Bradley Parker has been working as a visual effects supervisor and second unit director on some of the biggest movies in the business for over two decades. Just a few of the titles he’s worked on include Fight Club, Let Me In and Matt Reeves impending The Batman.
And, whilst you might not have been aware of his involvement in the aforementioned films, his name became a household word – particularly amongst horror fans – when he got behind the camera to direct the Oren Peli-written and produced disaster horror movie, Chernobyl Diaries in 2012. Fast forward almost ten years later and Parker is back with The Devil Below, a film that feels very much like a natural extension of the “extreme tour” of Pripyat he took us all on back then.
Penned by Stefan Jaworski (“Those Who Kill”) and Eric Scherbarth, and starring Will Patton (Halloween), Adan Canto (“Designated Survivor”) and Alicia Sanz (“From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series”), the film transports us to an abandoned town deep in Appalachian country where underground coal mines have been ablaze for decades. When a team of researchers embark on an expedition in an attempt to discover the origin of the fires, they soon discover something more terrifying than the mystery that sent them there.
As The Devil Below arrives on VOD and Digital this Friday, March 5, SCREAM sat down with Parker who revealed how the cast and crew worked like actual miners so as to create as authentic an environment as possible and how the script awoke his interest so much that he’d be keen to follow it up with a sequel, should the opportunity arise…
Words: Howard Gorman
