I didn’t have the best phone connection when I spoke with David Farr on May 6, 2016, but that didn’t diminish the perceptive, and even provocative things that the filmmaker had to say about his bone-chilling film, THE ONES BELOW. This tale of enforced intimacy and primal bonding between couples who are both expecting babies speaks to a whole slew of modern anxieties as it unfolds a story of mental deterioration, unspeakable tragedy, and the uncertainty of paranoia.
We started with the clever use of shoes outside a door to create an unsettling mood before moving on to the terrors of parenthood (as seen here and in his previous screenplay, HANNA), the counterintuitive use of color, and the disturbing behavior of which people are capable of when pushed to extremes (as seen here and in his mini-series, The Night Manager).
THE ONES BELOW is subtly terrifying thriller about two couples on the latter stages of pregnancy who find themselves living next door to each other in the same London apartment building. There is something just a little off about the new arrived couple. An awkward dinner party turns tragic, and the reconciliation that follows is tenuous, exacerbated by the paranoia, maybe justified, maybe not, that one of the wives experiences. The film stars David Morrissey, Laura Birn, Clémence Poésy and Stephen Campbell Moore. Farr directed from his own script, and his previous work includes writing the screenplays for HANNA and THE NIGHT MANAGER. He is also Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
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