Anna Biller’s commitment to world-building is so immersive that when it came to directing her third feature The Face Of Horror, the US filmmaker did not just write and direct but was costume designer, editor and music supervisor.
The TIFF world premiere, which plays in Midnight Madness, stars Kristine Froseth, Ellie Bamber and Jonah Hauer-King, and adapts Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan for 14th-century England. Shooting took place in the Czech Republic across summer 2025. In the story, a knight marries his longtime love, only to grow bored and instead court a wealthy noblewoman, with his wife in turn seeking her bloody revenge.
The film’s producers are Mike Goodridge and James Bowsher of UK outfit Good Chaos, with Prague’s Sirena Film servicing the production. It is sold internationally by the UK’s Embankment Films, with WME representing North America rights.
Colour palette
The 1960s and 1970s-inspired technicolour aesthetic of Biller’s previous features Viva and The Love Witch, which played at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2007 and 2016 respectively, returns in The Face Of Horror — and was hard won.
“I tried to get another costume designer but it didn’t work out,” says Biller, daughter of a fashion designer. “I wanted to go very historically accurate. Believe it or not, the bright colour is what they had [in the medieval period], and nobody does that.”
“[Biller is] one of those rare directors who is so well-prepared and knows exactly what she wants and can gazump you on any historical issue, costume or detail,” observes Goodridge, whose eclectic list of producing credits includes Ruben Östlund’s Triangle Of Sadness and Finnish actioner Sisu: Road To Revenge.
He and Biller first met in Los Angeles in early 2020 to discuss a gothic romance feature she had been trying to get off the ground for some time. When the pandemic interrupted those plans, Biller decided to lay the film to rest, turning it instead into a novel, Bluebeard’s Castle, that was published in 2023. She next eyed a move into horror with an adaptation of Yotsuya Kaidan, first written as a play by Tsuruya Nanboku IV in 1825 and offering the themes of revenge and betrayal that she had been looking to explore.
With Good Chaos attached, Biller wrote the script in 2021 and spent the next four years prepping meticulously. Financing came largely via a US private equity investment from Jared Sanford, who also executive produced and starred in The Love Witch. When it came time to shoot, however, setting the project up in the UK proved difficult despite the medieval English setting and Good Chaos’s involvement.
“It’s not straightforward, because Anna is American, to make it a British movie,” says Goodridge. “It doesn’t fit into a British funding model.
“We weren’t operating on a huge budget [under $10m] and we had to make that painful assessment of, ‘Is it going to be affordable to make this film in the UK?’” he continues. “Ultimately it wasn’t, it was preferable to go overseas.”
The search turned to Europe, with the Czech Republic winning out. As well as taking advantage of the tax rebate, the country offered “most of what we needed”, says Bowsher, including a [mock] 14th-century English village at Barrandov Studios. For the exterior of a main setting, “we ended up doing a glass painting of a medieval castle”, says Biller. “We found an old man [Jiri Cihak] who was a glass painter in the 1960s.”
The film shot on 35mm across 34 days, with post-production taking place between Prague and Los Angeles where Biller lives.
Speaking ahead of its Midnight Madness premiere on September 11, the producers feel confident The Face Of Horror will connect with a younger, TikTok-savvy audience, who may have come to The Love Witch via social media years after its initial release. While it played multiple festivals following its IFFR world premiere, and received modest theatrical releases in the UK-Ireland and US, its main life came afterwards.
“It has an enormous following, the long tail of that film is massive,” says Goodridge. “A billion TikTok impressions; it’s constantly coming up on lists of the best horror films of the 21st century. I think that generation who have discovered The Love Witch will embrace The Face Of Horror.”
“You are buying into someone who has a vision, and that’s what resonates with people,” adds Bowsher. “They can see something that is an entire world, that comes from one mind.”
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