Interview with Wrymwood: Apocalypse Director Kiah Roache-Turner

Cat: First of all, congratulations on your sequel Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, how exciting!

Kiah: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, anytime your film gets made in this country, it's America. So, I consider myself to be. It's very much hand of God in these instances.

Cat: Well, I was, the second part of that question was how does it feel to be able to create a sequel to Wyrmwood which was very well received? I'm definitely a fan of the series, so it's awesome that you could create something like so cool.

Kiah: It's great. It is kind of funny too, because I think everybody liked the first one, but there's a difference between what the audience likes and what the market likes. And you know when we started going, okay, now it's time for the sequel. Pretty much everybody just said, look, it's been too long.

That was the general feeling. And we just did that thing where we did the, I mean, we did it in the first one. We've always done it where people say, maybe we shouldn’t, and we just do it anyway. I don't care what you think. I don't care what the market thinks. We're just going to make it, even if we have to make it with sock puppets.

And the funny thing is once you get moving forward and getting people together and going well, I don't care. People are like, the budget's this, you can't possibly make a movie on that. And it's like, no, we're just going to do it. And then people when you started making it people are saying “oh, they are making it”.

Sometimes you just have to push through with bullish energy and that's what happened with this one. And you know I'm glad we did because I think the film's pretty good.  It's just so nice because we do have a fan base. It's nice to deliver the second part, so people have been looking forward to it for all these years are happy and, you know people who like zombie movies are happy, cause there's another zombie movie and people who like Mad Max derivatives, you know, get a nice little low budget Mad Max derivative.

Cat: There's a very dark sense of humour that is heavily applied to Wyrmwood: Apocalypse and I like to think it's just an Australian thing. We see Rhys living on a compound of repurposed zombies, which is a very environmentally friendly of him. How do you manage to like keep things light on such a heavy topic?

Kiah: I think you either have a sense of humour or you don't, and I think if you have one, it just has to make its way into whatever you do and say, like, I like to joke around and then my brothers always liked to joke around. And so that just finds its way into the into the screenplay.

I think humour is the way that people deal with trauma. This is a film that has a huge amount of violent trauma involved because it's about violence on the apocalypse and it's about the end of the world. And if you can't laugh at the end of the world, you're in trouble because we're experiencing it now.

You can jump up and down and go, oh, you know, death, flood, famine, war, you know viruses, this is the end of the world thing. You can cry or you can laugh. And I think the best thing to do is laugh. I love that you said that it's a distinctly Australian thing. I like to read a lot about World War II and World War I and all that kind of stuff, particularly about what happened with the with the Australian side. The thing that everybody always says about the Aussie troops is that no matter what happened, whether they're burying a mate or they're going to have to go to their deaths. There's always a wise crack and it's always a dead pan joke that was cracked that helps them deal with the shitty stuff they have to do with.

When your part of a culture that was born. On the back of like criminality and genocide and just, I mean, basically our forefathers fathers were sent over here on a boat because they'd stolen bread. They were told that you're going to have to dig in that quarry until you die. Australia is a bloody prison with nice beaches, you know, that's how it was set up. It's like what a bizarre cultural history. think that dead pan humour came out of just the fact that, we were sent over here as criminals and expected to die over here, and you've got to make something of that.

So, you do that with humour because what else can you do? I think so. And I think because was a lot of poverty and criminality, that's a section of society that doesn't take itself too seriously. We weren't founded on the back of Kings. We were founded on the back of criminals and, you know, criminals and poor people have to laugh because then I didn’t have anything else, you know?

That finds its way into our art, you know infinitely.

Cat: Wyrmwood, the original and now the sequel is quite a bloody and gruesome affair, and I'm guessing you have an affinity for so blood and guts. How do you bring that aesthetic into your practical effects?

Digital blood is bullshit. I mean, even though we have to use a lot of it, just because of setup time and budget. I'm going to have blood and guts, some action slash violence, like it should be real. I'm a big fan of practical. So, the way I like to approach things, if I have the option to is to 90% practical, 10% digital augmentation, there shouldn't be anything that's a hundred percent digital in a frame.

