It’s been called the supernatural Before Sunrise for combining the gory and grotesque with angsty young romance, a lush Italian setting and sci-fi twists. Meet the indie film-makers behind a very modern chiller

Spring starts as it means to go on: with death. Evan, a twentysomething American, is bedside as his mother dies; after the funeral, a bar brawl results in him nearly killing someone himself. Impulsively, he runs off to Italy, where he meets Louise, his dream woman. But there’s something not quite right with the girl, and from there things start to get gruesome.

In Spring, death is explored rather than exploited. It’s a meditative film about love, grief, biology and mortality, more metaphysical poetry than slasher horror. It juxtaposes the beauty of southern Italy with nature at its most grotesque, blending genre elements so seamlessly it defies DVD shelf categorisation (Wikipedia deems it a “supernatural romantic science-fiction horror film”). It’s being called a supernatural Before Sunrise, Linklater meets Cronenberg – valid reference points, but Spring is very much its own stew, and it feels like a fresh new voice.

The film’s co-directors, Americans Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, seem out of the industry loop: they care little for festival glitz, “passionately hate” celebrity events, and do practically everything themselves. Primarily, Benson is the writer and Moorhead the cinematographer, but they both pitch in with everything, including the producing, editing and effects. The self-assured workaholics jump in and out of each other’s trains of thought, bursting with stories (Benson relays in some detail the “crack addict with Tourette’s” who lived on the other side of his apartment wall and inspired their first film, claustrophobic junkie horror drama Resolution).

There’s something about bringing urban UK grit into the Italian countryside Justin Benson

They met while interning at Ridley Scott’s commercials production company RSA (“I saw him once,” says Moorhead. “He looked at me and frowned. While walking.”), and made Resolution, for just $20,000, shortly after. While finishing it, and inspired by Stephen King, Anne Rice and a trip to the Amalfi coast, Benson wrote Spring.

Lou Taylor Pucci (from the Evil Dead remake) stars as Evan and brings a charismatic naturalism to the role. Louise was harder to cast: they needed someone who exuded beauty, intelligence and confidence. Eventually they chose Nadia Hilker, a German-Tunisian who’d recently abandoned modelling for acting. Their screen chemistry is great, and there’s lots of psychological pushing and pulling. He’s an impetuous open wound, his romantic longings all too transparent; she’s more cryptic, with acute emotional intelligence keeping him at bay.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spring at the seaside.

“I’ve had a few experiences where you meet somebody and you would be fine throwing everything away for them, and then you don’t know if it’s lust or love, or infatuation,” says Moorhead of Evan’s quandary. “One of the reasons I love Justin’s approach is it’s simultaneously hopelessly romantic and completely pragmatic. Of being, ‘Okay, what exactly is going on here?’ Rather than, ‘It’s magic, of course we have to follow it’, which is the track most movies take, ‘nothing’s more important than love’. But no, there’s things that need to be talked about here. Love is messy and complicated.”

The film’s supernatural elements came to Benson first, but the characters are key, he says. “I’m starting to suspect that people have very low expectations for character work in genre films,” he says. “The example we give is Jaws. Those are very interesting men on that boat. I feel like when you even take it that far in modern-day genre cinema, with just a little bit of character development, a little bit of work towards making them unique fleshed-out people, it’s almost a glitch in the matrix. When you think of genre horror we’re talking about the scare, the visual, the visceral. And for me the scare comes from worrying about the person.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Benson and Moorhead on set.

Spring’s supporting characters are as well rounded as the leads. Benson and Moorhead cast American rapper Cage (Chris Palko) as a codeine-drinking white-trash hoodlum whose eyes tell of trouble. Later, Evan runs into a brash British bantersaurus played by Nick Nevern, stalwart of British geezer films with names like The Fall Of The Essex Boys and The Hooligan Factory. It’s brilliantly incongruous. “We try to make our characters entirely realistic, but not boring realistic,” explains Benson (who, when he wrote it years ago, wanted to cast a not-yet famous Professor Green). “If you meet UK travellers on the road, it’s very likely they’re gonna be urban, maybe hooligan, maybe into hip-hop culture. That seemed more realistic. It’s a lot of fun. There’s something about bringing urban UK grit into the Italian countryside, and that goes along with the juxtapositions of everything else.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spooky goings on are afoot.

Benson and Moorhead have a lot on the go. Their next film, Beasts, is about English uber-occultist Aleister Crowley. It focuses on a week where, as a young man, Crowley went to a house in Loch Ness to perform a magic ritual. Things go wrong. Their Crowley, they say, is Tyler Durden meets Captain Jack Sparrow, and the film will explore ego and counterculture. Enticing indeed. Cinema always needs fresh new voices, and Benson and Moorhead’s genre-bending is a welcome shot in the arm.

Spring is out now in selected cinemas