Monsters Recuperated: Director David Freyne talks The Cured
For writer/director David Freyne it's been seven long years to get his feature debut on to the big screen. Seven years that were filled with promises and disappointments, false starts and false hopes, but finally his vision of post-zombie apocalypse has been released in Irish and international cinemas.
The film itself tells the story of a disease that turns people into zombies which has now been cured. The once-infected zombies are discriminated against by society and their own families, which causes social issues to arise. This leads to militant government interference. This is the platform on which he weaves a memorable tale of social injustice, class warfare, an the power of family
We caught up with him to talk us through his end of the world.
Cin É: One of the things that I wanted to ask you is where did the name of the virus come from? Why Maze?
David Freyne: It was a lot of things. In the script for a very long time there was no name for it and everyone kept saying that we needed a name. So it came from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. There is no major, in-depth thesis written on it. I was like "I'm calling it Maze. It's a cool name!". So it was kind of arbitrary. I should come up with a better reason.
Why does the disease lead to the infected hunting other humans?
The idea was that with an infection there's an element in which it wants to spread, but in the process it kills as well. We did a lot of research into that. Basically the idea is that the infected choose who to kill and who to infect. So they choose to kill Tom, choose to infect Senan, Senan then decides to infect others who I won't name. There's an element of the people subconsciously wanting to kill certain people and infect other people that they might have an attraction to or want to control. So that's where the idea came from. Like any virus it's two-pronged kill and spread.
Words: Niall Murphy
42 CinÉireann / April 2018