The Weird Knocks & The Eerie Answers

Past the standing stones and settled mist, we venture to the lone house on the hill. Peering through the door as we step beyond the ordinary and into The Weird and The Eerie.

Myskatonic is a genre film, television and media company, passionate about the power of the horror genre, identity and place. Drawn to stories where characters find themselves displaced from the everyday into otherworldly situations that challenge their perceptions. Formed in 2019 by writer/director Ryan Mackfall and writer/producer Kingsley Marshall, they’re committed to developing new and emerging talent and increasing the visibility of the UK’s regional film industry, as well as Cornwall's history and culture.

Myskatonic’s first release was the award-winning short film Backwoods, an adaptation of a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. Since then, They’ve produced short films, documentaries and music videos for major record labels, and developed a slate of feature films, episodic drama, and documentary series for television.

Verdant and Myskatonic's first collaboration was the Myskatonic Showcase, a night of film screenings and panel talks. Following the success of Myskatonic Showcase #1, we’re thrilled to announce that Ryan and Kingsley are heading to Verdant Taproom to curate a quarterly season of socials and film screenings. On November 17th, they'll host Myskatonic Showcase #2 with some very special guests.

 Image: Brian Robinson

As before, all of the titles they’ll be screening were shot in Cornwall, including the feature film Night of the Eagle, and we’re pleased to welcome Candy Vincent-Smith from StudioCanal to join us on the panel to talk about reissues and restorations – and the place of the film within British folk horror’s heritage. Night of the Eagle is one of three adaptations of Fritz Leiber’s novel Burn, Witch, Burn; it stars the incredible Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair and Margaret Johnson, and was shot primarily on location in Porthcurno and St Just in Penwith.

Alongside the feature, there will be screenings of two music videos – a Hammer pastiche made for Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) – Rain of the Graves – shot at Enys House – and World Alone, a dystopian sci-fi which was conjured up to launch Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) new album in the summer. They’ll be talking about how those collaborations came about, and how they managed to coax Bruce and his House Band from Hell down to Cornwall to shoot the film. In the spirit of these rock & roll hall of famers, they’ll join you for the exclusive first pour of The Weird and The Eerie (6.5% IPA). 

Image: Brian Robinson

The beer's name draws from Mark Fisher’s seminal book. Fisher’s central conceit is that the weird is something present that doesn’t belong, an intrusion from outside of the familiar – his touchstones are H.P. Lovecraft, Daphne Du Maurier, Andrei Tarkovsky, The Stone Tape, Brian Eno and ‘weird’ fiction, all of which feed our storytelling at Myskatonic. The counterpoint is that the eerie is about absence, or a failure of presence – whether that’s unseen forces in abandoned places, or silence, or cries emanating from an otherwise empty landscape. This pretty much describes our approaches as storytellers – and our attitude to the people and places of Cornwall

We caught up with Ryan and Kingsley for an insightful look behind the lens at Myskatonic’s driving force, origins, influences, ethos and approach to making films in Cornwall, and the importance of collaboration and cross-pollination.

Q: Tell us a bit about how Myskatonic was formed, and what drew you to the weird and eerie in filmmaking & storytelling.

Ryan and I formed Myskatonic to make our first film together, Backwoods - adapted from an H.P. Lovecraft short story by screenwriter Neil Fox. The film premiered in the US, won the HP Lovecraft Award in Rhode Island,  and was licensed for the folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, directed by Kier-La Janisse, which screened at SXSW. The film went on to play at the BAFTA- and BIFA-qualifying London Short Film Festival, and on the train journey back, we cooked up our second short from a script Ryan had been developing with writer Lachlan Marks.

Q: Most of Myskatonic’s films are based in Cornwall. How much do the Cornish landscape, history, and folklore shape your projects?

Cornwall’s history is all around us - the ancient monuments, the moors, the post-industrial landscape, the sea and the coast are constantly inspiring to us. Stories seep from the earth. Our film Howlsavla Gwav is filmed and set at Montol, which itself builds and reimagines the mid-winter celebrations of West Penwith. Our stories are set on the landscape that surrounds us - inspired by islands, the moors, the ancient houses and stone circles

Q: Why is supporting independent filmmaking in Cornwall important, and what are the advantages and/or disadvantages of making films in our part of the world?

