Long Shadows stars Jacqueline Bisset and Dominic Monaghan discuss their characters, costumes, and the spirit of the Wild West in this interview.

The new western, Long Shadows, is drawing critical praise for its gritty realism and unexpected twists. For its stars, screen icon Jacqueline Bisset and fan favorite Dominic Monaghan, the film offered an opportunity to delve into new territory – both professionally and personally – and inject their own unique flavor into the Old West tale.

In these interviews with Mama’s Geeky, Bisset shared her surprisingly personal reason for a character accent, while Monaghan detailed his first experience saddling up for the Western genre.

Jacqueline Bisset Brought Her Own Twist to Long Shadows’ Vivian Villeré

Jacqueline Bisset’s role as Vivian Villeré, the lady of the house in the saloon, initially felt “disagreeable on the page” to the legendary actress. To add depth and complexity, Bisset suggested a key change: giving the character a Cockney accent.

“I read it, and I thought the woman, Vivian Villeré, was a little too… I didn’t like her particularly, and I felt there’s a reason for her to be this,” Bisset explained. “I suggested that she be a bit Cockney, because I wanted to do that.”

The choice was highly personal. The Cockney accent, which Bisset often performs with friends, brought a sense of lightness and fun. The inspiration, she said, came from “sitting on the bus, basically, and in England sitting on the double-decker bus behind people.” Most touchingly, Bisset used to perform the voice for her mother, who was incapacitated for many years. “She would laugh so much, and I just said, ‘Can I do this in this film?’ That’s all the story is,” Bisset recalled.

While her time on the Arizona set was brief, Bisset remembers being charmed by her driver’s knowledge of local wildlife, noting a fascination with a creature called a javelina.

Dominic Monaghan Saddles Up for His First Western

For Dominic Monaghan, best known for his work in fantasy and adventure, Long Shadows was an intriguing departure. “I’ve not done a Western before,” he explained, noting that the genre has “slightly lost its favor” despite its historical dominance in Hollywood.

Drawn in by the script and the chance to explore new ground, Monaghan found the role of Ned – a grifter, drifter, and alcoholic – too intriguing to resist. The decision to join the film, however, was simple: “It just seemed fun, you know, Arizona riding horses and working with Jacqueline Bisset. I was just like, yeah, I don’t need much more than that.”

Monaghan quickly found that the physical transformation was key to stepping into the Old West. “When you’re wearing a bowler hat and a cravat and a vest – or a waistcoat as we call it – it changes how you move, how you stand,” he said.

Working with an Icon and the Power of Costumes

Both stars were sure to mention the importance of costume during their interviews.

“The whole thing is terribly important. What you wear or don’t wear,” Bisset stated, noting that period attire naturally changes an actor’s gestures and mood.

Monaghan echoed this sentiment and found joy in working closely with his legendary co-star. “She was lovely,” he recalled of Bisset. “We built this little backstory between our characters that wasn’t necessarily in the script. It made those scenes richer.” For Monaghan, sharing the screen with an icon like Bisset was also a chance to trade insights about longevity and craft in Hollywood.

Filming in the Arizona heat presented a unique set of challenges, particularly for Monaghan, who admitted he’s not a big horse rider. Yet, his lifelong love of animals made the experience memorable. “Horses are sensitive – they pick up on your energy. You have to come into that situation correctly,” he advised, smiling as he reflected on the experience. “It’s bizarre using a living, breathing animal as a vehicle. But it’s such a special thing.”

Ultimately, Bisset hopes audiences take away the modern relevance of the story’s emotional core, particularly the reality of a young man’s struggle with trauma. “The reality of that situation is so awful. It twists his mind,” she said, acknowledging that the film addresses issues like mental health that still affect people today.

Whether it’s a Cockney twist, a new hat, or the unique energy of a horse, the stars of Long Shadows have reminded us that adventure – and a little bit of fun – is always worth the ride.

Be sure to watch the full interview with Dominic Monaghan to learn more about Long Shadows, Lost, and The Lord of the Rings. Long Shadows comes to theaters on November 7th.

NEXT: The $40,000 Nightmare: How Eli Roth Discovered the Found-Footage Sensation, Dream Eater

Dream Eater filmmakers and horror legend Eli Roth discuss bringing this incredible and terrifying found footage film to life.

The world of found-footage horror just got a terrifying new entry that has already earned the stamp of approval from a master of the genre. Director, producer, and horror icon Eli Roth has championed the chilling new film, Dream Eater, a micro-budget shocker from debut filmmakers Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams.

