Roxanne Benjamin is a Bradford native and a rising name in horror filmmaking.
Her newest film, “Body at Brighton Rock,” she wrote and directed — her feature debut as director.
On the writing side, she is penning the remake of “Night of the Comet” for Orion Pictures and MGM.
According to her biography on LinkedIn, Benjamin served as the head of acquisitions and development for Snoot Entertainment (“You’re Next,” “The Guest” and “Anomalisa) and Sean Byrne’s “The Devil’s Candy” (2015) before making her directorial debut with “Southbound,” which she also co-wrote and produced. The film premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. She followed that up with directorial and producing duties on the anthology “XX” for Magnolia, which premiered in 2017 at the Sundance Film Festival.
Prior to that she ran the Bloody Disgusting Selects label, where she oversaw the acquisition and distribution of 12 titles per year through Vivendi Universal. She also developed and produced the anthologies “V/H/S” and “V/H/S/2,” both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 and 2013, respectively. Both films were acquired and released by Magnolia Pictures.
In a prior interview, Benjamin explained to The Era, “All filmmakers are inspired by their own life experiences and backgrounds, so to that end growing up in Bradford very much does influence the types of stories I tell. Most of them take place in outdoor or rural locations, or involve a group of people being where they shouldn’t, and then something going wrong … That’s definitely something that harkens back to being a kid and teen around Bradford, I’d say.”
She described her own experiences in the local woods and suggested the time and place where she grew up helped her to develop creatively.
“There was a lot of running around in the woods at night and going to places we shouldn’t or camping places we shouldn’t,” Benjamin said. “But that’s the beauty of a small town, I think. You have to find things to do to keep yourself entertained, and use your imagination a lot more as a kid. I don’t know, maybe that’s also a result of growing up pre-information age.”
The woods — a common setting for tales of terror — are not a scary place for Benjamin. Instead, the forest is the backdrop for many of her youthful shenanigans and a very familiar place. She explained, “I know how to survive there.”
