A look inside Lynchian psychodrama The Ghoul
Gareth Tunley and Tom Meeten discuss making mind-bending psychological thriller The Ghoul
“I think most directors would benefit from trying to be an actor for a day or two to see what it is like, and they would be more sympathetic every time they shout ‘action!’” That’s how Gareth Tunley, the actor-turned-director behind trippy psychological thriller The Ghoul, starring Tom Meeten and Alice Lowe, begins when we sit down with him ahead of the film’s UK release.
The shift behind the camera has been a long-gestating dream for Tunley. He’s been working as an actor for over two decades, appearing in the likes of Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace, and collaborating for years with The Ghoul’s lead, Tom Meeten, but it’s taken awhile to get his own film projects off the ground.
“I had been around the film industry with scripts,” explains Tunley, “and I was impressed by the feedback I received both positive and negative. But it became really clear that people weren’t about to give me half a million pounds to make a film. I knew that the only way to do it was to start pulling in favours.”
For a first feature, Tunley has come up with an ambitious script. The story is squarely focused on Chris (Meeten), a police officer investigating a psychologist he believes is linked to a double murder. Managing to disguise himself as one of the psychologist’s patients, Chris finds that his mind is beginning to unravel and reality is no longer quite what it seems. Tunley wrote the script, honing it with Meeten and the film’s producer Jack Guttmann.
Tom Meeten (Chris) and Rufus Jones (Coulson) in The Ghoul
The plot is intricately woven with a structure that bears similarities to Shane Carruth’s Primer, and explores themes as wide-ranging as the loneliness of London life, mental health and the occult. The Ghoul was partly inspired by what Tunley called his “black moods,” quipping that “they generally blow off after a decade or two.”
The theme of depression – or rather psychology and its relationship to magic and the occult – lies at the core of this thriller. “When people are depressed they feel trapped in a cycle. So really it was about finding a visual representation of that.” Tunley is quick to state that he doesn’t have a huge interest in the occult, but years earlier had read Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, described by its publisher as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll." Hofstadter's novel lodged itself in Tunley's mind, after “gestating, or percolating, or even festering” in his brain for several years, before becoming The Ghoul.
Knowing that a first feature is always a challenge, Tunley wanted to make a film that could be adapted for a low-budget project, rather than start with an idea constricted by financial concerns. Fortunately, having worked in the industry for so long, he was able to call on past colleagues and friends. One such acquaintance was Ben Wheatley, who has lent his name to the film as an executive producer.
Tunley’s experience working with Wheatley on Down Terrace was a formative one, allowing him to observe how to approach working on a low-budget feature. “Ben [Wheatley] has been a galvanizing force on all of us who’ve worked with him. With his early films and the initiative he showed in how he made them, there was a degree of canniness.”
Tunley also knew that he was able to pull favours from old actor friends like Alice Lowe and Rufus Jones, who were happy to work under the demanding conditions of a first-time feature of this size. “I had a great crew. Our cast were under a lot of pressure, working very fast: where normally you might have a day to shoot something we would have an hour or two.”
He was also able to attract actors he hadn’t worked with before including Niamh Cusack and Geoffrey McGivern as a pair of sinister psychologists, and Paul Kaye, who provides a stellar scene as a worldly crook recounting a robbery gone wrong. “Paul took this little scene and invested in it wholeheartedly,” explained Tunley, giving one of many examples of the level of cast and crew he was fortunate to be able to bring on board. “Paul imbued the scene with a sense of gravitas and took it in its own direction – with very little input from me. I basically stood by the monitor eating Jaffa Cakes thinking, ‘This is going well.’”
Meeten, who is better-known for his comedic collaborations with The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding and for his Edinburgh Fringe double act with Steve Oram, was another friend of Tunley’s who threw himself heart and soul into The Ghoul, even taking on an ancillary role as one of the film’s producers as well as playing Chris.
“I have done a lot of crazy comedy roles – getting my balls out and things like that. Here instead I had to give a balls-out performance,” jokes Meeten. Tunley also teases, adding, “The first time I met Tom was in a basement. He was wrapped up in bin liners and gaffer tape being shouted at by Steve Oram… I should say that this was part of a comedy sketch and not some form of terrifying mental breakdown. I immediately thought ‘If I ever want to make a serious cerebral psychological thriller, Tom’s my man’.”
Not long before working on The Ghoul, he collaborated with Tunley on a short, The Baron, allowing them to develop a shorthand that would come in useful for the feature. Despite the unconventional role, Meeten embraced it with open arms. “I didn’t want to be too big a performance,” he explains. “The key to it was working with Gareth. We rehearsed a lot. Not walking through the scenes, but more reminding ourselves where we are in the characters’ journey. This gave us both the confidence to go for it.”
Both Tunley and Meeten relished this way of working, having artistic control, but also being able to work with friends on a project into which they could pour their hearts and souls. As Meeten puts it, “There is no room for poncey egos. It was more like a gang of troubadours making something together – everything has to pull in the right direction to get it made, and that is an immersive experience.”
The Ghoul is released 4 Aug by Arrow Films