Interviews
Hail Raatma: Creating the Memorable ‘V/H/S/94’ Creature from “Storm Drain” [Exclusive]
Last month brought the newest entry in the V/H/S anthology series to Shudder, marking the most critically acclaimed yet. V/H/S/94 introduced a whole new set of nightmarish horror and creatures, including fan-favorite Raatma, the unforgettable sewer-dwelling monster from Chloe Okuno’s segment “Storm Drain.”
What exactly is Raatma? How was this creature conceived and created? “Storm Drain” writer/director Chloe Okuno, creature designer Keith Thompson, and creature creator Patrick Magee answer these questions and more.
When conceiving “Storm Drain” and its creature, Okuno found inspiration from The Catman of Greenock urban legend. That’s right; a cat creature inspired the rat-like Raatma. She explains, “In terms of the creature itself, there’s like a local legend in Scotland, I believe about a figure called the Catman, and it was this urban legend that I think I’d heard about online or on some podcasts. It was intriguing. You could find a photo of this guy who’s just covered in black grime. I thought it was so interesting and weird. I couldn’t completely rip off Catman, so somehow Ratman was born from that.”
Once the concept and story were locked down, executive producer David Bruckner connected Okuno with Keith Thompson, the creature designer behind The Ritual and No One Gets Out Alive. Thompson was instrumental in bringing Raatma to life. “The first conversation that Keith and I had, I had some ideas, but Keith came in with an idea that was interesting and weird and creepy. It was more of a literal rat mother. He did this exciting concept art of this giant rat that let her cult followers suckle from her teat. It was extremely disturbing, and I was into it. But I told Keith when I envisioned this, the thing that was my inspiration was The Fly. Specifically, the Brundle pod moment in The Fly. There was something about the idea of this pitiful creature pulling itself along the ground,” Okuno reveals.
Concept Art provided by Keith Thompson
Thompson elaborated on that initial concept of a mothering Raatma, “What I first usually do is read the script because I’m coming into it completely blank. And then, in a way, I’m experiencing what they already have down on paper. So, they get this interesting view on what I imagined, even if it’s totally left field. One of the biggest ones was that you have this cult feeding off this black liquid that’s coming out of this thing. They keep referring it to this slurred speech of Raatma. I thought, okay, let me pitch this because what I couldn’t help but imagine is you’re going into it assuming this encrypted assumption of rat-man in the sewer. Then the revelation would be that they’re saying ‘rat ma’ like mother.
“And it could have worked with the idea would be that it was black milk. At first, you think it’s sludge. It’s the sewer; it’s sludge, it’s maybe oil or something like that. Then you realize it’s milk. It’s this sort of inverted milk, this awful milk, that gets all the cult to be reborn. But that was so bonkers. That’s a bit of an elaborate thing, even for a feature to tackle. Chloe was absolutely, immediately like, ‘That’s amazing, but we have to fit it into this.’ And so, she quickly pivoted, I think it works well,” Thompson said of the shift from Ratmom to Ratman.
Thompson added, “I love what she imagined with this idea of Ratma being something that shouldn’t be in our world. It’s found itself in our world, and it’s suffering from that, which gives this wonderful pathos to it, which is always a nice touch that I like to put in everything I do. Again, not necessarily a straightforward sympathy because sometimes things are genuinely quite horrible, and you don’t want to try and make excuses for that. But a certain type of empathy for their experience. Raatma is suffering. That’s one of the key scary things about it.”
Concept Art provided by Keith Thompson
Okuno gives more detail on Raatma’s background: “I’d always thought that it was something that came from another dimension and got stuck here. It wasn’t an actual God. It was just a thing that these people took it upon themselves to worship as a God. So yeah, we had this long discussion about different references like The Fly. I think a Puccini illustration is another thing we talked about. It was important that it looked monstrous, but you could also see how someone might mistake it for a large rat if they were seeing it in certain conditions.
