One of the films to generate the most amount of chatter at this year’s Fangoria x Monter Fest was the brand new horror film from Australian director Tony D’Aquino – The Furies. The film sees a young woman named Kayla (played by Airlie Dodds) end up in a vicious game of cat and mouse with programmed killers with one thing on their mind – killing.
Now with the film set for release on November 7th HEAVY Cinema sat down and chatted to Airlie Dodds about what it was like to work on The Furies.
“Yeah I do,” Dodds says with a laugh when I ask whether she gets nervous when one of her films is about to get released to the public. “I do because they exist forever. If you muck something up you can be like ‘oh no, that’s cool’ but with this, this exists forever. It is quite exposing but you do get used to it and it can be a really fun and useful thing to get used to… feeling exposed I mean. It is kind of just taking the good with the band.”
Previous to The Furies Dodds was also one of the stars of the brilliant The Killing Ground so I asked whether or not horror is a genre that she has always enjoyed. “I think so,” she says again laughing. “I mean I have done a romantic comedy or a dramedy before… but yeah I think so. I love thrilling work. I’m beginning to think that people just like to see me get all worked up. I just did this new series called The Gloaming and I did some kind of spooky stuff in that as well. Maybe it is because I have blue eyes or something.”
“But to answer your question I did watch some horror movies as kid,” she continues. “I watched things like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer… you know the teen stuff. It has been a bit weird being part of something that is trying to be converse to that, like oppositional to that in some ways, but still has those features if you know what I mean. It is kind of cool.”
As our discussion goes on though I learn that Dodds got inspiration from one of the best horror movies ever made though for her role of Kayla. “Tony gave me the reference of Halloween,” she says. “There was the Michael Myers character that was quite resident and then there is Laurie Strode this person who dreams of having the perfect boyfriend and then Michael Myers is the nightmare of those things which I think goes into relationships and stuff and how they can be a bit of a nightmare. I think that showed me that there are things in our bodies when we are watching horror films that our minds don’t really put together. I think for my character it is her worst nightmare – she is separated from her friend and having to fend for herself, she’s not confident, she doesn’t know herself and she doesn’t know how to protect herself or be vigilant – she doesn’t believe in herself and it is a nightmare having to confront that.”
The Furies is released in cinemas on November 7th.
