by Liam Ridolfi
Recently wrapping production, Australian possession horror film Diabolic is co-written and directed by Daniel J Phillips, whose 2019 indie Awoken showed a creative filmmaker with a knack for the cinematic.
Diabolic follows a woman who joins a healing ceremony led by the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), which all slowly turns horrific. What is your philosophy on horror storytelling and how do you balance traditional tropes with original ideas?
“I think my approach to any project is to lead with the story and the characters. I’m not necessarily a mad horror guy, even though my first two films have been horrors. But I think the reason why is because I’ve been really interested by those individual stories.
“I think my approach to horror is to ask ‘where’s the drama?’, ‘Where’s the reality between the characters?’, ‘Where’s the truth in all of this, so that we can ground it in some sort of reality?’ And then, it just happens to be a horror. I think that way, when it’s real and grounded, the horror can work better because I don’t do a very outlandish schlocky horror. Even though I love those, and they’ve got their place, for me it’s always going to have some sort of grounding in reality. That’s something that helps me avoid some of those tropes.”
Diabolic explores themes of faith and the supernatural. How did your own beliefs or experiences influence the writing process?
“I’m a staunch atheist and another coincidence is that I’ve done two movies in a row that have religious aspects to them! I think the attraction to this, and my interest in this particular thing, is more about the fact that the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, which is a huge background for this film, is very much a cult that is an offshoot of a religion that uses faith to justify some of the awful things it does to particularly women, but to lots of people.
“I’m always interested in other worlds, other cultures, and I think with FLDS, it’s literally like they’ve been living on an island for the last 150 years, and they created this moat around their beliefs and values that no one can really penetrate. I see it more as a cult movie than a religious movie.”
You’ve spoken about packing every frame of Diabolic with dread. Can you elaborate on any specific techniques or elements you employed to achieve that relentless feeling?
“When finalising the script for production, one of the things that I did was try and chart the tension levels in each individual scene and act and try to understand where the audience is at every moment. And from that understanding, ‘okay, at the end of this scene or at the end of this moment, are we releasing the tension or are we keeping the tension going? Are we rolling that into the next scene?’ And then using that to inform what the vision is for that particular scene coming up, so we can keep people on the hook if that’s what we’re doing. Knowing certain types of framing and things that we did to just create a sense of unease, whether it’s where we put the camera or simply doing things like leaving space for the score. The movie’s a slow burn that’s about tone and creating a mood for people that’s unsettling rather than thrill a minute, which I think is the way horror films are going. Thank God!”
What do you think distinguishes Australian horror from other international films in the genre?
“Diabolic is set in America with American characters, because it’s based on the true story of someone from Utah. It’s an Australian film in that it was made here. But in regard to Australian horror in general, it’s an interesting mix that we end up with because although Australia has its own cultural identity, particularly in its filmmaking, I think with genre stuff, we always borrow from a lot of different cultures, but predominantly US to understand what type of movies we’re making here. But what ends up coming out of that is this very interesting melting pot where you’ve got some Hollywood influence and you’ve got Australian sensibilities in there, and you end up with something super unique.”
Diabolic will be released in 2025
