The first time Neil Marshall set foot in the Sitges Festival was in 2002 to present his debut film Dog Soldiers, a horror comedy with British soldiers and werewolves that soon became a cult film. Eight years ago he returned as a member of the jury and in this 55th edition the British director has received the Màquina del Temps Award and has taken the opportunity to present his new work, The Lair, a film that again brings together military action with mutant monsters .
"When I came 20 years ago I was captivated by how beautiful the Màquina del Temps award was and I wondered what I had to do to win one. I feel very proud, really, because it is an extraordinary and unique piece and coming to Sitges is like being at home", he explains in a chat with this newspaper. In The Lair, starring Charlotte Kirk, the director's current partner, there is a clear tribute to the best B-series, the one that Marshall soaked up in the eighties when he was a teenager and he already knew where his professional future was going to go .
The script, co-written with Kirk, sees us as a seasoned British Air Force captain whose plane is shot down in the middle of the Afghan desert on her last combat mission in the country. As she flees from the rebels, she wanders into a bunker that had once been used by the Russians to experiment on alien DNA. Together with a group of soldiers who are not exactly very well qualified, she will try to put an end to disgusting and extremely violent creatures that attack at night. As expected, the screen will be splattered with blood and gore in a suffocating atmosphere.
The origin of this proposal that mixes "horror, war and science fiction" was given to him by a friend during the pandemic. "We were in Los Angeles and he has a house in the desert. He told me we could make a low-budget movie with a few people. In the end, it didn't work out, but the idea kept coming back to me and I started writing again." about soldiers and monsters -I'm the creator of the genre- Afghanistan and Russian bunkers and this time I took it in Budapest and here I am", assures the director of The descent, who believes that quality B-series horror films have " more than ever a space to show off. The Lair is a classic B-movie and I'm sure there is an audience that will really enjoy it. There are funny dialogues, scary scenes, what more could you ask for? ", he exclaims.
Charlotte Kirk puts herself in the shoes of a woman of arms, without fear of danger. "In my films, women have never been victims, never the ones I wanted to portray as such. In The Descent the cast was female and they were strong characters." The filmmaker believes that the television series in which he has participated, such as Game of Thrones or Hannibal and Westworld, have been a great experience. "They were very open to my ideas as a director," in contrast to Hellboy, which was panned by critics. "It had to have been a horror movie, but in the end it wasn't. I had no control over it," he says resignedly of David Harbor's 2019 comic book adaptation.
Marshall comments that he is proud that more and more women are directing genre films and "giving a new and necessary perspective" to the viewer. He has many projects in mind, but for now he cites Duchess, an action movie about a tough working class criminal who transforms into an anti-heroine and will be played by Charlotte Kirk and Colm Meaney.
