What better genre to tell the horror story of the national river pollution scandal than folk horror?
Cathy Wippell’s offer to River Action to be Executive Producer on her new film (she wrote it and stars in it too), Black Samphire, was a welcome surprise. She hooked me with her creativity and drive to tell a cautionary environmental story.
Together we discussed how impossible it is to ignore the news of rising water pollution levels. I recall Cathy, a keen open water swimmer, telling me that nowadays instead of just launching into the water, there are questions of hygiene and health to consider. She said, “That’s one of the horrible things about pollution; it makes people distrust the environment they themselves are destroying.”
And so we signed on and armed with a tiny budget and the creative juices of budding young filmmakers and actors. Black Samphire extracts a chilling tale from the stinking cesspool of our waterways that takes our shared mission to rescue Britain’s rivers to new audiences.
In the film, enveloped by the dark hues and eerie sounds of a ghostly marshland, a couple find themselves drawn to the strange black samphire whose tasty leaves are tinged by the effluent of a local sewage pipe.
A subtle, unsettling tale of insidious creeping horror unfolds; screaming darkly to an audience forewarned by folklore, and public outcry across the media of failing water companies, greedy multi-national agri-business and captured environmental regulators. While one character, Mari battles with an impatient boss – thank you Stephen Fry for lending your voice – Isla retreats from reality towards an ending of unwitting violence upon the love that sustains her.
The story cleverly mirrors the pernicious demise of the lifeblood of our land, turning healthy vital waterways into poison coursing through our national veins. Alongside Cathy (Mari), Ishtar Currie-Wilson (Isla) leads the tale, bringing her genre presence, crafted in the Netflix hit, Lockwood & Co, and honed in the new Omen prequel about to hit cinemas.
Noting how much she enjoyed working on Black Samphie, actor Ishtar Currie-Wilson told me, “I think that horror has always been the leading genre in making significant and accessible cultural commentary and with our current climate crisis there has never been a more important time to bring these stories to the big screen. I would expect to see a lot more environmentally focused films within the years to come.”
These two actors are going somewhere. But what about our rivers? Every single one in Britain is polluted with a toxic cocktail of agricultural run-off, raw sewage, micro-plastics and forever chemicals. By supporting this film, River Action raises the deathly spectre of the collapse of our rivers and wildlife to show viewers that this catastrophe is real and affects us all. From health risks and wildlife depletion to food production and the economy, we all need healthy rivers and abundant clean water.
A thought-provoking new tool in our campaigning box, Black Samphire adds a novel dimension to help take our powerful message to the victims of these crimes; the voting and consuming public, and perpetrators, greedy corporations as well as our failing environmental regulators. In the words of our Vice Chair, Feargal Sharkey, “We have been ripped off for too long. It’s time for urgent regulatory reform and polluting industries to clean up their mess. END RIVER POLLUTION NOW!!”
Black Samphire is a chilling, British folk horror short film that circulates the theme of pollution, our complex relationships with our own environment and the consequences of ignoring the signs.
Co-produced by Silicon Gothic and River Action, the film is scheduled for release in March 2024.
Q1. Tell us about yourself
I’m a writer and actor working primarily in bringing female-led, environmental and socio-political stories to the thriller and horror genres in film. I have a background in activism, having co-founded the SAFER campaign whilst studying at the University of Manchester, which went on to be featured in BBC News, the Today Show and referenced extensively in parliament debates.
I started acting professionally after I graduated in 2021, and discovered writing and producing through my work in screen acting. My first short film, Bloom, interrogated sexual assault without ever actually explicitly mentioninging it and was created with an all-female cast and crew. The film was featured in Film Stories magazine.
Q2. In April, 2022, you co-founded the production company, Silicon Gothic Ltd with director and producer, Joseph Archer. What was the inspiration behind creating Silicon Gothic?
The idea for Silicon Gothic stemmed from mine and Joseph’s own, personal concerns with our changing natural world. Climate change is such an overwhelming, multi-faceted issue, and we found that personifying issues like fast fashion, water pollution etc into modern, tangible monsters was a way to make these issues more digestible and understandable for our audiences.