In this interview with Mama’s Geeky, the filmmaking team discussed the film’s intensely personal origins, the grueling nine-day shoot that tested their limits, and the crucial, last-minute intervention by Roth that changed the film’s finale forever.

Stripping Away The Comfort Zone

Dream Eater follows a couple, Alex and Mallory (played by the co-directors Williams and Drumm), whose relationship is pushed to its breaking point when Alex begins to suffer from severe parasomnia – a sleep disorder involving abnormal or unnatural movements, behaviors, and dreams. The resulting footage, shot mainly from a camera recording the couple while they sleep, transforms the most secure space on Earth – the bedroom – into a relentless psychological hell.

For the filmmakers, the premise was rooted in personal experience. Mallory Drumm explained the unique terror the team wanted to achieve: “You know, I think first and foremost, we really just wanted to be able to strip away people’s comfort zones. And where do you feel the most comfortable? At home, in bed, lying next to your loved one.”

The story became deeply personal, drawing on their own nocturnal anxieties. Jay Drakulic revealed: “Both Alex and I grew up having night terrors, Jay grew up sleepwalking. So we kind of like added in a bit of personal experience in there.”

The crew’s goal was nothing less than genre-defining. “We always say like, Jaws made you change the way you went into water. Psycho made you change the way you take a shower,” Drumm stated. “And we really want Dream Eater to change the way you go to bed at night.”

The $40,000 Discovery: Eli Roth’s Support

Eli Roth’s involvement was a moment of serendipity. He learned of the film not through an agent or a festival submission, but from a viral TikTok post by a movie influencer.

“It was just one of those weird things where someone sent me a link to a TikTok that Chuck Shaughnessy, Your Movie Guy, posted where he was just raving about this movie,” Roth recalled. Intrigued by the “very disturbing and striking” imagery, he reached out directly via Instagram.

Roth was instantly captivated by the film’s raw, unrelenting terror. He drew parallels to the genre’s most revolutionary works. “I remember watching Paranormal Activity for the first time and Blair Witch Project for the first time when you really don’t know what you’re getting into,” he said. “It just gets you, there’s that moment where the movie just turns and it’s – I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m legitimately scared. This is really scary.’”

The final moments, in particular, left a powerful impression. “I don’t think there’s anything that’s scaring her in a movie this year,” Roth asserted. “I was legitimately heart racing, scared, just dreading every time it’s nighttime, they’re going to sleep.”

The biggest shock, however, came when he learned the budget. “I thought they made this for a million, a million and a half dollars. And they told me they made it for $40,000. I was legitimately shocked.”

For Roth, this level of achievement with such minimal resources demanded support. “Those are the people I want to support – people that make it on just raw passion and talent,” he stressed, praising the film’s “meticulous” sound design and score. “Horror fans love a discovery. And I think this movie truly is a discovery, and it deserves to be seen in theaters. I didn’t want it to get lost on a streamer.”

A Perfect Finale: Eli Roth’s Crucial Input

The decision to acquire and theatrically release the film led to a small but game-changing edit: the ending. Roth was the first to offer honest, constructive criticism.

“My job, if I’m going to be a producer, is to be honest with them, and you trust the filmmakers, but I’m telling them, you know, this is what didn’t – the only thing that fell short for me was this,” Roth said.

The filmmakers were ecstatic when Roth’s note aligned with an ending they had originally scripted but had been talked out of. Jay Drakulic was quick to credit Roth for the final, terrifying shot: “If it wasn’t for Eli, we never would have been able to recapture the spirit of what we were going for with our original scripted ending… so cool to get a second chance, a second opportunity at that.”

Roth emphasized the importance of a knockout conclusion in the found-footage subgenre: “These movies can live or die in that last shot, whether it’s Blair Witch, Paranormal, or reallyif you can have a really, really scary finale build up to that finale, then then you have a winner. And these guys did it. They nailed it. I jumped. I got chills at the end of it.“

Wearing Multiple Hats Allowed The Team To Tackle Challenges In Unexpected Ways

The production was famously lean, with the three co-directors making up a significant portion of the eight- or nine-person crew. Drumm and Williams also played the leads, a daunting challenge that required balancing performance with logistics.

Mallory Drumm reflected on the intensity: “Honestly, I think just exactly what you’re saying, like wearing all of the hats and doing all of the things is difficult… we did this movie in nine days with a crew of eight or nine people, three of which were us.” She credited the rigorous pre-production: “We spent months… blocking everything so that when we did arrive up at the location, any challenges that we did face, we felt super prepared to then just like pivot on the spot.”

