Possum: how Garth Marenghi creator Matthew Holness made a terrifying non-spoof horror film The cult comedy’s creator has swapped horror parody for the real thing. And the results are seriously haunting

Matthew Holness is best known as the creator and star of cult TV comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. But his debut feature film as writer and director is a distinctly non-humorous, deeply unsettling psychological horror that leaves a thoroughly haunting impression.

Even the poster is enough to give you the creeps.

In Possum, the ever captivating Sean Harris stars as disturbed loner and puppeteer Philip, who is carrying something very strange around in his leather bag. Something that may or may not be alive, and hungry.

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For Holness, making Possum was very much a case of returning to his first artistic love.

“When I was a kid I was into horror more than anything,” he explains. “I grew up with Stephen King novels and Hammer Horror on TV, and the old ‘invasion’ sci-fi films. I got more into comedy later on.”

Primal fear – and puppets

Thick with a sense of surreal atmospheric dread, and unsettling imagery and motifs that all makes skin-crawling sense by the concluding moments, Possum actually started life as a short story for an anthology collection.

“I was asked to look at Freud’s theory of the uncanny, and primal human fears,” explains Holness, who found himself drawn to the fear of dummies in particular. “The idea of certain objects coming to life is an unnerving fear we all have.”

Ventriloquists’ dummies and dolls have an established place in horror, from Dead Of Night to Child’s Play, but rather than the classic tale of a puppeteer who ultimately succumbs to madness, Holness had a different idea in mind.

“[These stories] often have a puppeteer descend into a psychosis of some kind. But I wanted to pick up the story at that point.”

The movie, which musters a powerful mood of foreboding around its protagonist’s unhinged mental state, has been positively compared to films such as David Cronenberg’s Spider by critics.

There are also shades of cult Canadian flick Pin, and sometimes a Lynchian vibe to the dream-like tone and strange, deliberately stilted dialogue – although Possum is set in rural Norfolk, rather than a warped vision of the US.

‘A dark performance’

Much of Possum hinges on an extraordinary lead turn from Harris, who channels real sadness and devastation throughout.

The actor, whose CV has spanned everything from low-budget indies to this year’s Mission: Impossible Fallout, is so good at conveying silent, simmering emotion – and he gives everything to a performance of perpetually traumatised child-like confusion and terror.

Harris came on board early, having responded immediately to the script. As a method actor, much of his discussions about the role with Holness took place before shooting. And Harris was very clear he wanted the character to shine through the horror.

“It’s a dark performance, and he’s willing to go to those places,” says Holness, “but you feel for him too. It hits you on an emotional level.”

Holness and Harris both wanted a potent ambiguity to Philip, however.

“Most films want you to root for a character from the start, but we had to have the audience creeped out by him… and be wary of him as well.”

Veteran actor Alun Armstrong is also on fine form in the film as Philip’s sole companion, mocking step-father Maurice.

Creating the outlandish music of Possum

That aforementioned atmosphere is also crucial to Possum’s grip, and the film’s score works wonders in that regard.

The outlandish, unnerving ambient and electronic soundtrack by the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop occasionally explodes with such high-pitched intensity it’s hard not to be shocked, yet in quieter moments there are soft woodwind notes over shots of the rural landscape that feel like an homage to Kes.

Philip is often a man without a voice. And Holness says the music itself “reflects where his head is”, and “communicates what he’s feeling”.

Possum had used music by The Radiophonic Workshop for its temporary score initially – using atmospheric tracks that had featured in shows such as Doctor Who, as they were sounds that “Philip would have encountered growing up, watching TV, on his own”. Holness hoped to secure the rights.

But after they saw the film, the members of the Radiophonic collective were so impressed they offered to create an original soundscape for it instead.

Those allusions to Kes, meanwhile, are entirely deliberate. Holness explains that Billy Casper in the Ken Loach classic formed his vision of the boy Philip, as “he inhabits a past he’s not been able to escape.”

Inspired by George A Romero

On the filmmaking front, a key influence for Holness was silent horror, which makes sense given Possum’s sparing use of dialogue and reliance on visuals and sound to tell its story.

“I wanted to create a silent horror film. And I realised that the character [in Possum] was a character who wouldn’t talk.”

Holness points to the likes of Nosferatu, M and The Golem; films with “a dark, fairytale quality to them”, which alluded to terrible events in an expressive way.

“That image of the balloon colliding with the pylons in M is so powerful,” he adds.

But perhaps the biggest singular inspiration on a thematic and story level was George A Romero’s 1978 film Martin, another film about a disturbed solitary young man who blurs the line between the sinister and the sympathetic.

“It’s a gothic story about a psychologically broken family unit – and that’s what I wanted to emulate,” explains Holness.

He also wanted to feature a protagonist who is established as being sinister, but who it is “possible to stay with…and feel for”.

Also, just as “the local geography [in Martin] reflects its decaying relationships”, so too does Possum’s. The decaying domesticity of Philip’s grotesque home is matched by the sparse marshland, derelict buildings and eerie woodland around it.

Children’s rhymes may be an overused trope in horror, from Nightmare On Elm Street to The Babadook, but Possum’s spine-tingling poem is a corker. Holness actually considered using title cards rather than narration for the poetry extracts originally, to add to the ‘silent film’ feel.

Garth Marenghi: ‘a very serious man making a silly thing’

As an actor and writer Holness became very much associated with TV comedy in the early part of his screen career.

He was in the Cambridge Footlights alongside David Mitchell and Robert Webb, made appearances in the likes of Time Trumpet, Friday Night Dinner and Toast Of London, and is probably still most recognised for his much-loved spoof series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – which of course drew on his long-time love of the ghoulish and grisly.

Starring Holness as the titular Marenghi – a vain, ludicrous horror hack who has famously “written more books than [he’s] read” – it revolved around a forgotten, terrible (and completely fictional) ’80s chiller programme ‘dream-weaved’ by Marenghi, full of continuity errors, hilariously dreadful acting and deliciously goofy scenarios riffing on everything from HP Lovecraft to John Carpenter’s The Fog.

Sadly, and somewhat ironically, Darkplace only ever got a single run of six episodes on Channel 4, but it helped launch the careers of Holness and his co-stars Richard Ayoade, Alice Lowe and Matt Berry.

“The initial pilot for Darkplace didn’t have an ’80s feel,” recalls Holness. “It was modern day. It was just about a very serious, pretentious man making a very silly thing.”

But after making it, they realised the show needed the period setting to add to the absurdity. And a legend was born.

Horror’s answer to Spinal Tap

Darkplace still has a highly devoted fan following. Why does Holness think it has remained popular?

“It’s a self-contained world,” he muses. “It’s a universe that’s been created and you know the characters, you know where they’re coming from.

“And it’s more than just parody. That only really works for a sketch. The stories actually have to be interesting, the narratives have to work, and a lot of work went into figuring out how and why and who made it. There was another level to it all.”

The interviews with Marenghi and his partners in TV crime certainly added an additional layer of humour and ‘reality’ to Darkplace.

“People can completely immerse themselves in it,” adds Holness. “It’s like Spinal Tap. I loved that world and all its characters. You can escape into it, and the characters feel like real people in that world.”

Despite that, it’s clear Holness is now much more keen on making viewers think and recoil through terror than inducing laughter – a path that someone like Terry Gilliam has also pursued.

“I’m far less interested in comedy these days than I have been,” he says, reflecting on his time creating Possum. “This is what I want to do.”

Holness’s infamous comic creation once said that writers who use subtext “are all cowards”. So what exactly would Marenghi make of Possum?

“I think he’d hate it!” laughs Holness. “He’d be far more interested in the sequel, where Possum invades a city, and knocks everything down.”

Possum is in UK cinemas from Friday October 26.

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