On a more personal level, I found that writing stories with monsters like these at the core of them was a catharsis for many of my own anxieties with climate related issues. The fable-like nature of our stories hark back to my fascination with English folklore, and this is definitely an influence for us as well; with folklore being so informed by the mysteries and intricacies of our land and elements, the British folk-horror tradition is at play in a lot of Silicon Gothic’s work.
Q3. Tell us more about the short film, Black Samphire. Where did the idea stem from and why did you want to make it?
I grew up partly in Shipton Green, Itchenor and harvested wild samphire myself with my mother when I was little. As well as this, we also picked wild blackberries. I remember it was always a race to get the blackberries when they were just ripe, or the other families would beat you to it. This had me thinking about human greed, and the hunger to use up our natural resources from an early age.
I’ve always been a keen open water swimmer and, as I mentioned, it was hard to ignore the news this summer of rising water pollution levels, especially when two of my local swimming spots were fenced off for a time. Seeing how the world changes in such a short time, and in the place I grew up trusting my environment so much, deeply disturbed me; instead of just launching into the water, there were questions of hygiene and health to ask. That’s one of the horrible things about pollution; it makes people distrust the environment they themselves are destroying.
So, armed with these ideas, I wanted to create a story about overconsumption set in the marshlands in West Sussex. When River Action came on board as executive producers, they really helped to bring out the element of water pollution that was present in the script. Their expertise and information resources steered the story to more explicitly address the issue as the ‘monster’ of the narrative.
On the 31st of July, 2023, as we were beginning pre-production, an Unearthed investigation found that ‘over 300,000 hours of sewage spills hit England and Wales most protected habitats’ in 2022. On the 5th of August 2023, as we were well into pre-production, fifty seven triathletes were hospitalised after partaking in the Sunderland triathlon championship due to swimming in polluted water. Now, just as we’ve finished the film, the UK’s ‘urgent’ plan to tackle the sewage pollution crisis has been delayed by four months, with no date of publication in sight (Source: The Guardian).
In other words, the water pollution crisis in the UK has been present throughout the whole process of this film. What’s more, it won’t go away anytime soon, unless we take urgent action. The ever increasingly relevant issue of water pollution on the British Isles has shaped ‘Black Samphire’ from start to finish, and will continue to inform the project’s journey.
Q4. You have worked on Black Samphire as both writer and actor – do you enjoy the extra responsibility that this entails?
To be honest, writing and acting in the same project is always a huge positive for me; as I’m lucky enough to be with the characters from when they were literally created in my imagination, I often find that most of my character work has been done and interrogated throughout the script writing process. So, this makes my life easier on set, as it’s really easy to switch into character quickly.
I’d say the extra responsibility on this film actually came from mine and Joseph’s shared responsibility with the company. As the marshlands are actually quite precarious to shoot on due to uneven ground and swampy, soft land (we had an issue with a sinking light at one point!), we had to make sure proper risk assessments and safety checks were carried out for the safety of the cast and crew. We did so many recces of those wetlands – maybe about six or seven despite the fact that I was already familiar with the area.
Q5. Do you have any favourite moments from the shoot?
One of my favourite moments has to be when we were shooting the final scene. Without giving away too much, there’s a part in the film where Isla has to spit black gunk out of her mouth. The blocking for the scene had me lying in the marsh, with Ishtar (who plays Isla) leaning over me. As we were about to shoot, there was a concern with costume continuity as we needed my costume the next day, sans black gunk.
So, Ishtar said ‘Don’t worry, I’ll spit it so it doesn’t go anywhere near the costume’. And you can guess what happened next – it went all over me and it was hilarious. It’s a very intense, emotional scene, and having that happen was so unexpected and funny that it was difficult for a moment to stay in character!
Having James and Erica from River Action visit the set was also a highlight for me. It was really great to share the set experience with them, and to have them there from script stage all the way through to the distribution phase is very special indeed.
Q6. What are you looking forward to working on next?
For me, ‘Black Samphire’ is my primary focus at the moment. The short film is actually a proof of concept for a full-length feature, so I’ve already started working on the treatment, and then I’ll be looking for commissioning to write the feature script itself. I feel a real sense of urgency with this story and narrative, so it’s going to be a matter of working on the feature as the short undertakes its festival circuit.
Silicon Gothic will be pitching a slate of films, including Black Samphire, at the Cannes film festival this year, as well as other international and national film markets throughout the year.
