An actor gets pigeonholed, and a director does too. I've done 300 plus TV commercials in addition to the movies. I always see those things as a mini-TV movie; a little opportunity to explore another type of film.
PR: Isabelle Huppert, head juror at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, has expressed concerns about the future of cinema, owing to its current “very weak” condition. In the past year, there have been discussions about how cinema is no longer the dominant art form. As someone that is challenging yourself, do you share Huppert's concerns, and what are your thoughts about the crisis of cinema's diminishing dominance?
HF: I suppose I am worried about cinema, but there are a lot of things to worry about in the world. You can sit and worry about it, or you can carry on. You've got to keep doing what you're here to do.
We've had the need for storytelling for thousands of years, and so, that need for storytelling is not going to go away. We used to be around campfires, and that's why film, as in cinema and being in a dark room, works so well, because it harks back to people sat around the campfire telling a story. Maybe it's a creepy story, or maybe it's atmospheric. Maybe it's a tale to warn you and there are a lot of warnings in Escape for young ladies. If you want to see them, they're in there.
Stories have a multilayered use, and it's about how you tell those stories. People have been worried more in the last year or two because of AI. You can ask AI to write this or paint that or create this effect, and you do get something that comes out the other end. What's worrying is whether the audience are going to be bothered? Are they going to be so saturated with a million things that we can watch for free or look at, and no one needs to draw a picture anymore because a computer is going to do it? I still think it's going to go back the other way, and we're going to start searching for genuine experiences again or pieces of art, or work - like vinyl, is coming back in.
Escape is released via streaming on 30th September, followed by DarkGame on 21st October.