I was brought up watching that next and Dawn of the Dead and saw Taxi Driver when I was eight. I had an older brother who went out and rented all the R-rated videos in the video store and I watched all of them in one day and I haven't been the same ever. That really borrowed its way into my brain. And now this is what I do. Blood and gore and violence is textures, you know, you know? People can say, oh, it's disturbing, but I'm like, yeah, it's no more or less disturbing than Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare. There's a lot of really violent, disturbing stuff in there. Most operas have some kind of death beheading, it's just operatic.

Cat: We’re pretty lucky to have some fantastic horror movies come from filmmakers here. What do you think makes Australian genre movies stand out so much?

Kiah: That’s a good question because we do make some of the best in the world The Babadook is up there with The Exorcist in terms of a straight up really scary, really decent horror film. That is incredibly well-directed mad. Max is like a genre unto itself. I mean, it's a gargantuan franchise. There is something dynamic about Australia and filmmaking and there's something original about it.

Wolf Creek is one of the great slasher films and these are all genres that are really hard to crack because it's been done so many times, like horror action and slasher films, there’s a million of them out there, but tend to make things that stand out I don't know why.

You can ask the same question. Why do we win so much gold, with the Olympics? We’re such a small country, we're such a small population. It doesn't make sense. I think, again, it probably goes back to the way that we were shaped. We are the world's biggest child, basically, they sent all these convicts over here and I think we just had to work twice as hard to be noticed, we’re the world's biggest small town.

Cat: I have one final question for you. So, when would apocalypse was selected as one of the nine projects supported by an initiative by Screen Australia? How important are these initiatives in helping independence and specifically horror filmmakers?

Kiah: From my perspective, I cannot overstate the importance of government funding. Without government funding we would be stuffed. Without government funding, you are just sitting there waiting for American money, which does come, but it comes rarely. Without things like the Producers Offset, Screen Australia and Screen New South Wales grants, I wouldn't have a career. It just wouldn't have happened. I would have been stuck making YouTube movies as a hobby. The fact that we have government support is just such a huge thing. It really needs to continue if we want to see Australian cinematic culture continue. It’s that simple not to get too serious, but I cannot overstate the importance of government contributions to the culture of the Australian film industry.

Cat: I know that the Australian government gives a lot of money to American filmmakers to come and film here, but it's like, hey, we've got filmmakers here that can do that too!

Kiah: That’s all part of it. You know, we need American films to come here. But there has to be a balance, and it's like the thing about Netflix too. Netflix is great, but it would be greater for the industry if there was more of an emphasis on local content it should be a thing that.

Both things should feed each other because even to remove it from an Australian perspective, like you want the Australian films, because we want Australian films in Ireland, do you know what I mean? And I want Irish films in Australia. So, something like Netflix, which is a big American company, what Netflix needs more than anything is original content. If you know stoke the fires of like local cinematic culture, you’re going to get more interesting content.

I mean, Squid Game. Like nothing is more Korean than Squid Game. That was created in Korea, by amazing Korean filmmakers and it exploded, it broke records all over the world. And that's Korean local content, backed by Netflix and you want people to be making their own cultural art in their own countries because that stokes the fires of the entire industry. Once again, to go back to Korea, because they're doing so well, look at Parasite, wonderful film, everybody, agreed that was the best film of the year, a few years ago.

It's very culturally specific. The thing that is problematic is I see a tendency towards people just wanting to make more standard U.S studio-based stories where even if it is Australian, they need it to be shaped like a classic sort of Hollywood film. And it's great, it makes sense from a financial perspective, but like if we could just open the doors a little more to make it a little more specific to whatever country is making it and open the doors for originality, whether it's cultural originality or narrative originality, then we just get more interesting things, and more people watch.

Kiah: I don't know. That's a long-winded answer.

Cat: Well, I better let you go, it was so awesome talking to you. Thank you so much.