“I wanted it like one of those weird photos was where you look at it; it could look like a rabbit, or it could look like a duck. You could look at this, and it could look like a rat, or it could look like this horrifying alien monster. Obviously, given those conversations, Keith came away with something just perfect and incredible. Patrick was the one who brought it to life.“
Concept Art provided by Keith Thompson
“All the things I’ve loved, you can just stare at the thing for as long as you want. You can have a still holding shot on it, and the design gets better and better and better. That’s always been the thing I strive for. In a way, the way I worked traditionally also helped, because I do pencil sketches initially. So, if it’s going to work, and if it’s going to evoke something for someone, they’re just looking at a linear drawing.,” Thompson explains of his approach to creating an evolving creature design.
Raatma’s design is one thing, but creating it proved much trickier thanks to time constraints. Adding to it was that the creature’s creator, Magee, didn’t have time to execute the design or fly to set. Magee said of accepting the task, “I love the old Alligator movie in the sewers and C.H.U.D., so it just really had that good throwback feeling. And then, with Keith’s design, it was a no-brainer. The catch was, well, we shoot in three weeks. I think three weeks or 24 days. This was last year when COVID was really nuts, and they’re shooting in the east of Canada, and I’m in California.
Patrick Magee working on Raatma head sculpt
Photos provided by Patrick Magee
“I talked to Chloe and told her this is what I can do, and this is what I can’t do. She had a couple of requests, but we didn’t have time. With my small crew of three or four, we scheduled every single day specifically. I had three days mapped out to sculpt the head and the body, and then, that’s it. I sent it to the director and told her to make your change right now because we got to mold it. Then we had a specific schedule for the molds, then to get the skins and paint them. We did do a mechanical head, and it came down to the minutes before we had put it in the box to ship it; I was still doing final details.“
Photos provided by Patrick Magee
Photos provided by Patrick Magee
Okuno applauds Magee’s efforts in such a short period. “It was crazy. Patrick gave us this incredible thing. He had no time to do it. He was in Los Angeles. There are all these different pieces of the suit that you operate. I think that he had gotten on a Zoom call with these special effects makeup people we had locally in Toronto and walked them through the process. We tried it on the performer, Thiago Dos Santos, the night before we shot, which I felt was important because I had this nightmare of us getting the set, and it just like not working for whatever reason. But it worked amazing. The team that was operating the creature did such a great job.”
Okuno credits Magee for pointers on how to direct Dos Santos and the effects team on bringing Raatma to life and how remarkable his work was given the obstacles. For his part, Magee gives appreciation to another unsung component of monster making: “The other element that goes hand in hand with making it believable is the sound design, and that was gratifying. I mean, the sound that they gave was cool, too. As an effects person, you cross your fingers because the sound can take you out of it. Suppose they screw up how the monster sounds; it takes away from the effects you’re doing, the sculpture and the art and the visual of it all. But it sounded cool, so it just added to it.”
Photos provided by Patrick Magee
Magee’s work also wraps up the segment, with the gloriously grotesque face-melting, and the vampire work in Ryan Prows‘ segment, “Terror.”
It took a cult of talented filmmakers, artists, and crew to bring Raatma into our world, an impressive feat given the production constraints. The result quickly made Raatma one of the most buzzed about movie monsters. Hail Raatma. And watch V/H/S/94 on Shudder now!
Photos provided by Patrick Magee
Of all the places to find a coven of witches, the attic above a Christian youth camp is probably the last place you’d think to look. But that’s just what we find in Camp, a surrealist nightmare of feminist empowerment from Canadian filmmaker Avalon Fast.
Emily (Zola Grimmer) is still reckoning with her involvement in a horrific tragedy when she accidentally contributes to the death of her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison). Unable to move on, the traumatized teen takes a job at a rural summer camp, hoping to forget her own sorrows by looking after at-risk kids. She quickly connects with a counselor named Clara (Alice Wordsworth) and finds comfort in her close-knit group of female friends. But a mysterious whisper from deep in the woods warns that they may be leading her down a darker path.
