FrightFest last saw you in Glasgow in 2008 with I Sell the Dead. It’s now 2026, what has taken you so long to return with The Restoration at Grayson Manor?
I’ve never really thought of it as being away. I’ve been working consistently across film, audio drama, music, and development. The Restoration at Grayson Manor (2025) is the result of a long gestation and a few false starts. We were preparing to go in 2019, then Covid intervened, and when we finally returned to it everything aligned in a way that made the production not just possible, but genuinely joyful.
I was able to assemble a cast I could not have been more excited to work with, and collaborate with my cinematographer Narayan Van Meile, who I had wanted to work with for years. I don’t think this film could have been made as well earlier. Hats off to Brendan McCarthy, John Mc Donnel and Deidre Levins at Fantastic Films for staying the course with me.
How did this project come about, and how did you meet your co-writer Clay McLeod Chapman? Was the inspiration for the central premise drawn from real technology involving amputees and subconscious control of artificial limbs?
Clay and I met through our shared orbit around Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix. Larry and I later invited Clay to write an episode or two for our audio drama series Tales from Beyond the Pale, and there was an immediate creative shorthand. We are both interested in using genre as a Trojan horse for emotional and psychological truths. The original spark came from watching a YouTube video of an amputee controlling a robotic
hand with his mind. That led me into neurological research around phantom limbs and subconscious motor control, particularly the idea that the subconscious never forgets, regardless of what the conscious mind tries to repress. From there, the story moved away from technology and toward questions of inheritance, trauma, control, and what gets passed down whether we want it or not.
How did you attract genre royalty Alice Krige and Glee star Chris Colfer as mother and son?
Clay and I set out to write the kind of film we wanted to see and simply were not seeing. By the time we shared the script with the cast, it felt genuinely singular, which meant we were offering actors something unusual and, importantly, different to play.
Alice Krige brings extraordinary intelligence and a justified staunchness to the role. After we wrapped she told me no one has ever asked her to do comedy before and it blew me away because Alice has such wonderful deadpan timing and wit, I think she is one of the best actors of her generation, and an absolute blast to be with on set.
Chris Colfer was excited by the chance to subvert expectations and lean into something darker and stranger. He's a very soulful actor, he got the humour, yes, but he managed Boyd's internal turmoil as he must allow his defensives to drop and to be vulnerable.
I also want to mention Gabriella Garcia Vargas, whose collaborative nature on set was a genuinely wonderful experience. We went to some very emotionally raw places together, mapping Claudia’s journey from addiction into recovery. These are heavy themes, which we were not afraid to undercut with moments of humour, but her character was always approached seriously and without irony.
Our Irish cast brought the same level of commitment. Declan Reynolds and Matthew McMahon gave the material everything it demanded. Matthew’s comedic timing, particularly in the sofa and stairway scenes, really allows those moments to shine.
My work with Declan Reynolds was some of the most hands on and rewarding of the shoot. It was a role that required careful shaping, and we spent time workshopping Lee’s emotional temperature in a way that best served the film. Our collaboration helped shape a performance that sits at the heart of the ensemble. I am very proud of what we achieved together.
Finally, I do not think the manor would be what it is without Daniel Adegboyega, his work as Tannock really shaped the flow. He has great comedic timing.
You’ve called it “The Lion in Winter of killer hand movies.” Explain.
Like The Lion in Winter (1968), it is about power struggles, generational resentment, and people who know exactly how to wound each other. The fact that there are murderous hands involved only adds to the flavour.
It was important to me that the barbed nature of the mother and son relationship be enjoyable to watch rather than suffocating for the audience. The Lion in Winter handles that balance expertly. It is vicious and hateful, but also playful, and it is clear the characters are enjoying the devastation they inflict on one another.
High-tone melodrama from diva soaps like Dynasty, Dallas and Falcon Crest seems to inform the narrative. Was that intentional?
I think it crept in at an early stage, yes. On a personal level, those shows were where I first encountered gay characters who were out, visible, and allowed to exist without being reduced to societal scapegoats. They were powerful, funny, glamorous, and generally sane.
Before that, most of the representation I saw suggested that gay men were either weak, tragic, or disposable. As a gay kid in need of escapism, I found enormous comfort not only in horror, but in the melodramatic excess and humour of writers like Richard Shapiro and Esther Shapiro, and producers like Aaron Spelling.
Your love of the vintage TV series Dark Shadows and its actress Grayson Hall seem to have influenced the title. Is that the case?
Yes. The film was originally titled The Restoration at Grayson’s Hall, but that felt a little too on the nose. I am probably a bigger fan of the films House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971) than the television series itself. There is something very dry and smouldering about them. House of Dark Shadows was cut with commercial breaks in mind, which results in wildly abrupt transitions that are not always narratively smooth, but give the films a strange and distinctive flavour that I love.
Grayson Hall was a fierce actor who clearly enjoyed deadpanning her way through Collinswood in Dark Shadows. She also received an Academy Award nomination for The Night of the Iguana (1964), which is where you really see what she was capable of. I imagine her between takes on Night of Dark Shadows, cigarette in hand, with a wry smile at what they were getting away with.
Robert Florey’s The Beast with Five Fingers, Robert Wiene’s The Hands of Orlac, or Oliver Stone’s The Hand. Which is the closest relative to The Restoration at Grayson Manor?
Spiritually, it is probably The Hands of Orlac (1924), not in plot, but in its fixation on identity and bodily autonomy. Orlac’s terror comes from the idea that his hands no longer belong to him, that they carry another person’s history, impulses, and violence. What we were exploring in The Restoration at Grayson Manor is that those impulses and that violence can stem from within; can rise up from the deeply buried part of us and demand attention.
That said, watching The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) as a young boy absolutely set me on this path. It lodged itself in my imagination early and never really left.
My co writer Clay McLeod Chapman often cites Oliver Stone's The Hand (1981), to which I always reply, but Clay, it’s shite.
The hand effects, practical, CGI, or AI?
They were a true mixed media endeavour. Primarily practical, a gloved performer supported by invisible digital work where needed, rig-removal and so on. I wanted the hand to feel present. Horror lives or dies on tactility, so we started there and when needed we relied on CGI, as well as props. We had a great team of visual effects artists working away in both Dublin and Vienna for some of the more action-oriented moment.
It’s an unapologetically queer film with no holds barred, was that always the intention? You must be pleased that Pride magazine named it one of the Top Ten Queer Horror Movies of 2025.
It was always queer, because I’m queer. Not as a statement, but as a perspective. Horror has always been an ideal space to explore queerness because it already deals in othering, scapegoating, repression, fear, inheritance, and monstrosity.
The recognition from Pride was meaningful because it felt like the film landed where it was meant to. I loved the company they placed us in on that list. Fréwaka (2024) is in there as well, another Irish film, and it is a gem.
And you’re staying in that space. Your next film is a haunted house shocker tackling the horror of homophobia?
Yes. That project is about bigotry, its roots, and why it is such a shell game.
As a queer person I am still conscious of how I move through the world. I still think twice about holding my husband’s hand in public. I still find myself coming out repeatedly to heterosexual people. I still hear debased and disproven hot takes about queer and trans lives from heterosexual people. Of course I want to talk about that.
Horror has always been implicitly queer. Allowing new voices into the genre is not just about fairness, it's about evolution. That is where the most interesting and honest new directions in horror are emerging.
THE RESTORATION AT GRAYSON MANOR is showing at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Fri 6 March, 8.50pm, as part of FrightFest Glasgow 2026. Glenn will be attending.
