by Dov Kornits
“We were one of the last Australian productions to be funded by Blackpills,” says Patricia Moore producer Chris Thompson about the French production company that invested in Australian short form genre fare with a view to capitalise on smart phone viewing habits in Europe. “It was a really exciting time to be making short form and Blackpills was driving a lot of that interest. Blackpills really did let us do what we wanted and allowed us to tell a story that I don’t think we would have been able to find funding solely in Australia for.
“We didn’t have any out-of-the-ordinary guidelines to follow, but when making the series we were very aware that it would have an international audience via the Blackpills platform, so tried to keep the story universal enough for it to translate into other countries.”
Set in rural NSW, Patricia Moore follows a family of cannibals living on a makeshift bus, the drama exploring family dynamics through a horror lens. Near Dark meets Bones and All, if you will.
We start by asking writer director Blake Fraser about the comparison. “Truthfully, I hadn’t read the book [Bones and All], but I researched around that book as well as other media that was out at the time, films like the Spanish We Are What We Are and the American remake. And also, when we’d just successfully sealed the agreement with Blackpills, Raw was on its way. Loved it! And I’ve since seen Bones and All, which is also great.
“The thing about cannibalism, it’s kinda this final taboo, and I think we’re seeing more films exploring this because it reflects our collective sense of nihilism. The self-destructive behaviour society is exhibiting and in a sense “consuming each other” to succeed. But what I noticed in this sub-genre, there was often a link to sexual desire. And while that makes for terrific analogies of the human condition, I think that also lends itself to a darkness that, while for horror purists is exciting, for a larger audience, can be really intense and off-putting.
“So, for this story I wanted to look at a dysfunctional family and how they attempt to hold it all together. I didn’t I want to look at the hunger as urge, but instead as a “curse” that the Moores are imprisoned by. And by doing that, it allowed me to lighten the tone, which I think makes it just a little more accessible to broader audiences. Because for me, I want the audience to get swept up by the complications of this family, trapped by how they must live, and looking for ways to enrich life to still feel like a family and even human, because, when you strip away humanity, what do you have to do to find it again?”

Playing other members of the family are Danielle Cormack and Les Hill. “Danielle came on first, because the mother character Marnie was always going to need a powerhouse performer and we needed to secure that early on,” Blake shares. “When we met, we had a whole lot of material, animatics, tone boards to help paint this world and as I talked Danielle through it. I explained that Marnie was a person that had the thankless task of being the “bad guy” to her family in order to keep them safe and then was searching for ways to inspire the family keep going. And thankfully that spoke speak to Danielle and she was a fantastic collaborator with endless ideas to add to the character.
“And when we were searching for Uncle Richie, it became really challenging. This character struggles with giving up his own life to protect his sister’s children. He has begun to tire of this endless bloody road they’re running on… and it’s testing moral conscience. Richie needed to be cynical, sadistic, and mounting with frustration that would lead him to become the most dangerous figure in the family. And that proved really hard to cast – mainly because of a particular tone we were going for. And we were less than a week out from filming and we still didn’t have a Richie. Then Danielle suggested Les. He came in just to meet, and he was really intrigued. He had this background in the army and was interested in the mechanics of how the family snared prey, and his wicked sense of humour was right. He was more Richie than I’d written, and in the end, he elevated the character, tenfold.”

Was it always conceptualised as a web series? “No, it was a film first that we’d gotten some nibbles of interest from but hadn’t gotten any substantial movement,” admits Fraser. “Then we teamed up with a French co-pro and short form was brought up. At the time, it was on the rise. There were quite a few platforms trying to bring drama onto mobiles phones to capture the youth market. And honestly, at first, I was resistant. Though there were notable exceptions to some incredible web series, my fear was we’d approach the story as ‘content’ as opposed to film. But thankfully, everyone was in agreeance that it was still going to be approached with the care and ambition of film. And when we were invited to pitch in Cannes, there was no looking back.”
Patricia Moore is streaming on SBS OnDemand from 26 October 2023