The Survivalist: The Irish sci-fi about to hit the big screen

An Irish sci-fi script was chosen as one the hottest in Hollywood in 2012. As it hits the big screen this week, Ed Power talks to its writer and star

ACH December, a countdown of the year’s hottest new movie scripts is circulated around Hollywood. Argo, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech are among the smashes to have featured on the quasi-mythical ‘Black List’.

Should The Revenant win best picture at the Oscars this month, it will be fourth Black List pick to claim the accolade in the past eight years.

Behold the closest thing in Tinseltown to a crystal ball. The list is typically crammed with tent-poles and awards season bait. However, in 2012, space was found for a low-key science fiction script by an unheard of Derry writer/director. In The Survivalist, civilisation has broken down, reducing what remained of humanity to a feral rabble. So far, so Mad Max.

But the cliches were transcended by the screenplay’s unsettling evocation of a world plunged over the brink as the oil supply begins to run dry. Just reading it was enough to convey a chill.

Four years later, the prescience of Hollywood’s tea-leaf readers is about to be put to the test as The Survivalist reaches cinemas. and has also been nominated for a Bafta for best debut.

Shot in a bare-bone, claustrophobic style evocative of Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, it is an undeniably effective watch — an end of the world meditation which renders a nightmare vision of societal meltdown disconcertingly plausible.

IRISH APOCALYPSE

The Survivalist is not quite the Fury Road substitute Hollywood may have anticipated, and it’s hard to imagine it being a mass-market hit in any meaningful sense. Those taking its presence on the Black List as a signal of its commercial viability may consider themselves mislead.

“The Black List definitely brought more credibility when approaching casting,” is writer and director Stephen Fingleton’s response to the effectiveness of early hype. “I spoke to one producer who used to be with [heavyweight independent studio] Working Title. He had an intelligent way of making the film bigger — with a big name actor in the lead.

“That would have been well and good but, we would have been showing the audience what the world had come to look like. I wanted the audience to imagine what the world had come to look like — we don’t show the world as much as depict how the world has deformed its inhabitants.”

On the face of it, Ireland is an unlikely backdrop for the apocalypse, he admits. We are generally lacking in smoking volcanos, tectonic fault lines or steam-punk barbarians on customised bikes. Yet, in The Survivalist the mournfulness of the countryside is revealed to be the perfect setting for a rumination on the downfall of civilisation. Silence, emptiness, the hiss of wind through the treetops — these simple signifiers convey societal collapse more profoundly than any amount of computer-aided bombast. Here is a dystopia to which we can all relate.

Mia Goth and director Stephen Fingleton

“I wanted to make a science fiction film without special effects,” says Fingleton. “ I discovered the concept of ‘peak oil’ — which states that in an era of increasing demand on resources due to population growth, resources decline will trigger a collapse. It’s a loner in the woods story from the perspective of the loner.”

He is a pains to point out that, technically speaking, The Survivalist is not post-apocalyptic. The world hasn’t ended. It is humanity which has been thrown into an existential crisis.

“It’s ‘post-event’. It isn’t science fiction, more speculative fiction. I love science fiction. However, I also enjoy going up against the tropes of the genre. Everyone who has survived in this world is a serial killer — they’ve had to kill multiple times in order to get by. But they’re also polite and withdrawn. They’ve all got this veneer.”

With its spare dialogue and matter-of-fact brutality, The Survivalist can be intensely uncomfortable to sit through. Shooting the movie was no picnic either, reports star Martin McCann (Clash Of The Titans, 71, Ripper Street), who plays the unnamed lead character — a man prepared to murder (and do worse) to defend his patch of land. To more persuasively portray someone for whom every meal is hard won and potentially his last, McCann went on a restricted diet, which left him exhausted and emotional. This helped his performance but didn’t do any wonders for his sanity.

“They put me on a low-carb, high- protein regime. The first six hours were okay, the next six hours... well it wasn’t as if you could just eat a biscuit. The only thing you could reach for was a tin of tuna. On the other hand, at least I was going back to my hotel every night. I had my comforts. If I was really living in that situation it would have been a lot more gruelling to watch.”

NORTHERN DRIFT

McCann speaks in his native Belfast accent, while the mother-daughter interlopers whose appearance on his doorstep serve as the movie’s linch-pin are identified as from what was once the Republic (they are played by the veteran Olwen Fouéré and newcomer Mia Goth). Such nuances will probably be lost on international audiences. But for Irish viewers they will add a layer of complexity and tension, hopes the director.

“It is explicitly set in Ireland,” says Fingleton. “They say they are from Monaghan. So you get this sense of emigration northwards. Moreover, the Troubles are not mentioned — they are not a reference for the characters. You see echoes of the conflict — but they will resonate only for those watching, for for the protagonists.”

Mia Goth and Olwen Fouéré in The Survivalist

When The Survivalist appeared on the Black List, it was suggested to Fingleton that he cast a recognised movie star in the lead. This would bring the film a higher profile, and with it a higher budget and wider distribution. Yet the director was adamant that he needed a relative unknown and that McCann was the best choice. Everyone involved stands by that decision.

“Stephen made it the way he wanted to ,” says Martin. “There was some pressure on. People were going ‘You know what— let’s get James McAvoy or whoever in here’. To give it a bit more box office. But Stephen wanted someone who was new. I am grateful he gave it to me.”

The Survivalist opens at selected cinemas nationwide on Friday