One of the biggest anxieties for Alex Lee Williams was maintaining the integrity of the performance while managing the set. “Will we be sacrificing something in the performance? Like that was always in the back of my head,” he admitted. The solution was full commitment: “Just throw yourself at it. Don’t think about how it looks or sounds, just go with how it feels in this moment.”

The crew’s ability to treat limitations as opportunities was essential. When an exterior shot was blocked by heavy snow, Jay Drakulic recalled: “We looked at it as something that was creatively liberating.” It resulted in a memorable scene where Williams’s character chops wood, a skill he learned five minutes before the cameras rolled.

Roth praised the director-actors’ bravery, noting they had to do stunts and scenes that many professional actors would refuse. “You have two of the three directors that are acting in it, and that have to direct and act,” Roth said. “Then you have Alex, who has to act as waking Alex, and then acting as sleepwalker Alex – that’s like three jobs. And then Mallory has to put herself through this in terrible trauma.”

Found Footage & The Intimacy of Terror

The filmmakers explained why the found-footage approach was necessary for their story, citing the crucial narrative justification of documenting parasomnia.

Alex Lee Williams articulated the appeal: “With found footage, which it’s funny, because people inherently think that found footage is an easy sub-genre to tackle when, when really it that is just mistaken.” The biggest difficulty, he noted, is justifying the camera being on. “Your narrative has to be strong enough to inform why the camera is on and then you that has to be sold through the actors.”

The format provides a unique intimacy. Mallory Drumm elaborated: “The intimacy, watching things that you feel like you shouldn’t be watching. And then exactly what Jay said, like now that the camera acts as a character, you as an audience member can put yourself like, as if you’re in the camera as well.”

For Eli Roth, the authenticity is key: “When it’s found footage, you’re like, they’re really fucking doing it… when you see these guys in the snow, and they’re barefoot, you feel that pain, they’re really doing it, they’re not faking.”

The Adrenaline Of The Audience Pop

After pouring years of their lives into the film, watching it with a theater audience was the ultimate payoff.

Alex Lee Williams described the experience as “very surreal,” recalling the honor of sitting next to Roth at the Beyond Fest screening. “When you’re the person who poured years into it, and especially with alongside your best friends, being able to look around and see people jump at those moments that you had crafted meticulously, you plan for that to happen. And it surprises them is like a feeling that’s indescribable.”

Jay Drakulic added that the experience turns into “market research” after a few viewings. “We’re all nudging each other. We’re like, see that one over there? That was, I didn’t expect them to do it at that time. Like, yeah, it’s literally just like, just gathering data.”

Roth concluded the conversation by reinforcing his mission to champion the film and its creators: “Hopefully people get the same obsession with Dream Eater… They got to, you know, get out there and support some new filmmakers. That’s what it’s all about. Blood in the genre, giving other people a chance. And if the movie works, it makes it easier for me to do it for other directors, too.”

Dream Eater is in theaters now.

NEXT: “Emotion is the New Punk”: Guillermo del Toro & Cast On A Profoundly Human Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro and the cast of Frankenstein discuss emotion as “the new punk,” a lifelong vision, & the Creature’s existential “why.”

Flanked by his star-studded cast – Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Mia Goth – and key members of his creative team, Guillermo Del Toro presented his film not merely as a horror story or a gothic tale, but as a decades-in-the-making meditation on creation, parenthood, and the necessity of forgiveness.

Mama’s Geeky attended an in-person press conference at Netflix Studios, moderated by Jenelle Riley of Variety. It served as a triumphant final preview before the film’s limited theatrical run, which began on October 17, 2025, ahead of its global digital premiere on Netflix on November 7, 2025. The director, writer, and producer was joined by his leads, Oscar Isaac (Victor Frankenstein), Jacob Elordi (The Creature), and Mia Goth (Elizabeth), as well as composer Alexandre Desplat, production designer Tamara Deverell, character designer Mike Hill, and costume designer Kate Hawley.

A Decades-Long Obsession Becomes A “Prodigal Father” Tale

For Guillermo del Toro, the film is the culmination of a lifelong obsession that began when he was a child. He was first exposed to Boris Karloff and James Whale’s “masterpiece”, as he calls it, at age seven, an encounter he describes as having a “profound religious effect” on him. Just four years later, reading Mary Shelley’s novel at age eleven, he had a revelation: “I realized the movie was not the book at all”. It was the book’s grappling with the humanity of the creature and the inhumanity of the world that truly resonated with him.

Guillermo Del Toro’s relationship with the material evolved, mirroring his own journey through life. He initially saw it as a story about himself and his own father. Later, upon becoming a parent, it became a reflection of his relationship with his own child. The final, mature iteration of his vision, he shared, crystallized only after 50, becoming about forgiveness and acceptance. This theme was so central that the ending – that message of grace – served as the guide for his entire writing process.

