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Reykjavík_Grapevine_issue_16_2015_master_WEB_ALL
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14<br />
The Reykjavík Grapevine<br />
Issue 16 — 2015<br />
‘Mara’ is slated for a 2016 release. You can follow<br />
the film’s progress on its self-titled Facebook page.<br />
Grown-Up Fairytales:<br />
On the set of<br />
Elvar Gunnarsson’s ‘Mara’<br />
Killing Your Darlings With<br />
A Lawnmower To The Face<br />
Words by Ciarán Daly<br />
Photos by Art Bicnick<br />
Despite possessing a desolate landscape, long winters, and<br />
prominent bodysnatcher demographic (sorry, Alþingi), Iceland<br />
is not really a landmark when it comes to horror movies—even<br />
though it certainly seems like the kind of place<br />
that should be. Thanks to a burgeoning national cinema,<br />
though, the country might just be about to smack intestines-first<br />
straight into the horror buff’s world map. Enter<br />
‘Mara’ (“Mare”), a new, independent Icelandic horror film<br />
that’s looking to make waves in the world’s oceans of blood.<br />
We roll up the gravel path, wheels kicking<br />
up scree into the fading summer air.<br />
The sun is working its way west. Dusk<br />
has started to gnaw at the top of the<br />
misty, rolling hills of the valley.<br />
A faint, blood-orange smog creeps<br />
across the sky. You roll down the window,<br />
but close it quickly again, the dust<br />
hot in your nose and eyes. Across the<br />
way, a salmon lake stands, near-drained<br />
in parts, the faint silhouettes of fishermen<br />
standing solitary in the wash.<br />
The guesthouse, our last refuge of<br />
warmth and supplies, fades into the<br />
shadows of the northern foothills—its<br />
security light a star, standing to attention<br />
in the small solar system of those dotted<br />
across the rest of the valley.<br />
There are no lights here, no path to<br />
follow. Once night falls upon this place—<br />
a sweet, velvet darkness—all bets are off.<br />
The cliffs grow up around you like the<br />
walls of an ancient fort. The moon glares<br />
from the south upon the mouth of the<br />
valley—your one way in, your one way<br />
out.<br />
The house, a particularly Evil Dead<br />
number, rolls into view. Creaking, rusty<br />
orange iron is punctuated by a kitchen<br />
window swinging in the wind, smacking<br />
into its dark, wooden frame. A large<br />
lighting rig and curtain cling to a side<br />
window in the growing tumult.<br />
The nearest main road is a 2.5km hike<br />
away. Water is already in short supply.<br />
Did I forget anything…? Two crew members<br />
fiddle with camera rails and filters.<br />
A dog howls in the distance.<br />
We have arrived.<br />
“A horror film is really<br />
just about fucking with<br />
people.”<br />
When I recount my last horror film experience<br />
to Elvar Gunnarsson, the director,<br />
writer, and cinematographer of<br />
‘Mara’, he laughs. Thanks to his nearencyclopaedic<br />
knowledge of the genre,<br />
he immediately knows which film I’m<br />
talking about. “Oh yeah, [Peter Jackson’s]<br />
‘Braindead’,” he grins. “The lawnmower,<br />
right?” He seems to know a suspicious<br />
amount of horror trivia for a horror director,<br />
writer, and cinematographer. I<br />
pursue this.<br />
“I have never directed a horror movie<br />
before,” Elvar admits, leaning back into a<br />
large wingback armchair. Dry ice from<br />
the previous scene permeates the air.<br />
“But when I was growing up, me and my<br />
sister weren’t allowed to watch Disney<br />
films. We weren’t allowed to watch fairytales<br />
with a happy ending. That was not<br />
allowed. So having not experienced all<br />
these fairytales and normal things that<br />
kids usually grow up with, I watched a<br />
lot of horror. That, and a lot of Hitchcock.<br />
These films talked to me as if they were<br />
talking to a kid, because I was a kid when<br />
I saw them.”<br />
‘Mara’ tells the story of an earnest<br />
young couple who have returned to<br />
Iceland from the US in order to live the<br />
American dream and open an Airbnb<br />
hostel in The Beautiful Icelandic Countryside.<br />
Upon their arrival, however,<br />
things quickly take a turn for the fuckedup.<br />
After the male lead, Pétur (Gunnar<br />
Kristinsson), discovers a mysterious<br />
hole in the cellar, his wife Mira (Vivian<br />
Ólafsdóttir, in her feature-length debut)<br />
is haunted by devastating night terrors.<br />
One morning, she wakes up pregnant<br />
with what seems to be an extremely rapidly<br />
growing baby—or so it would seem.<br />
That’s where the fun begins.<br />
It’s hardly Disney, but the story might<br />
have more in common with those fables<br />
than you’d expect from a horror film.<br />
As Elvar argues, “I think ‘Mara’ really<br />
is a story about growing up and becoming<br />
an adult—accepting that you have to<br />
take some kind of responsibility, and act<br />
according to those responsibilities,” Elvar<br />
explains. “Even though it’s set up as<br />
a horror movie, with devilish creatures<br />
and an Alien-like egg, I think that’s really<br />
what’s at the core of the story. While<br />
these elements would normally make<br />
more of a B-movie, we’re trying to make<br />
something slick.”<br />
Slick? Like, with blood?<br />
“It’s kind of like watching one of [David]<br />
Cronenberg’s '80s movies. His films<br />
were so absurd, but so slick, you know?”<br />
Elvar exclaims, enthusiastically. “For<br />
the average viewer, you’d just kind of<br />
have to believe what you were seeing because<br />
it was so slick and well-made. Like,<br />
take ‘Scanners’. Most of the film is quite<br />
normal—I mean, apart from the exploding<br />
head and people catching fire for no<br />
reason and stuff like that—but it’s actually<br />
telling quite a normal story in quite a<br />
normal way.<br />
“That’s kind of what we’re trying to<br />
do. If you were to read through the script,<br />
it would probably read like that sort of<br />
80s movie, but thanks to the freedom the<br />
genre gives you, the film has a very defi-