Exclusive Q&A with From The Dark Filmmaker Conor McMahon

A young couple find car trouble in the countryside of Ireland to be the least of their worries when the sun sets and horror rises in Conor (Stitches) McMahon's From The Dark. With his latest film now available on Blu-ray, DVD, VOD, and Digital Download from Dark Sky Films, we caught up with McMahon, who talked about putting an Irish twist on creatures of the night, filming a memorable scene in which a spider walks across lead actress Niamh Algar's face, and much more.

From The Dark takes place in the fog-shrouded Irish countryside, where there are real-life backstories of preserved bodies found in the bogs. Did these stories inspire From The Dark in any way?

Conor McMahon: Well, what I was inspired by was the fact that a lot of these bodies uncovered in the bog were found tied up with fatal wounds. These people hadn’t just fallen into the bog, they had been killed and dumped there. So from that I started to think about why these bodies might have been killed and was it for a good reason? Were these people that should never again see the light of day? There was also something ritualistic about the killings, so that allowed me to play with the idea of something slightly supernatural.

The creature unearthed in From The Dark is nocturnal and can't stand the light, traits it passes on to those it infects. Do you consider your monsters in this film to be vampires, or do you look at them as something else?

Conor McMahon: For sure we borrowed heavily from the vampire mythology, but we also tried to give it an Irish twist with the bog body element. I’ve always been interested in vampires and part of the thing that scared me growing up was the idea of something like a walking corpse waiting outside your house. That was the image that sort of stuck in my head. So I didn’t want them to talk or be suave or anything like that.

Darkness means death for this film’s young couple, and shadows can be found at every turn with a small light supply at their disposal. Was it particularly challenging or exciting to film this movie with limited lighting and a dominating darkness?

Conor McMahon: Yes, it was something we talked about a lot and tested a number of different approaches. I was trying to mimic what your eye might see in the dark, so in the film I didn’t want it to be overlit. In the beginning, I wanted to light the film with only the lights the characters had, but this became problematic when the characters didn’t have any light sources and you’d just see black. It’s something you could get away with for short periods, but not really for the whole film. So we had a compromise and used very limited lighting. Also another challenge we faced was the fact that we were shooting during the summer, so we only had about 5 hours of darkness each night. We had to block out the windows of the house and shoot some scenes during the day.

Many fright fans are fond of your 2012 film, Stitches, a gore-drenched horror comedy with clowns that’s a bloody blast from start to finish. Tonally, From The Dark is more straight-on horror. Did you consciously want to direct a different type of horror film this time around?

Conor McMahon: Yeah, I really wanted to try my hand at something that didn’t have any jokes in it. Most of what I’ve done before has always had comedy in it and I just wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do something different. I might return back to comedy horror with my next film, so it’s not like I’ve turned my back on comedy, but it’s a case of always trying to do something different from the last film and keep yourself interested and try doing something new. That’s what I love about horror too, there are so many types of films within the genre, that it would be great to try as many of them as possible.

From The Dark looks like it was an intense, physical, largely nighttime shoot. Looking back, do you have a favorite on set moment that stands out?

Conor McMahon: One of the most memorable moments for me was filming the scene where the spider crawls across her [actress Niamh Algar's] face. It was one of those scenes that could have gone any way. We didn’t know how the spider would react. I didn’t know if Niamh would be okay with me putting a spider on her face. So that day we had the art department hunting around for some suitable spiders. And at the start, we put the spider on her face and it fell down into her jacket, but she stayed very still and we kept filming and slowly the spider started to crawl back out. It was one of those moments where everyone on set was really tense watching it on the monitor and when we finally called cut everyone started clapping.

With From The Dark now available on VOD and Digital Download from Dark Sky Films, what’s on deck for you that you can tease for our readers?

Conor McMahon: I’m working on a few different projects, again some of them comedy horror and some more serious in tone. I’ve been working on a film about witches for a few years and I’m really excited to get that off the ground. It’s a creature I’d love to bring to the screen.

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