Newfoundland the perfect setting for new thriller ‘The King Tide’

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ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Newfoundlander Christian Sparkes has always been drawn to making films with dark undertones. And with his latest effort The King Tide, it turns out he found the perfect place to tell such a story in his own backyard.

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Shot in the coastal town of Keels, N.L., the new thriller centres on a child (Alix West Lefler) whose miraculous healing powers transform an idyllic island village after she mysteriously washes ashore one day. But as the years go by, cracks start to form after her abilities fade and the remote community fractures as they become split over the belief that the child is their saviour.

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“Newfoundland is a magical place. There’s not many places in the world quite like it,” Sparkes says of his setting for the film, which opens in theatres across Canada on Friday.

“It’s quite stark and the reality of living here is quite harsh, but it’s also beautiful and that’s reflected in the story.”

Working from a screenplay by Albert Shin (Disappearance at Clifton Hill) and producer William Woods, the St. John’s native, whose past films include the 2019 Whistler film fest hit Hammer, says The King Tide is a foreboding thriller cut from the same cloth as other suspense hits.

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“A lot of people show up to watch genre films in theatres and you want to make work that people get to see,” he says. “But I think the best genre films have more on their mind than they let on when you first watch them. When you think about a film like Get Out or Hereditary, some of these modern genre films that do well, they’re about something — race relations and strained family relationships — but you don’t think that when you first watch them. You’re too busy being entertained.”

The King Tide mines the same territory as it investigates how cult-like groupthink can ravage a once tight-knit group of people.

“It’s propulsive and moving at a great pace and it keeps you entertained. But it’s only as it continues that you realize that it’s about deeper themes involving fanaticism and religious fundamentalism and it’s kind of an environmental parable,” he says. “There’s a lot you can attach to it and dig into as an audience.”

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The end result is a brooding nail-biter enveloped in a rich darkness that is infused by haunting performances from a cast that includes Frances Fisher, who played Kate Winslet’s mother in Titanic, small-screen Lethal Weapon star Clayne Crawford and Aden Young, one of the co-leads on Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent.

Fisher, 71, joined Sparkes in St. John’s for the film’s Newfoundland premiere last week. She says that the beauty of the landscape was something she hadn’t experienced in a career that stretches back almost 50 years. Days off were spent cooking for some of her castmates and the local crew that helped make the film.

“Whoever wasn’t working, they would come over to the house and have a meal with me and we would sit outside by the fire overlooking the ocean. Where I was living was beautiful,” she says.

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“That’s what’s great about these places like Keels and small town Newfoundland,” Sparkes adds. “There’s only so many places you can go. Everyone’s stuck together, but it’s so beautiful. You’re perched on the edge of a cliff, you can be outdoors. It’s really fun. It’s cliche to say that it’s like a family, but it’s really true with a small film in a remote place.”

With its small population, setting his film in rural Newfoundland allowed Sparkes to imagine how a community could so easily come undone.

“There’s something about the Paradise Lost aspects of this story that appeals to me. I always love stories where human beings are given something beautiful and they kind of pervert and destroy it and then they get their comeuppance,” he says. “This film shows the dangers of poisonous groupthink. A lot of people become fanatical about what they believe in and it can be dangerous not to take an outside opinion. Bad things can happen, and in this film, very bad things happen.”

Fisher says the eerie, cult-like behaviour the townsfolk embrace in the film is a parable and a warning call amidst an increasingly divided political climate.

“What’s happening in the world, this is a microcosm of that and (shows) what can happen if you don’t listen to each other and really try to find common ground.”

The King Tide opens in theatres this Friday.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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