The theme of obsession is woven into each of your films. Sightseers and Prevenge share an obsession with punishment and Timestalker investigates obsessive love. Can you talk about why obsession is such fertile ground for your work?

The most pretentious answer is that it aligns with how I feel about creativity. I am an obsessive person, creator, and writer. I have thoughts and scenes and dialogue that play over and over in my head, which is why I’ve ended up being a writer. I don’t have much of a choice. It overwhelms me. I need to offload sometimes, and that was why I started writing plays, creating characters, and eventually making films. I have an obsessive nature, and it’s something that I engage with. As soon as I see a character that’s obsessive, even if they’re really dark, or sinister, or on the wrong side of the law, I identify with them. When I’ve latched onto something, I can’t let it go. I have a very visual memory. We’re all neurodiverse, we just haven’t found ways of categorizing people’s thinking. Someone told me that I have hyperphantasia, which means you see things very vividly in your mind’s eye. You experience grief and loss and obsession in quite an intensive way, because you can see that thing, but you can’t have it. It’s weird, isn’t it? 

I wonder if your hyperfocus on visualizing experience plays into your approach to violence onscreen. There’s a unique amorality to your work. Violence is not represented as a corrosive, malignant force, but rather as an understandable response to the horrors of everyday life. Perhaps your films offer an opportunity to visualize these responses?

It’s a form of catharsis for me, as someone who is very British. The repression is multiplied by twenty by being a woman, and by being Gen X—you’re not supposed to complain. Film offers a permission structure to feel those feelings, outwardly, physically, and materially, and not be judged for them. We’re so used to seeing men’s imaginations projected onscreen. There is something fascinating about women’s fantasies and imaginations, about allowing women to be amoral or even immoral onscreen. That’s the line that I’m interested in treading: is there any morality in imagination? I think there isn’t. There should be free imagination, not just free speech. I see debates asking the question, How feminist is this woman’s film? I think she’s allowed to imagine whatever she wants. Films are not diaries; they’re not instruction manuals. Just because my character is killing men does not mean that I am advocating for killing men. I am not the character, but rather she is an avatar for the audience. People are more likely to draw an equivalence between a female character and a female writer-director than with a male writer-director. No one watches Taxi Driver and says, “Are you suggesting that we go murder pimps in New York City?” But they do ask those questions of women’s work.

It’s that kind of representation that expands the notion of what women have the capacity for. There’s an interesting statistic that female serial killers are much less likely to be caught because people don’t believe they have the capacity to kill. So, what you’re really doing is advocating for female serial killers, clearly.

Yeah, I think that’s true. Let’s get it going.

But rage, and violent ideation, are things that live inside of us, that live inside of everyone.

I think so. My films reflect different stages in my life, and I’m not always aware of it at the time. When I was pregnant, I was particularly angry and trapped by the status of women in society. Prevenge is about pure rage. Timestalker is me having an epiphany about letting go of rage. There’s still anger, and obsession, and narcissism, but there’s also a coming to terms with being human. I’m a huge fan of David Lynch, and when I looked back at all of his work after he died, I realized what a commitment he had to being an artist beyond anything else. It’s easy to get distracted in this industry. But looking back at his filmography made me understand that it’s my job to make films and to be in the flow of making, but it’s not my job to fully understand what I do. I won’t always know. Prevenge is ten years old, and I think ten years is how long it takes for me to look at a piece of work with objectivity. I enjoy it because I’m not judging myself, because it no longer feels like me. My production designer said that I remind her of Cindy Sherman, that I’m trying on these different identities to show how archetypes of women are constructed. These are masks that we put on.

Cindy Sherman is a fascinating lens through which to view your work. Your films suggest a multiplicity to the ways in which women move through the world, which runs counter to the way that women are typically viewed onscreen.

Flexibility! This is why I’m obsessed with performers like Madonna, or Kate Bush, or Björk. We underestimate how women can transform themselves. It’s interesting to think about transness through this lens as well. Being able to transform yourself is a kind of superpower. We underestimate what a skill that is. I see it on film sets as well—the ways in which makeup artists can transform a film, but those roles are often undermined in comparison to gaffers or cinematographers. But to me, those women are the witches, they’re the sorcerers. Women survive by being able to change ourselves. Shapeshifting is a power, not a weakness.

