A new festival-favourite horror short from the team by the ridiculously innovative Dawn of the Deaf you say? Director Rob Savage, writer Jed Shepherd and producer Douglas Cox have broken out the condiments for super short supernatural shocker Salt, and you’re in luck – it’s now available to watch online.
If you’re yet to see the team’s ode to zombie drama from a few years back, stop right now and give it a google; it’s 12 minutes of pure understated genre brilliance that took Sundance, Fantasia and Sitges by storm. And this Alice Lowe-starring newbie is no different, with a bigger concept and a shorter run-time, Salt’s already taken bows at FrightFest and LFF, with more festival mayhem to come.
Lowe leads as a mother desperately trying to save her sick child from the grips of an unidentifiable monster, and the only way to keep them both safe is to stay within a salt circle that wards off the evil. “Writer Jed Shepherd and I are obsessive horror fans and always try and push ourselves to do things that we feel haven’t been seen before in the genre,” says director Rob Savage, “we both love siege movies and were trying to think of the most intense, contained siege movie we could make.”
And intense is one way of putting it; Salt may be one of the most full-on 2 minute shorts out there, with not a single second, or penny, wasted. “We had an amazing crew who all pulled favours and worked long hours to make Salt happen on such a low budget,” adds Savage, and as a team they’re clearly attracting some attention to their projects, with Brit genre champions Dan Martin (VFX artist) and James Swanton (creature actor) among the crew.
“Our intention was to shoot the majority of the creature as a practical effect, with a performer in costume, and then enhance elements of the creature in VFX… my ideas were more to do with the feral, unstoppable quality of the creature’s movement and posture – the design of the face is all Dan.”
Here’s hoping Salt will be a major step in the direction of Hollywood for this team too, with Savage and co. already getting demands for a feature version from a bunch of festival audiences. “We’re a huge fan of Atomic Monster and the intense, glossy horror films of James Wan, and we saw Salt as a compressed version of one of his rollercoaster horror movies.” he finishes, and if studios like Wan’s or Blumhouse have any sense, they’ll snap these guys up fast.
You can catch Salt in all its glory below:
