The Screen Addict | Marshall

I started following director Neil Marshall after a friend recommended I check out The Descent (2005). Although I’m not a huge Horror fan, I do very much love a nice monster movie, so I was definitely triggered by the premise of a group of spelunkers stumbling across a previously undiscovered species of cave creatures.

Today, I believe that The Descent is one of the most important films of the early Aughts. More importantly – I consider Marshall’s sophomore feature a textbook example of when jump scares were still actually scary. The genre’s most popular convention has become ubiquitous to the point that it’s often more funny than frightening.

The Descent whetted my appetite for more Marshall movies, so I tracked down his buzzy debut Dog Soldiers (2002). Equally enticing in plot – soldiers versus werewolves in the Scottish Highlands – and again featuring stunning makeup and creature effects, DS definitively made me a full-blown Marshall aficionado.

Next for the Brit came the two less focused, but still hugely entertaining big-budget outings Doomsday (2008) and Centurion (2010) – the latter starring a pre-fame Michael Fassbender – followed by almost a decade of directing for the smaller screen. During this timeframe Marshall made what many believe to be one of the best TV entries ever – Game of Thrones’ Blackwater episode – not to mention prolific work on Black Sails, Hannibal and Westworld.

Many years after I discovered his early films, I dealt with Marshall on a professional level when I acquired Millennium Media ’s Hellboy (2019) for my territory. The director’s involvement was one of my main motivations to buy this risky project at all.

Side note – if you haven’t seen this flick, do check it out. It gives Del Toro’s films a serious run for their money, and David Harbour is nothing short of excellent as the titular demonic man-child.

Marshall appears to have found his muse in Charlotte Kirk these days. The embattled actress stars in no less than four of the director’s recent and upcoming films. One of these titles is The Lair (2022) which, going off the premise, feels like a revisit of Marshall’s exciting early work.

Kirk plays a RAF pilot who hides in a bunker after crash landing in an Afghan desert. Little does she know that the place is crawling with human-alien hybrids bred for biological warfare.

I saw The Lair the other day, and it really does play like a third chapter in the unofficial trilogy that was kicked off with DS and The Descent two decades ago.

Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) obviously influenced The Lair, but I’d like to believe that Marshall and Kirk – who cowrote – drew some inspiration from the Resident Evil and Doom video-game series as well. I thought I even spotted a couple of references to Bryan Bertino’s little-seen creature feature The Monster (2016) and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002). To be clear – this doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Solid sources of hidden continuity, all of ‘em.

Produced and financed by my friends at Highland Film Group , The Lair was distributed through local independents across the globe. It might therefore prove challenging to track the film down, but you’re in for a treat if you do.

IMDb.com currently lists 11(!) upcoming projects for Marshall, many of which undoubtedly will feature Kirk in some capacity. This fan is happily awaiting ‘em all.

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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict