We chat to Jonathan Zaurin, director of Derelict, about the current state of the UK film industry and trying to get genre films made in an industry that values celebrity over originality.
This story was originally published in Film Stories Issue 52.
Derelict feels like a small miracle of a film. Mostly told in stunning black-and-white, it’s a familiar, but effective story of the destructive nature of revenge. Suzanne Fulton plays Abigail, a woman desperate for revenge over the murder of her father. Abigail’s journey to redemption is intercut with the story of two brothers, Matt and Ewan. The film recently had its world premiere at FrightFest 2024, and was warmly received by both the audience and press.
Zaurin, who originally hails from France but has settled in Hereford, has worked in horror films for most of his career. His love of the genre dates back to an old video rental store where he’d go to with his dad and be introduced to the worlds of Brian De Palma and David Lynch.
Greatly impressed by Derelict, we caught up with Zaurin for an extensive chat about not just making genre films, but the entire state of the film industry and just how difficult it is to get a film made and distributed in the UK.
Derelict isn’t a horror film, but it’s certainly horrifying at points. Is it fair to say that you’ve kind of worked in horror primarily as a director for the most part in your career?
Yeah, it’s always kind of been a mix. Even in my short films, I think I’ve made three horror and then more of an action short, and then our first feature was a horror film. I do think it comes out in Derelict as well. It’s a neo-noir, but [there are] parts that are definitely from my horror roots, where we definitely are out to disturb, at the very least, even though we don’t show too much. The thing about horror is, I love it, so it’s going to come through. Maybe not if I do a very serious, intimate drama. But with something like Derelict, it’s bound to come out, because the real story is horrifying.
Is there a specific film that ignited your love for horror?
I don’t think there’s a specific film, but there’s a specific place and a specific kind of event, I would say. I was born in the 80s and by the time I was seven or eight, we had these video clubs in my town, and one of them was called King Video. My dad was a huge movie horror kind of fan [and] I grew up with the works of Brian De Palma, David Lynch, Eraserhead, all this stuff. On Saturdays, we’d go and rent a couple of videos. And he’d always pick one for himself, a horror film or something like that. And I’d be like “I’m curious about this.” My dad being very open minded, from a young age I was allowed to push the boundaries. It wasn’t always successful, sometimes I got very terrified. I think that thing ignited the love for horror, because it was the films themselves but it was also sharing [them] with my dad.
When did making films become like a viable career option? Because I think when you love films, you always think, you’re going to be a director. And when you get older, you realise it’s not the most stable of professions.
That’s a tricky one, because I think from the age of about six, seven, that’s what I wanted to do, and it never changed, which is weird. Most kids go, “I want to be a policeman” and then realities of life strike them and they end up doing something else, but I always wanted to [make films].
When I was 19, with my first short film, I got access to digital equipment. It wasn’t great equipment, but I got access to it for free, and we’d shoot over a couple of months. We shot on weekends. The film isn’t any good, but I thought: “I could do this”, so I carried on. I did a feature documentary in the desert with the Tuaregs, because my dad went on a trip, so I followed him.
Then I moved to the UK, I was 22 and I had to start from scratch. None of my contacts were here, I had to start again. And it took me a very long time, about 10 years. I decided to do a BA to build my portfolio. And while doing my BA, I obviously had the experience of doing all these films along the way. I made a short film called Portraits, which [had] a successful festival life. I thought, “I can do this”, I quit my day job, and I started working for Arrow and for Imprint, doing a lot of editing for them, filming interviews. So I made a living mostly out of that, and then reinvested the money to do features. It’s a process in itself and you’re right, it’s a very insecure situation, it really is. But I love it. That’s all I love doing.
Read more: FrightFest 2024 | Derelict review
But you didn’t go to film school?
I went to college for a short term course. It was not a great film course and I realised pretty quickly that people that were supposed to be teaching me knew less about film than I did. It was weird, but I took that opportunity as a chance to build a portfolio. You go: “Maybe I won’t learn a lot, but I’ll have access to equipment, access to people, and these people that are going to help me secure locations”.
