14/04/2009

Ireland-based Scottish director Colm McCarthy has completed principal photography on supernatural horror film Outcast. For McCarthy, a well-known television director, Outcast is his feature debut.

The film’s final schedule was over two weeks in Galway’s Solas Studios after a three-week location shoot in Scotland. The film, written by Colm and Tom McCarthy and shot by Darren Tiernan (The Honeymooners [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), is set in a council estate in Edinburgh and tells the story of Scottish/Romany girl Petronella and her enigmatic Irish boyfriend Fergal as they are stalked by the lethal Beast.

The film features James Nesbitt (Five Minutes of Heaven [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Katie Dicke (Red Road [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Ciarán McMenamin (The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce) and Niall Bruton (Uncle Bill’s Barrel) in the cast.

The Irish Film Board and Scottish Screen are funding the film with Vertigo Films responsible for distribution and Bankside Films handling international sales. Fantastic Films’ John McDonnell and Brendan McCarthy are producing Outcast, with MaKar Films’ Eddie Dick serving as co-producer.

Dick said, “The story really emerged from Colm’s memories of living in Craigmillar. It fits very firmly into the horror genre. The thing that gives it its edge is its realistic, urban feel. It’s based on the real lives of people on housing schemes in Edinburgh. What we’ve thrown into the mix is Celtic mythology. The story in a sense has a kind of social realist base, but it begins to develop and twist out of that quite quickly, and that’s linked in with an exploration of Celtic mythology.”