STACK #179 Sept 2019

FILM

FEATURE

While writing the script and waiting for the green light on Nekrotronic , the brothers conceived and shot a short film as a teaser scene. “ DaemonRunner is the proof of concept for Nekrotronic ,” explains Kiah. “Our original idea was a lot darker and probably a lot less mainstream. But once you go through the development process and the studio system, it changes a fair bit. I think it definitely became a more Guardians of the Galaxy and Ghostbusters thing. It’s interesting to have the two of them exist side by side – the original idea and the big budget version.” DaemonRunner will be included as a bonus feature on the Nekrotronic DVD and Blu-ray, along with a behind-the-scenes documentary and a look at the creature effects and make-up. “It’s pretty chock full of stuff,” says Kiah. “If you like the film, then you’re going to get an A–Z of how it was made.”

Anything that can get my daughter off the phone is a good movie!’ And I thought, ‘so you’re doing this to get your daughter off the phone?’ That’s classic!” When asked how they collaborate

on the writing process, Tristan says the kitchen is a focal point for creativity. “All the best conversations seem to happen around food. Once we’ve got a bit of an idea and a couple of cool scenes, we start to structure it and fill up a whiteboard with notes.” Kiah, however, spells it out in simpler terms: “All you need is two brothers, a camera, a bucket of blood and two weird brains, and we get a project. “We don’t tend to make Sense and Sensibility type films,” he adds. “You’re not going to come to one of our films and be reminded of Ingmar Bergman. We like to make films where audiences scream and jump up and down.” As for what we can expect next from the bothers, there are a slew of projects in various stages of development, including a Wyrmwood TV script and feature film sequel. The guys are also excited about Crimehouse , which Tristan describes as “a low budget, intensely edited, scary as f–ck serial killer thriller”. There's also a giant spider movie in the works, a vampire film, and a VR experience for both Nekrotronic and Wyrmwood . That’s a lot of time in the kitchen!

Oh brother!Tristan and Kiah Roache-Turner

Pokémon Go app with ghosts. That’s kind of funny, so we elbowed that in there.” Conceptually, demons possessing people through their smartphones isn’t such a stretch, given society’s addiction to devices. “It’s so what’s going on at the moment,” agrees Tristan. “You look around and everyone is spellbound by what’s on their phone. “Kiah came up with the initial idea for a film that was about using a resonator engine to amplify the signal of ghosts and make them appear. And then throughout the development process it kept changing, and before we knew it we had demons possessing people through mobile phones, catching demons in Ghostbusters -esque trap boxes and then 3D-printing them up.” Nekrotronic stars Ben O’Toole as a hapless sanitation worker turned reluctant demon buster, alongside Caroline Ford, Kiwi actor Epine Bob Savea and local hero David Wenham, with Italian superstar Monica Bellucci ( The Matrix Reloaded , Spectre ) as the film’s demonic villain. According to Tristan, Bellucci’s involvement was instrumental in the film receiving the green light. “We actually wrote her a letter and neither Kiah nor I thought in a thousand years that she would ever even respond to it, or say yes. But she loved the screenplay – she’s always wanted to play an out and out villain. And she was so cool to work with, really supportive on set and up for whatever we wanted to shoot with her.” “She was one of the only people who actually said that the script was intelligent,” adds Kiah. “Usually we got ‘interesting’, ‘exciting’ and ‘adrenaline-infused’, but never ‘intelligent’. She came in and she’s like, ‘this is so smart and intelligent – the souls, the mobile phones, how you use the internet.

• Nekrotronic is out on Sept 10

D O N ' T M I S S

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