We’re committed to making films where we live and work, and are proud to be part of a community of filmmakers in Cornwall, a wider Celtic community, and outsiders around the world. We work at the film and television school at Falmouth University and are committed to developing and working with new talent there, and through our production work at Myskatonic - where we’ve worked with over 100 students as trainees over the years - on films, music videos, and Ryan’s work as a concert filmmaker. Cornwall’s geography encourages cross-pollination and collaboration, and there’s something about this place that draws creativity - in the people already here and incomers. We’ve built a large group of actors, musicians, designers, writers and filmmakers through our work, who we’ve met through other projects - and so many of these people we’ve met through festivals and events, other filmmakers, playwrights or our work at the University.

Q: When considering tone, story, and message, what checklist do you tick off when starting a new project?

No checklist ticking for us - it’s all about the feeling. We have different tastes, but we're both drawn to subtext and what lies just under the surface. We’ve been drawn to stories about personal identity and representation, often where characters find themselves displaced from themselves, from the everyday, from their families, from comfort - that’s our sweet spot. We get pitched a lot of stories by writers, and if we’re hopping on a call, it’ll be something that clicks with both of us where we feel we can help to develop something that fits with Myskatonic.

Q: What are four Weird and Eerie films that have influenced your approach and that you think everyone should watch?

When we were making BACKWOODS, we’d seen so many bad Lovecraft adaptations that we wanted to add something solid to the canon that did the strange tales justice. With THE BIRDWATCHER, our touchstones were Jon Glazer’s amazing short THE FALL, and we talked a lot about UNDER THE SKIN as a reference for the feel of some of the sequences. With THE LAND DEMANDS BLOOD, our documentary on Hammer films and their influence on folk horror, we were thinking about WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED,  the Anna Biller movie THE LOVE WITCH and THE LAST SACRIFICE. We love listening to creative people talk about their work, and our pitch to Hammer was that we’d get these amazing filmmakers, historians and playwrights - Jane Darke, Carl Grose, Dean Puckett,  Ruth Heholt, Mark Jenkin- who we’d had conversations with in the past, in a room to speak to their own experience of the films and the influence it had on their work and their lives. We were in production the next day.

Q: Why is the collaboration with Verdant important, and how did it first come about?

Verdant are doing so many incredible events at the Taproom and beyond, truly inspiring. We’ve had Myskatonic meetings here over the years, and we talked to Matthew and Adam after we ran a Myskatonic showcase back in May through Neil at the Sound/Image Cinema Lab’s regular monthly events with Brewing Folk. Since then, we’ve hosted a few Q&A’s and collaborated on the Folk Film Festival which happened at Heligan over Halloween. Launching THE WEIRD AND THE EERIE as a collaborative beer between Verdant and Myskatonic is like a fever dream for us, and we hope it fuels many more weird and eerie stories and leads us to many more creative collaborators.

Q: We’re having a Myskatonic film event at Verdant Taproom on November 17th. Is there more to look forward to between Verdant and Myskatonic?

We’ve committed to a quarterly curated season at the Taproom - bringing down studios, distributors and filmmakers that we think the Taproom crowd would love to hear talk about their work. We’d decided on NIGHT OF THE EAGLE for this event in November, as neither of us had seen it programmed on a big screen and we felt the restoration of this cult classic warranted attention. We reached out to Candy Vincent-Smith, who managed the re-release for Studio Canal, to see if she could join us for the Q&A, and we were thrilled when she agreed.

Our next event will be in 2027, and another studio is joining for a very special screening. We can’t wait to see cult horror fans there on the night to share the experience with us.

Join us for Myskatonic Showcase #2 on Tuesday, November 17th 2026 for what’s sure to be a weird and eerie evening of films, panels, and the sacrementum of our collaborative beer, The Weird & The Eerie (6.5% IPA). Free Entry. For more info, click HERE.

www.myskatonic.co

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www.soundcloud.com/kingsleymarshall/sets/the-land-demands-blood