The Cellar: Eoin Macken Talks Creating Complicated Horror Characters in Shudder's Creepy Haunted House Movie

04/29/2022 05:40 pm EDT

Earlier this month, director Brendan Muldowney's The Cellar dropped on Shudder. Expanding on a short film Muldowney made about a young girl who vanishes into the ether while descending the basement stairs at an old house, the film stars Eoin Macken and Elisha Cuthbert as the parents of said girl, who have to grapple with the seemingly-haunted house they live in, and try to figure out how to get their daughter back. It's a haunting film, and a lot of it hinges on the likability of Macken's Brian and Cuthbert's Keira, as they navigate the challenges in their lives and relationships.

On paper, Brian should not be sympathetic. The couple both work in advertising, which is usually shorthand in fiction for "I'm a career-obsessed jerk," and Brian can't quite get on board with his wife's instantaneous understanding that the family is being haunted.

"The reason why I was interested in this, is that I think Brendan is a really clever writer, and I really liked the interpersonal relationships he created, and that bond--  or lack thereof -- between Brian and Kiera," Macken told ComicBook. "We also shot internationally, and we got to spend about two weeks in cottages quarantining next to each other, so we had this nice time to properly embed each other in the character work."

That skepticism about the haunting is a key part of what makes Brian believable, but Macken also thinks it helps that Kiera is the assertive, confident one, while Brian is a little at sea, throwing common horror-movie gender roles for a loop.

"It was really important to me that Brian to me felt real, but also had those real reactions where...I didn't think he wouldn't believe her, but he goes through these different waves of whether he thinks she's crazy, or what he thinks should be going on, and he's reacting in his own human way," Macken explained. "I thought that was important as opposed to driving forward some movie trope where the male protagonist is trying to solve everything. He was just trying to keep everything together, and he didn't understand what was happening."

In terms of the advertising job, it wasn't something that seemed ingrained into the main plot, but Macken thinks it helps to add a dimension to the way the characters view the world.

"Its an interesting job choice that Brendan gave them in terms of what it reflected in today's society, and also sort of how they are shifting narratives themselves in terms of dictating how people see stuff through fabrication, or a lie in a sense," Macken said. "We wanted to be really careful of not laying into the tropes of not making them likable just because they work in advertising."

You can see The Cellar on Shudder now.

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