By the time Gilbert came on board, Christina Ricci had already expressed interest and had director approval. The Samuelsons showed her the result of their first two collaborations with Gilbert, the TS Eliot story Tom & Viv (1994) and the biopic Wilde (1997). These did most of the convincing, after which director and star had what the former describes as “a very nice meeting” and Granada gave the go-ahead. From then on, with Gilbert at the reins, the remainder of a stellar cast - including Welsh heartthrob Ioan Gruffudd, New Zealander Kerry Fox (fresh off this summer’s highly controversial Intimacy) and top British actors Stephen Dillane and Simon Russell Beale - was assembled.
|
“What I like about it actually - and what really sold it to me - is that it’s a British horror film in the way that The Wicker Man and films like that were”
|
But, insists the director, it’s Ricci who holds the whole thing together. “It was Christina’s attachment that made it seem a quality thing for me,” says Gilbert, who has been hugely impressed by both the preparation and the on-set professionalism of the young actress.
“She’s an absolute dream to work with,” he says. “She makes it all seem so easy. What is remarkable is there doesn’t seem to be any strain. Unlike most actors, she just doesn’t show the process at all: she turns on a dime.
director Brian Gilbert
|
“She’s very smart, very knowledgeable about anything to do with the work: every question is a real question. She’s terrific with notes or with her own thoughts. And she’s incredibly professional. For example, she was on one of these country-house staircases on set. We’d shot the first half of the scene several weeks earlier, and when we came back to do the second half the focus-puller said, ‘Christina, do you remember where you were on the stairs?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I was five stairs from the top and 13 stairs from the bottom.’ She knew exactly! She hits focus, and she can repeat actions perfectly and naturally – all the technical side she just has off with great accomplishment.”
The Gathering will not short-change horror fans, says Gilbert. But he hopes that it will appeal to a much broader audience, as did both The Wicker Man (one of the very few cult movies in the British canon) and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, which had the same sense of dark forces undermining an apparently beautiful surface.
Stephen Dillane
|
“There’s quite a lot of action,” he says, “and, yes, there’s quite a few special effects. But it’s not a theme park movie in that respect. Mainly it works by suggestion and, I hope, being scary. And provoking.”
Kerry Fox and Harry Forrester