I did a bunch of short films that worked really well. It didn’t work well enough to get me on any producer or studio map, but it worked well enough that I made contacts, and I met some actors, I met musicians and it allowed me to make those films on tight budgets, which is the main difficulty that people run to. They go, “Well, I want to make a film, but it’s going to be a money pit”, and it can be. You have to find ways to be able to do things on the cheap, if nobody’s going to help you do it any other way.
There are some really incredible British horror films, like The Descent and Saint Maud, and we’ve produced some really great genre directors. But in the UK, is it particularly difficult to get a horror film made? How do you find financing?
That’s a question I can’t even answer, because so far, I’ve been unsuccessful finding financing. You run into a loophole where you go to a production company and they like your project, and they go, “Okay, but you have a name attached?” No I don’t, I need money to get the name. And they go “Well, get a name attached.” You’ll go to a name and they’ll ask “Have you got the money?” No, because they want a name attached to give us the money. “We won’t attach the name until it’s fully funded.” You end up in this loop.
In America, horror is kind of a safe genre. It’s cheap to make, but it almost always turns a profit.
We get more snobbery around genre in the UK, even though we have a tradition of amazing genres with studios like Hammer.
I think the problem is that digital opened the doors to… Basically, it’s the democratization of filmmaking. Anyone can make a film these days. That’s great, because new talent can emerge, but the flipside of that is that it’s a flooded [market]. Everyone is making films and trying to get distribution, but distributors are going “Nah.” You can self-distribute, but it’s very easy to lose your film in that amount of stuff being made.
In turn, distributors don’t want to take a chance, because it costs a lot of money to get a film found out. You have to get it to festivals, and you’ve gotta get a massive advertising campaign. We are at a dead end at the moment, especially the indies. There’s no support system for us. That’s how you get a lot of indies that kind of jump into the whole Amityville template, Amityville In Space, Amityville Vs. Godzilla, it’s endless. It’s what gets you exposure. We don’t have the studios that Hollywood has.
It’s a very closed loop, isn’t it?
You could argue sometimes the quality of the films has to do with why they don’t get picked up, right? Not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I think you’d have a hard time telling me Derelict is a badly made film, for example. Still, we are struggling, it’s an uphill battle all the time. So it’s not just the quality of the film. Even the well made ones don’t get picked up.
If you don’t have the resources, there’s only so much that you can execute. But it seems that they’re unwilling to even see the potential and then lend a hand to actually fulfilling that.
Honestly, they put fences up that are non existent. They put them up themselves. We got into a situation with Derelict where we talked to quite a few distributors. They all said the same thing. It’s really strange, it’s even worse than if you’ve made a bad film. They go, “We really love it, but we can’t distribute it.” Why? “Black and white.” Oppenheimer just made how many millions? I know it’s Christopher Nolan, but it’s in black and white. “Oh, it’s the duration as well. It’s two hours.” It’s not two hours and 57 minutes, it’s just two hours. “Oh, there’s no names attached, it’s tricky.” It didn’t cost anything to make, so to buy it, it would literally cost you nothing… I think we’re in a really bad situation, particularly in regards to distribution in the UK. I think if distribution was healthier, then maybe the filmmaking market would be healthier.
If you think about some of the best British horror films, like early Neil Marshall and Ben Wheatley, how are we supposed to find the next Neil Marshall, the next Ben Wheatley, if no one’s willing to take a chance on a new, up and coming filmmaker who doesn’t yet have the resources?
They still do. Look at St Maud. That’s a new filmmaker and it’s a stunner of a film. Look at, say, Kill List or The Descent, they’re films of almost a different age. Filmmaking has moved on since. Netflix practically destroyed this industry. They have a business model where risk taking is pretty much impossible. I’m simplifying but if you put that in the middle of an already unhealthy industry… How many actual indie films breakthrough to Netflix now? Not a lot.
It’s funny, because Netflix, when it started producing its own content, was marketed as a safe haven for filmmakers, because someone like David Fincher went over and there was supposedly granted unprecedented creative freedom. I feel like that’s very much gone now.
