Scottish film Shepherd mixes horror with an isolation story – and it’s taken director Russell Owen a long, long time to get it made.
Fresh out of university, Russell Owen began a journey to create Shepherd, his take on a psychological drama masked as a horror movie. Nearly 20 years later, the film debuted at the BFI London Film Festival in the autumn of 2021. From dealing with funding cutbacks as a result of the financial crash and leveraging his skills for last minute projects to secure new investments, Owen went as far as selling his car and buying up old Kodak stock to cement his career as a director. Shepherd is the eventual result and it’s a great lesson in perseverance.
Set on the Scottish coastline on the Isle of Mull, it follows Eric Black (Tom Hughes) who takes a job as a shepherd on a secluded island. His life takes a dire turn as he spirals into paranoia, fuelled by the recent loss of his wife.
Taking inspiration from the Smalls Lighthouse tragedy, similar to Robert Eggers’ acclaimed film The Lighthouse, Shepherd focuses on isolation and explores how loneliness often results in paranoia. Upon learning that another director had heard of the story, Owen jokes “I had a meltdown! Luckily it was very different and he [Eggers] did an amazing job, more accurate to the original story.”
Owen’s goal was to create a narrative that viewers can insert their own experiences into. This could’ve easily come across as an empty gesture. But the careful absences of dialogue and immersive cinematography force your mind to wander and escape into this sinister world by putting yourself into the shoes of the protagonist.
“[Eric’s] alone. He’s trying to get through something. The audience can empathise with him. He had to be a vessel for other people to sort of look at and go ‘oh I can imagine I’d be like this in this situation’. Those aspects of his character, although they’re not fully explained, it leaves an open field for people to project their own personality onto,” says Owen.
Although Eric’s struggle is presented in very extreme conditions, his journey will bring some comfort, especially since many faced isolation in the last two years. The film inadvertently plays out the horrors of such circumstances and the release date is an eerie coincidence, granted the film was started nearly two decades ago. The irony is not lost on Owen who admits that people will probably view the film “in a different light now.”
Shepherd is a testament to the director’s ability to present a struggle with a crumbling mentality through a supernatural lens. In fact, his constant awareness of real-world applications is based on personal experience. “Having had friends who suffer badly from depression and losing their lives but talking to me about it beforehand, it always came across as a horror film,” he recalls.
“It’s in the setting of a horror film, because the imagery and the editing and the music is deliberately inspired by horror as we might know it. Because this central character is going through a horrific episode, it’s in homage to more stylised horror films.”
The gloomy shots of the Isle of Mull convey this atmosphere confidently and this comes from treating the setting as its own character. The director explains that “you need cool, low light and winter to get in the vibe, so that time of the year is also really important to the film. The air was crisp, but the sea was really clear; it’s a beautiful part of the world. It’s a real privilege to be able to film there.”
So can Shepherd be considered a traditional horror? According to Owen, there’s no such thing. “Nothing makes the perfect horror film,” he says and cites Ari Aster’s Midsommar as an example as to why. It is after all one of the most divisive modern features, sparking spirited debates among fans on whether it’s even a horror film. Owen argues that “I think it’s just absolutely outstanding, really confident, beautiful filmmaking. And it’s not horror in that sense. He’s [Aster’s] just done his own thing about horror in a horrific circumstance. But fans just absolutely tear each other apart ‘oh this isn’t a horror film.”
Strong reactions from fans whether good or bad means you’re doing something right and Owen believes that “you can tick the boxes and tick the kill lists but if you can throw yourself out of the box and do your own thing and cause those conversations, then you start changing the industry.”
The long journey of bringing the film to screen allowed Owen to adopt his life experience into the production, especially from his day job as a commercials director. It equipped him well for managing a set and bringing his vision to life, which surprisingly did not change over the 20-year development. “I think what shocked me is how accurately I was able to retain what I had in my head. Being able to walk onto a set that you’d imagined, seeing all that work pay off was a shock, a pleasant shock.”
One aspect that did change, however, was Kate Dickie’s character – as it was originally written for a man. But the film goes against the grain; it doesn’t stereotype and feminise the role. Instead, it focuses on how she unsettles Eric’s character.
“Top of the list was Kate Dickie”, Owen explains, “and I didn’t think that we’d get her because she’s just a treasure in her own way as a character actor, and she jumped at it and made it her own. I think without her, that character wouldn’t have been so sinister. And I think we would have just seen you know, a stereotypical fisherman. She certainly changed that character”.
He’s right of course, as Dickie gives a powerhouse performance. Her chilling line delivery of “Are you escaping or running away, Mr Black?” is a standout scene.
Tom Huges also fed into the script and he brought a vulnerability to Eric. Having previously portrayed real people (such as Prince Albert in Victoria and poet Kit Marlowe in A Discovery Of Witches), Shepherd gave the actor more creative freedom. Owen explains that “with Tom in the lead, he said ‘I really want to bring something of myself to this to make it believable’ and he went to town on it. I reworked some of the dialogue between him and his mother because they needed to have a certain flow. That’s what film is all about; it’s a collaboration.”
When asked what he’s taken from this experience and how it will affect future projects, Owen concludes “I think that it’s being able to create a sense of atmosphere. You know, nothing’s perfect, the film isn’t perfect, but it’s something I’m very proud of because that shows where I’m headed. It’s the most simplistic and elegant of everything that I’ve done. I knew if I can achieve this and then heighten different areas and grandiose different scenes, it will give me, in a sense, the license to do a little bit more moving forward.”
Shepherd comes across as a carefully thought-out feature, which tests the waters on how far a viewer can go in interpreting a story in their own way. Quite rightly, it was made to start conversations. And there’s a good chance those conversations will be taking place amongst audiences long after the credits roll…
