The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper is an unusual Gothic horror adapted from the short story of the same name, written in 1892.
Horror and suspense films have a tendency of becoming blatant and predictable, but when filmmakers decide to bring in a different vision, things can get passionately exciting. Just released on Amazon and iTunes, The Yellow Wallpaper takes us on a poetic journey, where mysteries take on a life of their own. The film centers on Jane, a lady who is taken to a country home by her husband to recover from an unknown illness. Whilst there, she is confined to her room in order to rest, a room with a strange yellow wallpaper. During her stay she begins to notice things within the wallpaper, but at night is when it really comes alive.
I came across the short story of the same name, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, and set about adapting it with a collaborator. My aim was to create an unusual psychological gothic horror. A gothic horror set in daylight was my initial thinking, focusing less on the horror and more on the effect the room has on the main character. The short story itself, was one that came with a variety of interpretations, as it was a somewhat hidden piece of feminist literature, so there was scope to put my own angle on it. The main goal was simple – to learn as much as I could, particularly from a technical point of view. So with this is mind I wanted to tick a few boxes. I wanted to be ambitious, make something with a VFX element, I wanted to get experience creating and working in a set, and I also wanted to use an entirely professional cast rather than relying on friends. The Yellow Wallpaper was a short story that allowed me to bring in all these elements. I learnt a lot of lessons from making this film, and as always I’m my own worst critic here, but there’s a lot I’m proud of considering the limitations that accompany a student film.
The Yellow Wallpaper packs the quality of a featured lenght success into a passionate and delivering 30 minutes. With such defined detailing taken from the original story written in 1892, director Stuart Hackshaw and his team did a marvelous job turning the film into a poetic visual novel, taking ghost films to a whole new level.