Author and screenwriter Mark Stay on bloodthirsty goblins, Bugs Bunny and horror’s staying power
Ellen E Jones wrote in The Guardian: “This is Straw Dogs by way of Fraggle Rock, essentially.” Personally, I would have thrown a bit of Gremlins in there, too, because there’s more than enough to keep you worried about nightfall.
Herne Bay’s Mark Stay is one of the minds behind the recent Warner Bros release Unwelcome, which brought home-nations horror back to the big screen. Working with Whitstable film director Jon Wright, the pairing saw Unwelcome premiere to 1,400 people at Spain’s Sitges Film Festival before it made its way to cinema in the early part of 2023.
“Just sitting in a darkened room of people, listening to them scream and clap every time someone gets eviscerated - there’s nothing like it,” says Mark. “It’s an amazing ‘pinch me’ moment.”
A novelist and screenwriter, Mark has had acclaim with his Witches of Woodville series - published by Simon & Schuster - while his work with Wright has also seen success in the making of sci-fi film Robot Overlords starring such names as Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson. Not bad for someone who started their career in publishing on the night shift at Waterstones.
A healthy obsession with Star Wars (who doesn’t have one?) and Monty Python led to acting and drama, but it was after writing a number of plays and a Christmas shift at the famous bookstore that his passion for creating the narrative, rather than starring in it, took hold.
“Because I was on the night shift, it meant I could get a lot of writing done,” says Mark. “It was fun, I loved it. I love seeing the reps, meeting authors and getting proof copies of books and slowly but surely I kind of started to feel like I belonged because there’s always this thing, especially if you’re from a working-class family, of ‘Should I be here? Am I allowed here?’.
“I wrote my first play, which was about all the terrible camping holidays my parents had taken me on as a child, and it went down really, really well.
“A friend of mine who worked in television said to me ‘There’s too many actors and not enough writers. And you can write - keep writing’. I think that was his way of telling me I was a terrible actor.”
“WARNER BROS IS BUGS BUNNY, IT’S CLINT EASTWOOD, IT’S BATMAN, YOU KNOW? SO WE’RE ON THAT ROSTER AND I’M STILL GETTING MY HEAD AROUND IT”
RED CAPS
In March 2020 - a month most of us will remember forever - Mark and Wright finished their work on the screenplay for Unwelcome and things took off at pace.
“Well, it’s this bizarre thing,” remembers Mark. “There was talk of lockdown without the lockdown actually happening yet. And I was down to my last 200 quid. I mean, it was a dark time. And within a week of each other, I got the book deal for The Witches of Woodville and this film got picked up. We sent it to our producer Piers Tempest in the morning, and he had read it and optioned it by lunchtime. Warners paid a million pounds for it, which doesn’t come to me but goes towards the budget, but apparently that is the most Warners UK have ever paid for a British horror movie.
“It was so strange, but I’m glad they did and seeing that Warner logo at the beginning is… it’s iconic.
“Warner Bros is Bugs Bunny, it’s Clint Eastwood, it’s Batman, you know? So we’re on that roster and I’m still getting my head around it.”
Unwelcome follows a young couple who leave their flat in London in search of a new life in the west of Ireland to start their family.
“They’re a really nice, progressive couple,” says Mark. “They inherit this house in a rural, beautiful, lovely village. And in this house there’s a garden and in the garden there’s a wall. And in the wall there’s a hole where you leave an offering every day for the Red Caps - these malevolent, bloodthirsty goblins. And they’re so-called because they dip their caps in the blood of their victims. If you look at cultures all over the world, they’ve got fairies and leprechauns and goblins, but every culture has a variation on these super-violent beings.
“The couple are kind of sceptical at first and they forget to leave an offering. And so things go horribly, horribly wrong.”
Inspired by the monster movies of the 80s and 90s, Mark and Wright are huge horror fans and so wanted to combine it with a home-invasion movie.
“It’s about violence and how violence changes you,” explains Mark. “We were talking about violence and how very few times in any kind of movie you see the after-effects of violence and how it changes people.
“So often in horror movies, the low-hanging fruit is to have a couple who are always bickering and on the verge of splitting up, but we wanted to take a really nice couple and give them something to lose… and see how they cope with it and see the different reactions. Which is why the end divides people, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.”
At a time when worldwide cinema is in its own battle to survive the onslaught of streaming platforms, a movie making it to the big screen is a hell of an achievement. But horror is one of the few genres where you can get an original idea off the ground for a movie, as Mark explains: “These days, production companies are obsessed with IP - it has to be based on a book or a comic book, or a remake of this or a reboot, or a reinvention of that, whereas horror travels. They can sell it internationally, in the Far East, in South America, all over Europe - horror travels.
“So it’s a great genre for playing with new ideas and trying new stuff out.”
With the film likely to be picked up by the streaming platforms (it has, we just can’t tell you who yet for contractual reasons), Mark is looking forward to the reactions of a wider audience - no matter what they might be.
“Books are my happy place because I’m in complete control. I have copy editors and a publisher, but ultimately I can say ‘No, I’m gonna do it my way’. Whereas film is a lot more collaborative. And film, I’m ultimately handing it over to the director and the cast, the production team, and they’re taking my words and making it into something else. I love that collaboration, but it’s kind of out of my hands after a certain point.
“It’s yours until the moment you hand it over, and then it becomes the property of the reader or the viewer. I think once you’ve done it a few times, you understand that it’s theirs now. People will come to all sorts of conclusions and interpretations about what’s happened. And it’s interesting because Unwelcome, the ending is quite ‘out there’. It’s been fascinating because people have very strong feelings and it’s been great because it’s got people talking, which I absolutely love.”
While new books from the Witches of Woodville series are on the horizon, there is another major project in the offing and hopefully it won’t be too long before another one makes it on to the big screen.
“I know a lot of people are predicting the doom of cinema,” says Mark. “But there is something really special about sitting in the dark, turning off the phone and having an amazing communal experience. It’s one of the few things we still do together as a group with strangers.”
