Interviews
William Brent Bell Co-Wrote the Theme Song for Folk Horror Movie ‘Lord of Misrule’ [Interview]
Director William Brent Bell (Orphan: First Kill) is back this week with brand new horror movie Lord of Misrule, a folk horror movie starring Tuppence Middleton and Ralph Ineson (The Witch, Green Knight). Magnet Releasing will release Lord of Misrule in theaters and on VOD on December 8, 2023.
Tom de Ville’s (The Quiet Ones) script has been said to echo The Wicker Man and Midsommar. Like The Wicker Man, Lord of Misrule also features original folk horror music, particularly a theme song featured over the end credits. It turns out that the folk song was co-written by Bell himself.
The filmmaker shared the story behind the folk horror tune in a recent chat with Bloody Disgusting (part one here) and also touched upon the mysterious new entity prowling the quaint town at the center of the folk horror nightmare.
Brent Bell explains, “It was always one of the designs of the movie to retell the real story, the history in a song. And of course, I freak out over something like that, and I geek out over it, and then I’m like, ‘Well, it’s over the credits. Is anybody ever going to hear it?’ Sam Lee is the guy that made it with me. He is the singer, and he’s also sang the first track. He’s incredible. I listened to his music during pre-production and during production, even when I was at home.
“Then, when we got to the point of the process, which was late, where I’m actually writing the song, I was trying to figure out a way to duplicate what he did in a way, his vibe. The producer said, ‘I’m friends with his brother; why don’t we just call him?’ So then, I have Sam Lee doing the song, writing it with me, who was the guy that was inspiring so much of my audio inspiration for the pre-production and production of the movie. So that whole thing, I’m glad you paid attention to it.”
Tuppence Middleton in LORD OF MISRULE, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
Lord of Misrule takes its name from an ancient custom that, per Wikipedia, sees a peasant appointed in charge of ‘”Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and wild partying.” While Bell’s folk horror tale isn’t set around Christmas, he explains how the rich production value stemmed from his research and the filming locations that already had folk festival customs ingrained in their history.
“It’s a harvest festival that happens in the fall and into the winter, which is when we shot it,” Brent Bell tells BD. “It’s very much that, and it comes so naturally to people from there. For me, it was like a kid in a candy store, everything about it, from the masks to the costumes to the fanfare and the festival and the dancers and everything. Then bringing on the crew like Libby Irwin, who did the costumes, the sketches, the designs of everything, the evolution of those characters, building that mask from concept to sketching, to sculpting and then creating it, it was just amazing the amount artistry and the taste of everybody in the UK.
“Everybody around there grows up around festivals like this, so they all have preconceived notions about certain aspects. For the festival, a lot of the people there, we brought in, they call them Mummer dancers, I think. It’s those people with the big sticks and all. There were a couple of groups of those people that they do that all throughout the year, and so we just had them come and do their thing for us. I think the oldest place we shot in was built in the 1400s. It was a bar. It was so rewarding, is the best way to describe it, to be able to bring all that stuff to life, and with no time and no money.”
Ralph Ineson in LORD OF MISRULE, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.
Lord of Misrule also sets itself apart from its folk horror ilk with an enigmatic entity, albeit one that lurks in the background compared to the villainous Jocelyn, played by Ralph Ineson.
“In the script, yeah, he was a goat,” Bell says of his folk horror entity. “He’s kind of a goat god with this gnarl of horns and antlers, so he more described what he was in the festival. For me, it was just trying to create something. The team that helped create it, that’s why they came onto the movie. They did a lot of things, but they came on to create that monster. Even though we just barely see them in the movie, it was really exciting trying to create something because in a movie, even if it says something on the page, it sounds very cool. It’s like, this is our opportunity to do something. We’re making a movie that’s going to live forever, so let’s try to make something.
“That doesn’t mean we have to reinvent the wheel completely to where it doesn’t fit the mythology at all, because the history of these mythologies is important to this movie because they’ve been around for a while for a reason. But to try to do something different and make it impactful was the goal.“
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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