Another Primer on ‘Walled In’

We looked into Mischa Barton’s current film, ‘Walled In’, recently. She’s still in Saskatchewan filming it. Fangoria had an interview with Karim Hussain, who is the cinematographer for the movie.

It’s a great insight into Mischa Barton’s character in the movie. Thus far, we’ve only had surface insight based on the plot of the movie. But I am intrigued by her "journey into her past" - that could call for some great acting!

Here are some relevant excerpts from the interview:

“It’s a movie that is contrary to how people usually see me; it’s directed by a French filmmaker named Gilles Paquet-Brenner, in his English-language debut,” Hussain tells Fango… Starring Mischa (THE SIXTH SENSE) Barton, Deborah Kara Unger from David Cronenberg’s CRASH and Cameron (GODSEND) Bright, WALLED IN is “a horror movie about a mad architect and a girl [Barton] who basically ends up in his building where very dodgy, twisted things happened during its construction,” Hussain explain. “It’s really this young woman’s journey into her past as she encounters this insane architect in this building. For me it’s great, because I’m working very closely with the director on not only the visuals but also the film’s content, and there has been a lot of great creative collaboration.

“I’m excited about working on it; it’s going to be an extremely disturbing horror film, while at the same time we’re really concentrating on working on the character’s psychology,” he continues. “I know everyone says that, but this one really does, and it’s the kind of movie that will deliver some rather intense, unpleasant moments. But at the same time, it’s based in architecture; it’s not just a movie made only for the teenage audience, we are taking the adult audience into play. I can actually say that it’s an excellent script and I’m ferociously proud to work on it; it’s a really special one.”

The creators of the film are balancing horror with commercial action and art-house flicks. So, not the normal horror cliché moments. Entertaining but also intelligent. Sounds great!

“It’s a very elaborate visual scheme we’re working up,” he says. “The important thing about cinematography is that everything has to reflect what’s going on in the character’s psyche—that it doesn’t become an aesthetic ruse or sort of commercial. If the camera’s going to move, it’s going to be for a reason; if a certain lighting scheme is there, it will be there for a reason. The whole movie is really about people molding—literally—into the architecture of this building, both visually in terms of the lighting and compositional sense, and also physically, as you’ll see. Also, it’s a lot about playing between light and darkness, because the lead character has a pathological terror of the dark; she always has to keep moving between them. We’re structuring the whole visual scheme of the film to have only very small pockets of light, to always keep her on edge.”

Tags: mischa barton, walled in, horror film, horror genre, mischa barton movies