UK filmmaker Simon Rumley’s Thailand-set kidnapping thriller Crushed underlines his commitment to create films in what he has dubbed the “extreme drama” genre.
A renowned writer-director on the genre circuit for more than two decades, Rumley has a reputation for uncompromising, uncomfortable and unflinching films that he says is to “get an audience to think and feel something”. It has seen him build a loyal following among both genre cinema fans and festival programmers.
“Cinema is an art, it’s a serious art,” Rumley says, ahead of the world premiere of Crushed at this month’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. “There is a place in cinema for popcorn movies and there’s also a place for movies that challenge and make people think.”
Crushed is Rumley’s first feature since 2019’s Once Upon A Time In London. It portrays the tale of a pastor and how his family’s faith and resilience is tested when their young daughter is kidnapped and they embark on a desperate search with local authorities to find her.
The film takes audiences into Thailand’s seedy underbelly replete with beatings and torture, animal snuff porn and a predatory American paedophile.
The production shot for four weeks entirely on location in Bangkok in XX. It stars UK actor-director Steve Oram (Sightseers, Aaaaaaaah!) as the pastor, first-time actor Nattapohn Tameeruks as his wife, and French-Thai newcomer Margaux Dietrich as their daughter.
The cast also includes Thai superstar Sahajak Boonthanakit (Only God Forgives), South African-born, Thailand-based artist Christian Ferrieira, and Bangkok-based US stand-up comedian Jonathan Samson, who has regular roles in local Thai productions.
Tom Waller of Bangkok-based De Warrenne Pictures produces on behalf of the UK’s Screenprojex. Long-time Rumley financier Doug Abbott of Screenprojex is an executive producer, along with Steve Jaggi and Lionel Hicks.
Rumley wrote the first draft of Crushed when he was on the festival circuit with his Texas-set sexual thriller Red White & Blue in 2011 after reading two disturbing articles in the UK press about “crush videos” in which women dress up in high heels, stockings and suspenders, play with animals, often kittens, before killing them with their stilettos.
That draft was shelved for more than a decade as Rumley wrote and directed other projects. Those included a segment for 2012’s indie anthology horror The ABCs of Death, which portrayed a desperate prostitute with three children to feed who agrees to star in a crush film.
When he told Abbott and his other regular financiers about his Crushed script they backed him to rewrite the script to reflect his desire to explore faith and what having it tested in extremis might look like.
“I’ve always been fascinated by faith and the question of do you take the readings of the Bible literally or not? Some people do, some don’t. Forgive your enemy. It’s such a great thing to be able to do, if you can. But can we do it?” Rumley muses.
He first met De Warrene Pictures’ Waller in 2000 at the Edinburgh festival, when they both had films of their own in the lineup – Rumley with Strong Language, Waller in the Scottish capital with Monk Dawson. They became firm friends on discovering they were “like-minded people with the same sensibilities”, as Rumley puts it.
After five years in London, Waller returned to his native Thailand in 2002 to produce films. The pair met again during the 2024 Berlinale and brainstormed how Crushed could be reworked to set it in Thailand, taking advantage of Waller’s local production experience and crew contacts.
Initially the script was entirely in English but Rumley adjusted it to have scenes when the expat UK characters would speak Thai. “In the script all these people have been here a long time, so of course they would speak Thai,” Rumley says, explaining Orem learned his Thai lines phonetically.
Casting director and UK expat Kaprice Kea also stepped in with their wide network of contacts for English-speaking Thai actors.
After 20 years making films outside of the mainstream, Rumley is looking forward to the audience response at Edinburgh.
“I want to get a reaction out of the audience,” he says. ”I watch so many films and come out of them thinking ’Why did I bother?’ Making my films, I am railing against the mediocrity of contemporary cinema. Especially with streaming services where everything just seems increasingly bland. I like making films about people and the emotions that they go through. To my mind if you push the audience to an emotional reaction it is working. If you’re doing a comedy and people are laughing, that’s amazing.
”But I don’t think I’m going to be trying my hand at comedy any day soon, that’s very hard.”
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