The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) has continued to foster outstanding home-grown movies. With Diabolic, Adelaide director Daniel J. Philips has created an edge-of-your-seat horror thriller based on real-life events from co-writer Ticia Madsen‘s time in a fundamentalist Mormon church. Whilst the forbidden love story was real, the dark malevolent horror is pure blood-curdling fantasy.
Walking the red carpet was Elizabeth Cullen, who plays the lead role of Elise. Despite leaving the church some ten years previously, Elise still suffers from blackouts that often lead to violent outcomes. Despite the reservations of her boyfriend Adam (John Kim), she is talked into revisiting the site of her trauma and taking a powerful hallucinogenic to rid her of her demons. Her hippie friend Gwen (Mia Challis) acts as a chaperone.
The cleansing ritual is reluctantly overseen by the mother Alma (a chilling performance from Genevieve Mooy), and her disappointment of a son (Robin Goldsworthy) who hasn’t even taken one wife. The ritual exposes an evil witch presence, Larue (Seraphine Harley), and a deeply suppressed connection with missing girl Clara (Luca Sardelis).
Once the horror unleashes, the jump scares come at you, with several satisfying twists and turns. The dark forces feel constantly just underneath the calm exterior of the remote wood cabin setting. The mood shifts from light and airy to dark and foreboding.
After the movie, AFF CEO Mat Kesting hosted a panel consisting of the director Daniel J. Phillips, actors Elizabeth Cullen, Robin Goldsworthy, Genevieve Mooy as well as cinematographer Michael Tessari. Phillips explained that whilst the movie is a typical American mid-west horror story, the najority of the movie was shot in Australia with Australian actors. It was a style choice to make the movie feel as authentically American as possible.
Elizabeth Cullen described the low-budget and fast-paced shoot as “intense and challenging, but one that she relished as an immensely rewarding experience.” The movie has a rich story, set in the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint (FLDS) Mormon region of the American mid-west, with particular sect accents that were hard to master. The cast bonded in valuable rehearsal time both prior to and during the shoot, and worked closely with dialect coach Jennifer Innes to develop the unique and varied accents.
David Wilson shared that the actors were encouraged to critique the action to improve the believability of the story.
Cinematographer Michael Tessari said his role was challenging at times, with so many scenes set in the forest at night. “Finding a look to our moonlight that allowed us to see performances while keeping the atmosphere dark and terrifying was a key discussion in pre-production.” The low budget meant working with the challenges of rain, mud, cold and darkness that were all working against the team. The movie was divided between forest locations and sets built in Adelaide’s Sunjive Studios.
Phillips explained that the movie has a deeper meaning of religious persecution, particularly against women in a patriarchal institute. He loved including the obvious tropes of the horror genre while keeping a sense of humour. He cited influences as diverse as Wes Craven and Steven Spielberg for his inspiration.
The sound design for the movie was crafted by Hamish Keen and Emma Bortignon who worked on Talk to Me, with composer Will Spartalis creating a chilling setting to the story.
Phillips also fielded a question on the open ending as leaving room for potential sequels. When questioned on one thing that audiences may miss he described the ritual slaughter of animals in the field as representative of character’s deaths. Spoiler alert: The fox, snake, rabbit and rat are all symbolic of different characters.
Our photographer John Goodridge captured these red carpet images from the beautifully restored art deco Piccadilly Cinema.
The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) is South Australia’s premier screen event, and runs until October 26th. For Films and Events check their webpage.
