Something like five years ago I optioned a feature script from writer James Hancock that I really liked, it took the teen slasher format and gave it a more European feel mixing up a bunch of horror essentials without cheese and with a psychological edge that just completely entertained. James and I spent quite a while developing it further, tried to get it funded, unsurprisingly failed with just a couple of tiny low budget shorts to our name and decided to come back to it a bit later in our careers.

A couple of years later I asked my friend Nicolas Fogliarini (a French director with a lot of music video and commercial credits) to take a look, Nicolas takes a completely different directing approach to me with real attention to slick technical mastery and an actual crew of technicians plus a big love of horror films I didn't have in nearly as much depth, I thought he could bring something new to it all; he liked it for all the same reasons I did, had a ton of ideas and so we sat down with James to develop it again. We didn't get anywhere and decided to come back to it a bit later in our careers.

About 6 months ago, Nicolas happened to show the script to director Xavier Gens who had Hitman fresh under his belt and knew Nicolas from way back, we figured he knew what was going on in the indie horror thriller arena having been "discovered" with a great example of one in Frontiere, and would be able to give us some new perspective on it; he liked it as much as we did and agreed to executive producer. So James sat down again, accompanied by new-born baby crying, to get another version together. We decided it already was a bit later in our careers and we really needed to nail it this time around so while James got writing Nicolas decided to shoot a teaser trailer; he got actors, crew and a studio together in France, I put camera, food and tent in my rucksack and headed to the Scottish Highlands to film some impressive brooding dark mountainous landscapes and a castle.

Nicolas cheerfully delivered a bunch of awesomely produced shots of actors getting bloody and screaming things whilst I found myself in what had to be the driest, sunniest and least dark brooding Scotland since records began wondering what my excuse was going to be. Fortunately the castle shoot turned out OK, braving a bunch of grumpy Highland bulls (more like buffalo than cows) and knee deep swamp wetland I got a pure blue sky in frame and our editor used it as a blue screen and put some proper evil clouds in. For the establishing landscapes I dug out some old footage shot at the top of a very windy mountain which the tripod didn't cope with as well as it could have; I guess we'll be coming back to them, but only in a month or so.