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The Nun020 | w w w. s c i fi n ow.co.u k
There’s something special about the
mountains of Eastern Europe for genre fans.
From the black-and-white Universal classics
to the Hammer Horror favourites that ran
red with blood, the hills and forests of
Transylvania are steeped in that horror spirit
of old. While we may be in a golden age for
the horror genre, so much of what we’re
seeing is rooted in the present. We’re getting
suburban ghost stories, urban violence and
monsters stalking cornfields. When we heard
that the latest chapter in The Conjuring
universe would be set in Romania in 1952,
we were absolutely thrilled.
“It felt like an opportunity to step in the
footsteps of Dracula,” enthuses director Corin
Hardy. “And the movie has a classic sense to
it with castles and graveyards and smoke and
fog and castles and gaslight. I made a mood
book when I got the job, of inspirations and
it has visual inspiration, and there’s elements
of Dracula and The Exorcist and Hammer
movies and Italian horror and some of my
favourite stuff. Just travelling there
on a location scout and then building sets
and working with the Romanians as well,
there was a nice authentic sense of Gothic
horror going on.”
Hardy broke onto the genre scene back in
2015 with his Irish-set dark fairy tale The
Hallow; a bold and stylish mix of realism