David Fincher, Martin Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro. Who wouldn’t want them? Jonathan of Hereford, making his little £35,000 film… Netflix doesn’t give a shit about me. I can see why, I’m not blaming them, but you hear it from Hollywood people as well, how disruptive Netflix has been to this industry. And unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to get any better, because now we have AI to contend with as well.
At the same time, I think [AI] might actually finally finalise the digital revolution we’ve all been waiting for. Everybody’s been like, ah, with digital cameras and computers now it’s going to be a digital revolution, all sorts of new talents are going to emerge. And it hasn’t been the case at all. If anything, it’s just become murky and everybody’s making films, including me. I’m one of them, I couldn’t make a film on a film camera! But the digital revolution itself, this whole idea of it’s going to be heaven for indies, hasn’t happened.
However, once the whole thing collapses with the rise of AI and streaming… Because the thing about streaming, it was like, it’s great for film lovers, access to all these films. Then everybody started doing their own streaming services and now they’re adding adverts to it. Basically, we’ve gone back to cable TV. That’s all we did, and that has kind of destroyed cinema, and that has made it an impossible situation for indies. When this whole thing collapses – which it will – maybe we’ll finally see the end of that digital revolution we’re waiting for, but until then, it’s going to be very much an unsympathetic situation for filmmakers like myself, that is for sure.
So do you have any plans to maybe go to America where it seems that it’s a little bit more friendlier?
I’m stubborn. Not only do I not want to go to America, but I also don’t want to necessarily go to London. London’s fine, but I think what makes Derelict special [is] the fact we didn’t make it in London. You have a setting that’s different, it’s not what you would expect. It might be a simple revenge story, but the setting and structure and the way that we go at it make it an original film.
This whole London-centric thing is annoying, so imagine how I feel about the Hollywood-centric thing. That’s not to say if tomorrow Hollywood called me and said: “Hey, do you want a 30 million dollar check to do a Marvel movie?” I would say no to it. I probably wouldn’t. But that’s not going to happen, so until we’re in that situation, I’m stubborn. I actually think that could be a remedy in the long term. People going, no more London, no more big studios, no more of this. Let’s make smaller films that might be different, that might be interesting.
What’s the one thing that you think needs to change for the industry to become more hospitable for young, emerging filmmakers, specifically working in genre cinema?
That’s a complicated question. There is a need for infrastructures to start believing in smaller things and actually catch up with the times. Because, guess what? The star system is dead. So when you keep insisting that people get a famous name in the film, the only thing you’re doing is you’re perpetuating a system that doesn’t want to discover new talents. And I don’t say that for myself, necessarily, but when you look at Derelict, you can see actors in there that are great, right? Suzanne [Fulton] is amazing, Pete [Bird] is amazing, Darren [James King] , Dean [Kilbey], they’re all amazing. They’re not names, but they are amazing. That needs to become enough.
I just want to make good films with the right people that are good for the parts, with the right composer, the right script writer, etc. I don’t get this obsession with celebrity, this obsession with having known things. I know it’s reassuring for the audience. It’s less risky, but I just think we need to normalise risk and, actually, glorify risk taking. Because, at the moment, what’s happening is we have an entire industry that is celebrating celebrity and the achievements of celebrity, or the achievement of franchises because it’s safe, but I think we need to get back to a situation where we do celebrate the risk itself. Taking a risk is a positive, not a negative.
Until then, that means there is no infrastructure for people who are making small things. I don’t know if you saw Tom Rutter’s The Pocket Film Of Superstitions. It’s a tiny film. It’s not technically perfect, but it’s such an amazing little thing. It’s so odd, it’s so strange, it’s so magical. That’s the kind of thing I want to see pushed out there. Until the infrastructures decide that risk and originality is a good thing to throw themselves at, we’re stuck. If it worked, that would be fine, but it doesn’t work. The amount of star filled movies that flop hard, that’s not what people want anymore. I think people want their franchises. I think they also want original stuff and weird stuff and stuff that takes risks. If anything, Oppenheimer proved that not long ago.
What can we expect with Derelict? Are you talking to anyone about distribution?
We’re trying. At the moment, we’re talking to some fairly big players, one of whom would be maybe my dream home for Derelict.
