‘IT has all the right elements of isolation, the really beautiful mountains, the cliffs and the bleak oceanside.”
That’s how Hollywood actress Jena Malone describes the Isle of Skye which, according to her, is the ideal place to shoot a horror film.
Malone, who has starred in the likes of The Hunger Games series and 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, told the Sunday National of her “love”
for Scotland where she filmed her new movie Consecration, part of this year’s FrightFest at the Glasgow Film Festival.
The film sees an American woman arrive at a convent on Skye as she seeks to find out the truth about her priest brother’s death.
So, what makes the Scottish island so good for a film so scary?
“The director [Christopher Smith] picked it for his reasons, I just got to go to this amazing place – but as soon as I went there, I realised how right he was,” Malone says.
“I honestly didn’t get to spend that much time there as it was only for a couple of days of filming.”
Although she couldn’t enjoy Scotland too much during that particular visit, it’s a country she’s become very familiar with over the years.
Malone tells us: “I love Scotland. I’ve been to the Edinburgh Film Festival, I went up to Aberdeen and I’ve been to the Orkney Islands.
“I want to spend more time there, I just think it’s so cool. I love the people.
“I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the UK, and the English countryside feels flat and linear so when I get to Scotland, and I grew up in the mountains, the beauty just smacks you in the face.”
She adds: “I would totally live there.”
Malone’s new film is definitely one for horror lovers – although she admits it’s a genre she’s distanced herself from, somewhat.
“I’m a fan of horror to a certain extent,” she explains. “I used to watch more but since I became a mum, I have a threshold for violence that’s so tiny because I spend so much of my day pre-visualising the worst thing that can happen – and we live in a scary world.
“I don’t want a horror film to zone out anymore,” Malone laughs.
It’s a busy time for the actor, with the European premiere of her other new film Adopting Audrey already hitting the Glasgow Film Theatre.
It sits at the complete opposite end of the spectrum to Consecration and is based on a true story.
“The focus is on a woman losing her way in life who turns to adult adoption for help.
It’s a special film for Malone, who noted the transition from playing roles in major blockbusters to something more grounded as a “liberating experience”.
She explained: “I loved the character of Audrey and previous to this, I had been doing a lot of character work with accents and wigs and entering different points of history.
“I was putting on so many masks but I realised the one thing I hadn’t done was kind of take all those away and just try to be myself and give a very real, human performance.
“The script for Adopting Audrey came to me and I thought this is it, I’ll just let Jena lead a little bit.”
She continued: “It was challenging but I found it very liberating because I haven’t done something this close to myself since I was a teenager.
“That was scary but also very oddly soothing. It felt really nice to drop all those things that I had learned about behaviour and accents and just be myself.”
Adopting Audrey will be available on digital download from March 13
