Locally made horror film gets LA premiere and worldwide distribution by Disney+

Back in 2018, Bristol writer/director Ben Steiner’s atmospheric short film Urn was commissioned by Fox for Hulluween, the inaugural online horror festival from US streaming channel Hulu. That led directly to his feature debut, Matriarch, which was shot in Bristol and the Somerset village of Sutton Mallet, and receives its world premiere on the opening night of the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in LA on October 11. Matriarch will then be distributed worldwide on Disney+ from October 21.

The film stars Jemima Rooper and Kate Dickie (whose credits include Game of Thrones, Red Road, Prometheus, The Witch and Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as Laura and Celia Birch, a long-estranged daughter and mother who are reunited after Laura mysteriously survives a fatal overdose. As the official synopsis elaborates: “Claiming to be acting on a mother’s intuition, Celia contacts Laura the day after her near death experience and lures her back to the village from which Laura ran away as a teenager, promising to take care of her. But as Laura’s body starts to secrete a strange black ooze, the village’s shocking secrets come bubbling to the surface.”

Although neither star is from Bristol, there’s plenty of local talent behind the camera, including composer Suvi Eeva Äikäs, who’s also studio assistant for Geoff Barrow (Beak/Portishead) and Ben Salisbury and has had previously had her work used in Alex Garland’s science fiction TV series Devs.

Shooting took place during the winter of 2021/22, when covid was still rampant. “My son tested positive on the first night of the shoot, so not only could I not go home but for the next week I had to direct in isolation from inside my car, directing via walkie talkie,” Ben tells us “A week after that, the lead actor would get covid herself, so we had to postpone the rest of the shoot until after Christmas.

“Some very bad things happen in the village church and we shot those scenes in a set built inside St Michael in the Mount Without. We shot the early, urban section of the film in an office building on Berkeley Square and an apartment block just by the SS Great Britain. The rest of the film was shot in and around Sutton Mallet.”

For Ben, the completion of his first feature was the culmination of a dream. “I’ve been making short films for over twenty years. They were never just a means to an end and whether or not I get to make more features, I’ll definitely carry on making shorts. But I did always hope they’d lead to a feature film. And now they have. It is a dream come true, which I’m doing my best to enjoy while feverishly plotting my follow-up. I’ve got loads of scripts ready to go (at least I think they are!), so now I just need a producer and a couple of suitcases full of money.”

Main pic: Hulu

Read more: Bristol director’s short horror film is up for a $10,000 prize