Five-Legged Iguana

¡QUÉ HORROR! 2011
Candidate # 18

WAKE WOOD
(March 2011)


Take Pet Sematary and transplant it into the grand British horror tradition of The Village with a Dark Secret, and you’ve got the makings of David Keating’s Wake Wood. As the third title from the recently reconstituted Hammer Films, it’s the second one to garner ¡Qué Horror! attention.*
With Timothy Spall, The Children’s Eva Birthistle, and a creepily effective score by Michael Convertino, this one disturbs on some very primal levels. The script by Keating and Brendan McCarthy, from a story by McCarthy, also, quite incidentally, explores some of the themes I delved into in my horror novella, Craving. So if you happen to have read and liked that (and if you may forgive me my shameless pimping of my own stuff in this mention), then Wake Wood should be right up your alley.

Parting shot: Brendan McCarthy has produced some notable titles in the past like Freeze Frame, Isolation, and Breakfast on Pluto. He’s also one of the producers on Wake Wood, as well as another title I’m keeping an eye out for, Outcast.

* The second title, The Resident, with Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, didn’t really rise above, as Let Me In and Wake Wood did, despite having old school Hammer poster boy Christopher Lee in a brief role.

(Wake Wood UK quad courtesy of empireonline.com.)