CULT CINEMA
Carmilla054 | W W W. S C I FI N OW.CO.U K
worked in theatre as an interpretive art form
I didn’t have an aversion to something being
done before. You can see the same thing
being interpreted in different ways so that in
itself was exciting; seeing what my version
would be.
“At the time I came to it, it was reflecting
a lot of what was happening in the world in
terms of how we were behaving as a society
and those aspects of human nature that
were coming to the fore were very obvious
to me in the book. It felt like the right time
to explore it in this way, to look at how
prejudice and hate towards an outsider has
become so ingrained as part of normal life.
We’ve started to accept that as the norm.”
Themes of fear, persecution and sexual
awakening are key in Carmilla. As far as the
fantasy and vampiric elements go, Harris
decided to take her interpretation in a new
direction. “I tried to really think about,
what is a vampire? Where does the vampire
come from in literature and what does it
represent?” she says. “For me, a vampire
has always represented the feeling of being
in love. That feeling, when you have fallen
deeply in love, and you just want to find a
way to keep the person or create a mutual
pact! I guess that’s really weird, but it’s just
this visceral urge where you just want to
attach to somebody and make sure they’re
yours forever and ever. I really relate to
vampirism in that way, which isn’t actually
scary it’s just very practical. I guess what I
was seeing in Carmilla was definitely that
first coming-of-age moment of love. I was
trying to reflect first love and using that idea
of vampirism in that way. So, it’s not this
scary thing, it’s a feeling.”
Harris’ conversations with Hannah Rae on
set mainly focused on loss of innocence, first
love and coming-of-age. “The way that we
saw the relationship between Carmilla andLara was very innocent,” explains Rae.
“Lara hasn’t grown up with a lot of
interaction with other kids her age. When
Carmilla is introduced, it’s like her coming-
of-age, through their relationship, finding
out who she is and how she deals with the
situation. She’s never experienced a girl
like her, her own age before. We had lots of
chats about the film, and I drew on my own
experiences of being a 15-year-old and trying
to find out who I am.”
Phil Selway from Radiohead (who also
has themes and music from Legion, The
Handmaid’s Tale and iZombie under his
belt), composed the score for Carmilla. “He
came on board very early,” says Harris. “The
score and sound design are half the film so it
was important that it wasn’t left until the end
of production. He had read the script very
early on as he’s a percussionist which I felt,
from a storytelling point of view, made initial
sense. When he read the screenplay, he said
there was so much percussion in the script
with the crunching leaves, crashing rain and
crackling fire, so he developed a score that
elevated the story. He gave it an element that
I hadn’t even thought about. He came on set
and he absorbed the environment. The scoreLara forms a bond with the
mysterious Carmilla.This version of Carmilla is
set during the 1780s.