WAKE WOOD

“A LOT MORE THAN YOUR AVERAGE SCARE-FEST… HAMMER CONTINUE THEIR RETURN TO FORM.” (FOUR STARS) – BESTFORFILM.COM.

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A brand new horror film from the legendary and recently revitalized Hammer Films, Wake Wood superbly evokes the spirit and tone of the studio’s revered classics with a chilling supernatural tale that also combines the menacing paranoia of ‘The Wicker Man’ with the creeping dread of ‘Pet Sematary’.

Directed by David Keating (The Last Of The High Kings; KM64: Birth Of A Skatepark) from a script by producer Brendan McCarthy (Outcast; Breakfast On Pluto; The Mighty Celt; Omagh), Wake Wood stars BAFTA nominated actors Aidan Gillen (The Wire), Eva Birthistle (Middletown; Breakfast On Pluto; Ae Fond Kiss) and Timothy Spall (Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows; The King’s Speech) in a contemporary story of the occult.

In an attempt to cope with the grief and despair of losing their only child Alice (Ella Connolly), mauled to death by a savage dog, veterinarian Patrick Daly (Gillen) and his pharmacist wife Louise (Birthistle) move from the city to the remote Irish village of Wake Wood. With Patrick taking over the local vet’s practice and Louise working in the village chemist store, the couple soon become friends with many of the local landowners, farmers and their families.

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Their acceptance as members of this small but close community leads them to the discovery of an ancient pagan ritual practised by the people of Wake Wood in order to help ease the sudden loss of a loved one. This tradition, secretly preserved for many centuries, enables the grief-stricken to bring a deceased person back from the dead for a period of three days within one year of their passing, allowing them to say a final farewell to the departed before they make their final journey to the spirit world. For Patrick and Louise, this represents a miraculous opportunity to see Alice one more time and their request for the villagers’ help in realising their wish is reluctantly granted. But the ritual is bound by strict rules and conditions, which, if broken, demand a terrible price be paid.

A “hair-raising” (Matt Glasby, Total Film) and “spellbindingly eerie and deliciously grotesque” (Robbie Collins, News of the World) shocker that manages to stir the emotions as much as it chills the spine, Wake Wood is a new and worthy addition to Hammer’s hallowed canon of classic horror films.

Vertigo Films will be releasing Wake Wood (cert. 18) at UK cinemas on 25th March 2011 and the DVD release (£15.99) will follow on 28th March 2011 courtesy of Momentum Pictures.

Special Features include:

  • Interview with cast and crew
  • Deleted scenes
  • Trailer
  • Teaser trailer.

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OUTCAST IS OUT NOW ON UK DVD

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New UK realist horror OUTCAST hits DVD today. Forget the comparisons with Let The Right One In. Although both films share a need to place the horror genre in places where people actually live and work, as opposed to gothic castles or grim torture dungeons, the two films swerve wildly apart in their tone and story. Outcast may surprise you. Here is a UK horror that reflects our country and the grim realities of life for many of us. Watching the film and remembering the ugly sinkhole estates of my own home town, I’m moved to wonder about the nature of horror. Yes, when a mythic, ancient evil comes to the housing blocks and cul-de-sacs of the films chief locations, the implications of this force of nature unleashed to maim and kill are horrific… But life in modern Britain in some of the UK’s poorest neighbourhoods can also be pretty terrifying.

Thanks to the filmmakers behind OUTCAST, this contrast between the grim housing scheme reality of recent UK movie RED ROAD (which shares a cast member in Kate Dickie) and the kind of Paganistic horror you’d find in a film like The Wickerman or Blood on Satan’s Claw are married with surprising ease…

Now, enjoy this playlist of clips from the movie. Watch out in particular for the one I titled “Lost Forever”, it’s a textbook example of how to instill the cinematic creeps in an audience with any need for blood or violence, just a few, well chosen words, plus, there’s also plenty of clips featuring Karen Gillan for all the DOCTOR WHO fans out there…

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