The Austin, Texas-based SXSW Festival was the first major film festival to shut down in 2020 amidst soaring concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic. While last year’s festival was a purely digital experience, this year’s SXSW promises to be a hybrid of in-person and virtual events, including keynote and featured speakers, art installations and exhibitions, and, of course, movie premieres. Indeed, countless popular movies have premiered at SXSW in the past, from Bridesmaids and Baby Driver to Jakob’s Wife and A Quiet Place. Through the years, SXSW has become a hallowed institution for genre filmmakers, providing a large-scale platform for directors of horror, screwball comedies, and hard-hitting documentaries, to name a few, to showcase their work.
One of the films set to make its world premiere at this year’s SXSW is The Cellar, a horror feature from Irish writer/director Brendan Muldowney (Pilgrimage, Love Eternal) that stars Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert (Eat Wheaties!, The Girl Next Door) and Irish actor Eoin Macken (La Brea, Till Death). In The Cellar, Cuthbert and Macken play Keira and Brian Woods, respectively, who, shortly after moving their family into a centuries-old home, experience strange occurrences in the house. When Keira (sort of) witnesses their daughter’s disappearance in the house’s cellar while on the phone with her, she launches an investigation and discovers an ancient demon controlling their home. From there, Keira works tirelessly to find her daughter before the demonic entity claims the rest of her family.
We sat down with Cuthbert, Macken, and Muldowney ahead of The Cellar‘s world premiere at SXSW. The movie is one of eight films in the Midnighters program, which features a collection of horror (or horror-adjacent) movies that are scheduled for late-night screenings throughout SXSW’s run. In addition to its in-person screening, The Cellar is also scheduled for online viewing — check out The Cellar‘s SXSW page here for scheduling and tickets. Moreover, the film is slated for a simultaneous release in select theaters and on Shudder on April 15.
On Bringing The Cellar to SXSW
“I’m really excited,” says Cuthbert on bringing The Cellar to SXSW. “I was thrilled to hear that we were even going to be able to [go to the festival] and physically be there. It really does feel like we’re turning a corner and getting out of this crazy pandemic, so it will be lovely to reunite with all the cast and Brendan, and be able to actually, fully, celebrate our work.”
“I second what Elisha is saying,” says Macken. “Once I found out we were going to actually be in [an in-person] festival, I deliberately did not want to watch the film yet because I want to experience it the first time on a big screen with an audience and with Brendan and Elisha. That’s the one thing I’ve really missed — not being able to share that experience in a cinema — especially with a movie like this.”
Neither Cuthbert nor Macken are strangers to horror. Following her breakout turn in The Girl Next Door, Cuthbert starred in a string of horror movies in the 2000s, like House of Wax, The Quiet, and Captivity. Meanwhile, some of Macken’s recent works include Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, A24’s supernatural hit The Hole in the Ground, and last year’s home invasion thriller Till Death. However, what sets The Cellar apart is how grounded the film — its story and, more specifically, its special effects — in reality.
“Eoin and I actually [stayed at the house we shot in]. We were so immersed in it,” says Cuthbert. “The house is its own character, and it [felt] very real in that way.
On Representing Irish Horror Cinema at SXSW
“I think it’s kind of indicative of the fact that there’s some incredibly talented Irish filmmakers,” says Macken on The Cellar representing Irish cinema at SXSW. Indeed, between Antonia Campbell-Hughes’ It Is In Us all and Rioghnach Ní Ghrioghair’s Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You, The Cellar is the only other Irish film making its world premiere at SXSW. What’s particularly significant about The Cellar is that its part of a sort of renaissance in Irish horror cinema. Within the last decade, movies like The Hallow, The Devil’s Doorway, Don’t Leave Home, and Without Name have made their marks in the genre in Ireland.
“The Hole in the Ground was one of the last sort of hits we had apart from a couple of new ones at the moment,” says Muldowney, referencing Macken’s aforementioned film. “But, yeah, it’s fantastic. Irish horror has been moving up for years. I would actually feel that I’ve been part of it. [My] films haven’t been directly horror, [but] they’ve all been skirting around horror.”
“I feel Brendan [has] been a huge part of that [renaissance],” says Macken. “It’s only recently that there’s been a sort of turning towards an allowance for Irish horror films to be made in Ireland. We had a certain type of film being made before and [Brendan’s] a part of the group of people that changed the tenor.”
SXSW Festival runs from March 11-20. The Cellar makes its world premiere at the festival on March 12, and will be released in theaters and on Shudder on April 15.
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