Australian horror film Beast No More full of Newcastle DNA

The upcoming Monster Fest film festival that plays across most major cities in Australia includes a feature film, Beast No More, with several Newcastle film and acting personalities involved, including Jennifer van Gessel (writer/producer), Matthew J Schelle (writer), Janine van Gessel (executive producer/boom operator), Ben Schelle (art department), David Gairdner (production assistant), Bradly Coulter (location manager), Kristy Gillies (prop maker), Justine Atkinson (doll maker) and Nola Atkinson (costumer).

The film stars Jessica Tovey and Dan Ewing. Newcastle actors in the cast include Taya Calder-Mason, Dean Kyrwood, Anne Rzechowicz and Joe Brown.

Beast No More premiers on Saturday, November 2, at Events Cinema on George Street, Sydney, as part of Monster Fest.

"It's almost three years since we finished filming," Calder-Mason says. "It's about grief and family and it's really weird."

The film was shot over four weeks in July 2016 at Old Sydney Town, with shooting from 10pm to 5am daily in the cold of winter.

"Shooting it was like being on school camp," Calder-Mason says. "We shot four weeks straight. We'd finish at 4am.

"It was a lot of fun. A lot of hard work. It was so cold."

Tovey, who began her career on Home and Away, was also in the Underbelly Series, Paper Giants, Wonderland, Wolf Creek and Bad Mothers.

The film has all the hallmarks of a classic horror film. According to IMDb websites, Tovey's lead character, Mary Jane, is a young biologist suffering the loss of a child and she escapes suburbia in favour of the Australian bush. Amidst her grief she is offered the chance to be a mother again, only it comes at a cost.

Ewing plays Tovey's partner, and Calder-Mason plays Tovey's blind sister. The pair go in search of Mary Jane in the bush.

"It's a thriller horror," Calder-Mason says. "It's so bizarre."

There are a lot of special effects, as the trio encounter several scary figures in the bush and Mary Jane realises they are being stalked.

Calder-Mason's own short horror film, Harrows Forest, debuted at Dendys cinema in Sydney this week, showing with the full-length Australian horror film, Fragmentary.

Fragmentary was written and directed by actor and producer Jace Pickard.

Calder-Mason wrote and directed the short film Harrows Forest, which was shot in Wallaroo State Forest in August 2018. "It's about four friends - two girls and two guys - who go into haunted forest to discover what's the go," she says.

The film was her second, after Fight Like a Woman, a short dramatic piece about a female boxer who has a bout with a man.

She also made a short film, Blackout, a comedy about what happens during an electrical blackout, which was entered in Tropfest (but did not get selected).

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