Fast burst onto the scene in 2022 with Honeycomb, a psychological horror film that follows a burgeoning matriarchy. Known for their focus on “Girl Horror” stories, the talented young filmmaker tackles similar themes in Camp as Emily leaves the modern world behind to embrace a dark vision of self-discovery through magic.
Ahead of the film’s U.S. release on June 26, Bloody Disgusting sat down with Fast to chat about the nebulous nature of good vs. evil and the intoxicating power of female-driven horror.
Bloody Disgusting: What inspired this unique story? Did you go to religious summer camps when you were young?
Avalon Fast: I did. I went to lots of different summer camps, but all of them were primarily Bible camps. The memory I have of camp is kind of strange. I was very homesick as a kid, and I didn’t necessarily enjoy all my time there. I definitely remember meeting some interesting girls at camp and having that presence of religion hovering around the whole experience.
BD: I really love the film’s gorgeous natural setting. Camp is the kind of surrealist nightmare that you don’t just watch. You feel it too. How did you approach creating this world?
AF: Well, a huge part of it was working with my cinematographer Eily Sprungman, who’s a very close friend. We spent years prepping, shot listing, storyboarding, and mood boarding. She’d had a similar experience to mine. We grew up around the same place, and so we understood each other’s visions from the get-go. But there are so many other pieces that came together. The costuming, the art, and the animated sequences were done by Sofiya Iurkevych. One of our producers, Taylor Nodrick, was obsessed with shooting on Super 8 film. I’ve always wanted to as well, so all the memory sequences were shot on Super 8. It was just a lot of people with an understanding and a vision for what this project was. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
To the extent that you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your relationship to witchcraft, and what does Camp have to say about modern witches?
Well, that’s the question of Camp. It’s not that I don’t resonate with any of these things, but I specifically wanted Camp to be a little bit ambiguous around what witchcraft looks like. Is this witchcraft? Are these girls witches? Emily explicitly asks if that’s what’s happening here, and the answer isn’t yes. The film isn’t going to answer that question for you. My relationship to magic and witchcraft? It’s tough. I feel like there’s so much magic, connection, and spirituality that comes from these friendships, the closeness of these women, and what’s happening around them. A lot of what Camp is trying to say or show is just that magic can come out of friendship.
I loved watching these female friendships develop. And you’re right. No one ever says the word “coven,” but you can feel that connection, and you can see a change in Emily as those relationships grow. I’m also really fascinated with the way Camp plays with the idea of good and evil. At one point, Clara says, “Maybe God drew us to the devil,” which stopped me in my tracks. How do you view witchcraft or the magic these girls are experiencing in regard to good and evil?
That was such a huge part of the script’s construction. The story is really trying to keep a balance between those two things. I like asking people if they think these girls are good or bad, because I feel like a lot of people come out of the film thinking one or the other. They’ll say things like “thank God Emily found her people” or “God, I really wish she’d gone home.” I just don’t think there’s ever an answer. I wanted to explore the idea of going down the wrong path, especially coming out of grief. What makes you a bad person, and does healing mean you’re looking to become a better person? I don’t have an answer, but I do feel like that’s a huge part of what Camp is asking. What is good? What is bad? Why did God bring me to the devil?
Yes, because this is all happening at “God camp” in Emily’s words. So how can both of those things exist at the same time? Along those lines, I’m also fascinated by the voice Emily hears in the woods. Without spoiling too much, what is this voice asking, and what is required in return?
Emily comes to camp with a shout into the void, asking can anyone hear me? Does anyone want to? And it’s answered so clearly by these girls, specifically responding only with love, care, support, and trust. It’s like her prayers were answered. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be alright, but Emily is looking for peace. She’s looking for a moment where she feels pure good. And I think, even at its surface level, she does get that experience.
Personally, I don’t really think people are good or bad. I think we all exist somewhere in the middle. Camp centers traditionally villainized characters, but that’s where Emily seems to find her peace, however you choose to define it.
