Hammer Horror Goes 'Beyond' the Screen

'Beyond The Rave' Takes a Classic Studio to the Web

by John Lichman

Film is innately seductive. It whispers a promise to take us away for90 minutes to the things we only daydream about: monsters,heroism, true love and impossible situations captured perfectly framed and timed. But if you'reHammer Films, the productioncompany best known for immortalizing Christopher Lee as Draculaand making "British Horror" become a genre onto itself, the filmexperience isn't as simple as sitting down and hitting play. Theaudience wants to be completely drawn into a new, darker world.

Beyond the Rave

is the first film co-released by Hammer in 20 years, and at first glance it seems like a comfortable return to basics:Ed (James Dornan), a soldier about to ship out to Iraq, decides tospend his one free night with his friend Necro (Matthew Forrest) andmake amends with his girlfriend Jen (Nora-Jane Noone) at a rave.This gets more complicated when the rave's location is discovered--a

trailer-sized space with one entrance/exit in the middle of nowhere;Ed then learns that Jen has taken up with Melech (Sebastian Knapp),the lithe and pale leader of a group who just epitomizes "something bad is about to happen." And because this is a Hammer film, it mostcertainly does.

Rave

unfolds as a 20-episode series, streaming and hosted onMySpace, which is fitting since scrolling down the page reveals pagesfor the characters, ranging fromEdand his time training toMelech's own soliloquy on finding lost love with a twist: "I went on a bit of a bender after I plugged the last of the Spartans at Thermopylae.Xerxes, polymorphous pervert that he was did know how to throw aparty… and how to beat the hangover with a single magical kiss."Of course, being Hammer, they are vampires after all."Vampires are the classic Hammer monster, from the original 1958

Dracula

and its landmark Christopher Lee performance through tothe Karnstein 'trilogy' of the early 1970s," said Nic Ransome, whoproduces digital content for Hammer, via email. "Not forgetting thegreat one-offs like

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter

and

VampireCircus

."It's hard to think of a time when there weren't films involving theaudience not only for promotion, but in terms of immersion -- withplot, characters, fictional worlds and even histories that are barely hinted at during a 90-minute run-time at the local theater. In thiscase, all the MySpace profiles are open and anyone can friend thecharacters, whose walls contain plot backstory (in the case of Necroand Jen) or are dominated by users asking after the characters andhow they've been."I've always had an interest in blurring reality," said Lance Weiler, who handled the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) for

Beyond theRave

with his company Seize The Media. Weiler's two films,

TheLast Broadcast

and

Head Trauma

, both used the ARG staple of producing fictional media like 911 calls or message board posts as a way to further the story and involve the audience.

"When we approach story builds, we think of it in terms of a lot of media consumption changing," he said over the phone last week."People are effectively their own media companies. They can record video and make it available to the world instantly."Part of the way

Rave

quickly got attention was its use of MySpacepages, a tactic recently applied by larger film productions, such as

Cloverfield

and the upcoming Batman feature

The Dark Knight

. In both cases, the strategy has been to hide information on the characterpages with numbers and within games."That's something where you get a chance to immerse yourself insomething that you've been a fan of," said Weiler. "I think that can bea very intoxicating and powerful thing. Obviously, it's a crowdsourcing method to promote things, but I think it has more value thana promotional marketing thing. It actually has the ability to emerge asa new form of entertainment."