The director revealed that adapting the classic proved structurally challenging, requiring two to three and a half years of dedicated work. His solution was to structure it as presenting two sides of the tale that were found in the original text. The key, he explained, was framing the narrative around the experience of a father who is unaware of his child’s journey into the world until the child returns to tell his story. This approach cemented the film’s powerful, paternal core, which was underscored by the project’s secret working title: Prodigal Father. Guillermo Del Toro even drew a direct thematic line to his Oscar-winning work, noting that Frankenstein and Pinocchio are the same story: One of an imperfect creation and a father’s responsibility.

The director confessed that he began writing the script with his lead actor already in mind: Oscar Isaac. Isaac, who plays the ambitious and tormented Victor Frankenstein, described his casting as a surprise, resulting from a chance meeting that Guillermo had originally claimed was not about Frankenstein at all.

Oscar Isaac On Victor’s “Doubtless Blindness”

When asked about his experience playing a character as dark and as cruel as Victor, Oscar Isaac offered a fascinating psychological insight. He admitted that he found so much pleasure playing this character. Isaac elaborated on this, contrasting the character with himself:

“So playing, me who’s filled with whys and doubts all the time, to have the release of somebody that’s doubtless about what they want to do to the point of blindness, the fact that I found that so enjoyable, I don’t know what that says about me.”

Jacob Elordi: “I Get to Be Job Asking God Why”

Oscar Isaac’s co-star, Jacob Elordi, provided an equally profound perspective on embodying the Creature. His connection to the material was instantaneous, responding viscerally to the Creature’s existential torment. Elordi saw his role as an opportunity to channel the fundamental questions of existence and suffering, declaring:

“When I read it, every word of the Creature was something that I was asking myself. I mean, I get to be Job asking God why. Every scene was why.”

Elordi’s commitment to embodying the Creature’s vulnerability and rage was evident. He recounted a pivotal moment while reading the script, where the stage direction described the Creature pulling down a mask and seeing the line, “Now run.”

He remembered the moment vividly, saying, “when I read that, I heard drums in my head”. This reaction underscored the emotional truth of the character that Jacob Elordi was determined to bring to the screen.

Character designer Mike Hill later praised Elordi’s dedication, noting that the Creature was designed as a person whose physical appearance was engineered to direct the audience’s gaze towards the actor’s eyes, allowing the character’s “soul coming out” to be the focus, rather than a “garish, ugly monster”.

Mia Goth On The Universal Longing “For a Home”

Mia Goth, who plays Elizabeth Lavenza, spoke to a personal resonance with the narrative’s themes of alienation and belonging. She was incredibly moved by the script, noting that she recognized parts of herself not just in Elizabeth, but, surprisingly, in all of the characters for the first time in her career. Her interpretation of Elizabeth centered on a universal yearning for connection:

“I think this sense of feeling like an outsider and this longing to connect and this searching for a home is what really resonated with me.”

In Guillermo Del Toro’s version, the character of Elizabeth is an amalgam, a voice of wisdom that is fused with the spirit of Mary Shelley herself. Her voice in the film is meant to guide and challenge Victor’s destructive ambition.

“Emotion is the New Punk”: Del Toro’s Final Defiance

Toward the end of the discussion, Guillermo Del Toro addressed the film’s deeper meaning, a topic he approached with the gentle caution of an artist. Acknowledging his past statements that monsters are metaphors for outsiders, he resisted defining the Creature’s symbolism with a single, restrictive meaning.

“You have to be careful with poetry because if you give it a single meaning, it becomes math. It becomes chemistry”.

Instead, he views the symbols as alchemic, shifting, and depending on the reader. His job as the director, he concluded, was not to dictate the audience’s response – “I provide the supermarket, not the shopping list” – but simply to provide the wealth of material and emotion for each person to take what they need.

He finally closed the press conference with a passionate defense of the sincere emotion at the heart of the Frankenstein novel and his film. In a world he believes is increasingly cynical and scared of emotion, he declared a personal revolt:

“I think emotion, as I’ve said in the past, is the new punk. Being emotional is the new punk. It’s the new anarchy”.

The film itself, he asserted, is a complete act of love that has taken decades to create, and a defiant gesture against irony and callousness.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a powerful exploration of family and the need for empathy.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is in select theaters now and will be available to stream globally on Netflix on November 7, 2025.

NEXT: Frankenstein Movie REVIEW [Venice Film Festival 2025]