Absolutely, and I think your films reveal hidden female experiences that are not typically depicted on screen, like unabashed sexuality. There’s a frankness to the way that you approach sexuality in your work, like Tina’s knit crotchless panties in Sightseers, and Agnes’ dildo in Timestalker. But Ruth’s sexuality in Prevenge is particularly radical. From the first frame, Ruth is in control of her sexuality, and she’s also very visibly pregnant. Maternal sexuality is an incredibly taboo subject.

I wasn’t consciously thinking about shattering a taboo. This is a love story, but the object of Ruth’s obsession is gone. She thinks she won’t ever have sex again because she only wanted him. With a loss of identity comes the loss of your sexuality. And it’s superimposed on you: you’re pregnant now, you can’t be sexy. You’re a mum now, you can’t be sexy. You’re menopausal now, you can’t be sexy. There are all these restrictions, and no one told me! I didn’t agree to that contract! And at the age of thirteen, you might get sexualized without asking for it. You didn’t ask for it then, and you didn’t ask for it to go, either. I think about this a lot, particularly through the lens of being an actress. The industry needs you to belong in a box. It has a lot to do with the interface of the internet. That’s why I started getting interested in working on period pieces. In the past, being charismatic was enough of a reason for people to fancy someone. Unless they smell a bit, or have rotting teeth, or something. But we don’t trust our own instincts anymore. As a creator, I’m always trying to reach an intuitive, impulsive place with human instincts. Culturally, we’ve thrown away our instincts.

The concept of following your instincts is central to each of your films. There is a battle between what is instinctual and what is socially acceptable. Your characters find their power when they follow their instincts.

I grew up in the pre-internet generation, so I found my identity without it being reflected back to me through a magic mirror. And with AI, it’s going to be a billion times worse. When I went home, it was just me by myself with some books, maybe some drawing. Like a Victorian child with a candle. That really led me to trust my own instincts; I know who I am on quite a deep level. I even see it with my own kids. Their experience of reality is so fragmented that it’s very hard to find a sense of who you are within the world. Or there’s a multiplicity to who you are, but in a very unintegrated way. Every night at 6pm, I’d watch the news because my dad would put it on the telly, and the cartoons went off. We don’t have that anymore. All of our experiences are so fragmented now, because we don’t have enforced exposure to reality. How do you rebel against structure if you’ve never had structure in the first place? My work asks the question, How do you get back home to yourself? That’s what I’m always trying to get to as an artist. When you follow your instincts, it’s good art, it’s fresh. I’ve tried to sell out and it never works, it’s a bit crap. I tried to make money and it was just shit. Prevenge didn’t make me a lot of money, but it was a very intuitive and very easy process for me. That film was a lesson in trusting my inner voice.

I want to talk more about Prevenge, because this year is the tenth anniversary of this film.

I have a ten-year-old at home to prove it.

It’s a film that continues to be profoundly influential. Could you talk about the process of (oh, God) conceiving of the project and filming it in your last trimester?

I had made Sightseers, and the next logical step was to write my own film and possibly direct it. And even though I’d just written and starred in this film that went to Cannes and got lots of awards, nothing was happening. And I was at that point where I realized, if I’m going to have kids, I have to do it now. So I got pregnant, and then this producer, Jamie Adams, came to me and said, “I’ve got a tiny pot of money, and I think I can make a feature. Do you want to write something?” I was really grumpy, and I basically said to Jamie, “Go away, I’m pregnant. It’s easy for you, you’ve got three kids, but you’re a man. You’ve got a wife who can do everything.” But then I realized this was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. I always go back to the Taxi Driver analogy when talking about judging female characters. You don’t judge Travis Bickle! You watch him as a character. So, what if Travis Bickle was a woman? What if he was a pregnant woman? So, I pitched the idea to the producers, and they said, “Let’s do it.” And I said, “Can we do it in the next month, because I’m six months pregnant?” So, we pulled this thing together with very little financing. I wrote a series of two-handers, and I’ve got amazing friends who are actors, and I wrote stuff for them. They’ll each come in for a day, we’ll kill them in the morning, do the dialogue in the afternoon, and if we do eight days, we’ll have a feature film. We ended up doing eleven days, and that was it. Then we started the editing process with the baby. A lot of men say to me, “How did you do that pregnant?” You know, I got a bit tired, but I can do this standing on my head. It was an amazing experience, really.

Prevenge is proof that being a filmmaker and being a mom is possible.