I also wanted to show the experience of having decided that you are a bad person, you’ve made mistakes, and you feel cursed. Then when you meet other people who have done things that you would consider worse, you can actually feel good in their presence. You feel like less of a bad person. I think that’s a huge part of the story as well. Emily’s finding her version of other fucked up people, and she feels less fucked up around them. I’ve found that in my own life. It’s a cool thing. I don’t think it’s bad.
I don’t think it’s bad either. It’s finding your home, your people. We meet Emily in the aftermath of unthinkable trauma. Is this a story about mental health and healing?
Witnessing it myself. witnessing other people experience tragedy and then move through grief, you hear a lot of talk about healing or coming out the other side. There’s so much conversation around what that looks like, with self-care and showing up for yourself. I always felt really averse to it. It annoyed me. I think the beginning of the film speaks to that. The therapeutic version of what getting help looks like is obviously very different from what Camp is showing. And again, I don’t have an answer for what you’re supposed to do. But I think that’s another question I was asking: how do you heal? Do you heal at all? Is that the end goal, or are we just trying to get better? It’s something I experienced in my own grief. And the answer, for me, at least now, is just that I’m not looking to get better. So I felt like I hadn’t. I found it hard to find people to have those conversations with. And I think that’s what I ultimately wanted to make a film about.
I love that unanswered question. In my own experience, I’ve had to reframe what healing actually looks like. There’s not really an endpoint. It’s just finding a way to keep going. There’s also an element of sacrifice in this story, particularly regarding another counselor named Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith). What role does she play in Emily’s journey?
For me, Jo is this human embodiment of Charlie, Emily’s friend. As Jo, she had a life at this camp before meeting Emily, and then was kind of taken over by Charlie’s spirit. I think a lot of people view Emily’s final choice as horrendous and tragic. In a way it is, but for me, if Jo becomes her angel, it’s almost like a self-sacrifice. Jo knows that by sacrificing herself, she’ll be giving Emily power to move forward. In the original script, the girls were supposed to bring out another counselor, JB (Aidan Laudersmith), and burn his body. But I just thought, there’s no way sacrificing this guy could give the girls enough power. There’s just no way, right? Logically, that just didn’t line up for me.
I’m glad you mentioned JB, because he has his own tragic arc. How do men factor into the world of Camp?
The way men factor into my world is so bizarre. I have such little respect for them in my films, which is something I’ve been called on. I think I have to challenge myself in the future to make a movie about a boy because, these boys … It’s not that the men in my films aren’t redeemable, but there’s no depth to these characters. They’re just treated with such disrespect. I don’t know why I do that, actually. That’s something for me to look into. It was the same with Honeycomb. They’re just such peripheral characters. I’ve had people ask about Kayne (Henri Gillespi), the scary guy at the fire, what happens to him? I just think, I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s not the point of the story.
Well, I can say after a lifetime of watching women on the periphery of the story, the course correction feels nice. In a similar vein, I’m in love with your homepage, avalonfast.com. There’s an image of girls on a film set and then a still from Honeycomb in which a blood-covered girl is screaming at the sky. And in the middle, it just says Girl Horror. It’s a really powerful statement that gives me chills. How do you define Girl Horror, and what draws you to these types of stories?
I was obsessed with the term when I started making my movies. It was something I’d come up with to kind of brand myself and describe what I was doing. Then I went through a period where I felt like it was a bit gender exclusive and didn’t interest me as much. But now I’ve come full circle on the term. I think it’s a bit of a commentary on youth and the horror of growing up female. But I think everybody can relate to that experience. I don’t want it to feel like this exclusive thing, that I make movies exclusively for girls, because I don’t think I do. I’m interested in exploring what Girl Horror means. Originally, it was just a title, something I came up with, and now it’s become something that resonates with people. You said it gave you chills. That’s cool for me to hear because there’s obviously some depth there.
Are you working on anything new?
Yes. I am actually making a movie about a boy. That’s the next thing.
That’s exciting! The more I think about feminism, the more I end up coming back to men and boys, because they have a place in the world of Girl Horror too.
Absolutely. It’s all just part of being human.
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