In the first scene of the film, when I kill someone and I’m wearing a cardigan and a floral dress, that was me laughing at the audience. You thought you knew this person, you’ve made so many assumptions, and she’s nothing like what you thought. I was able to say to the audience, “I’m going to flout your expectations of me.” Female directors are encouraged not to talk about their kids. We never think of Christopher Nolan, or David Fincher, or Ridley Scott as fathers. That’s way down in the footnotes of who they are. There is so much more judgement on mothers.

Because you started out as an actor, did you find that there was resistance when you moved to writing and directing?

Yes. I was starting out in a different era, the noughties, which in the UK was a male-led and male-dominated comedy scene. This was the breeding ground of Russell Brand, to put it in context. If you were lucky, you’d get to be a groupie, or maybe get a small role as a muse or a girlfriend. That was weird, having just been at university and feeling like my voice was valued, where I could write a damn good essay if I was asked, and then going into a world where people just wanted a blonde. I didn’t have ambitions to be on screen. I thought I would be a penniless actor in a garret, just having a huge amount of fun. It was an accident that I started working with ambitious people—it’s like a disease, ambition. I was sort of along for the ride. I felt like an imposter calling myself a writer, even though I was creating characters and coming up with ideas onstage. And I was acting in sitcoms during the day, and feeling like the creative intuition part of me was really muffled. So, I started making one short film a month and I gained a bit of power and confidence in my own voice. It was a long journey, but I don’t really have any doubt in my voice at all, now. Sometimes I think, God, I should doubt it a bit more, it might be shit, like I’m trying to remember to feel shame. That’s the great thing about being an older woman: I used to give a fuck about things, now I don’t. Creatively, I’m at a place where I can just say, take it or leave it.

Your most recent film, Timestalker, had all the hallmarks of your older work, but it felt like an exciting departure as well. I would love to know about your use of color. It’s such a visually striking movie.

I don’t like feeling pigeonholed. As soon as I’d made a horror film, I was aware that I could have gone to LA and made some generic horror films. They would have made me color grade it gray, blue, or brown. There’s a particular way that you’re supposed to do things, and I didn’t want to be in that box. Most films are missing flamboyance, magic, unreality. I don’t want to be afraid of color. I want to assault people with color, beat them about the head with it. Timestalker is about letting go of shame, letting people see your pink pants. That’s what the film is: you can look at my pants. They are frilly and they are pink. Deal with it.

Horror offers an opportunity to take those bold swings. Do you think you will always work in this genre?

Genre should be a peg, not a box. So, you can hang something on that peg, but I’m not interested if it ends up being a box. My work is about the realm of the imagination. But I think horror and comedy are natural parts of my work; they just show up.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re working on now?

I’m working on an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with a twist. I’m also writing a film called Sprites, about Girl Guide groups set in the early 80’s. And I’m writing a novel! That’s an exciting new direction for me.

I want to end our conversation with a question about endings. In each of your films, your characters undergo a journey of self-discovery, but end up back at the beginning. Rather than regression, this return feels like a form of self-acceptance. As you prepare to step behind the camera again, are there certain themes, formal considerations, or ideas that you’ve come to understand as hallmarks of your work that you’re excited to bring to these projects?

I was on a panel with filmmaker and friend Prano Bailey-Bond, and she said, “I always make films about mad women.” And I thought, I do too. They’re always unreliable, and their perspective doesn’t reflect reality, but we are in their reality. What they see is true for them. I use it quite cathartically. I use it to unlock little puzzles about myself. My adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is really about addressing myself as a younger actor walking into the industry naively. The machinery is not built for your survival. It’s a form of reckoning with something I see now that I couldn’t see then, and sharing that with an audience. That’s what impressed me so much about The Substance. I was on a bus with two teenage boys, and they were talking about the film as if it could happen to them. That’s magic. That’s what films are for. You should feel you are that character. Regardless of gender, politics, race, age, it’s an empathy machine. You are that person for the duration of the film. That film helped those boys to understand what it feels like to be a woman aging in the public eye. That’s good cinema. It guided someone through realizations they didn’t have before. So yeah, that’s kind of my thing. I can’t help it. My parents are educators, so I do have to be a little didactic.

Your films insist that there is no such thing as a normal woman or a crazy woman.

Yeah, we’re all mad. And that’s forgiveness, isn’t it?