Take a trip back in time to Terror.

The Borley Rectory, often considered the Most Haunted House in England, was a gothic Victorian mansion built on the site of an old monastery that had burned down. Its legend includes the execution of an innocent Monk and the premature burial of a nun, his lover, who was purportedly sealed up within its brick walls. Their only crime? Falling in love.

Over the decades eyewitness accounts of strange Borley happenings included phantom carriages, ethereal figures roaming the grounds and even messages from the grave that would appear within mirrors. A mysterious fire eventually destroyed the rectory in 1939.

Horror fans won’t be surprised that such a legend would eventually get a movie, but the way the creators of BORLEY RECTORY are tackling their subject matter is getting rave reviews. What started out as an Indiegogo-supported short film, BORLEY RECTORY has now become independent production company Carrion Films first full-length feature. 

Essentially an Animated Documentary, the film uses a blend of rotoscope and digital animation techniques to transport the audience to the late 1920s, delivering a nostalgic time-travel trip to the days of scratched film, crackling audio, Oxford jackets and dark seances.

The actors of BORLEY RECTORY were photographed, then rotoscoped and added into backgrounds generated via “a mixture of painting, digital photography and model work“. Shot in black and white with a digitized 3D CG set fashioned after photographs of the original mansion, the film is being eloquently pitched as ‘an ultrasound of a haunting’. All of this work looks to deliver a delightfully good time watching buttoned-up researchers of the paranormal investigate the madness at midnight.

The film is written and directed by Ashley Thorpe and stars Reece Shearsmith (LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN), Jonathan Rigby, Richard Strange (BATMAN, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS), with narration by Julian Sands (WARLOCK, NAKED LUNCH).

Interested? You’ll have many chances to enjoy BORLEY RECTORY as it’s set to screen in 2018 at multiple festivals, including HorrorCon UK, the Chattanooga Film Festival, WIerd Fest, Fantastic Fest, Chicago Horror Fest, Sci-Fi London and the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

Plot Synopsis

Borley Rectory is an animated documentary chronicling what came to be known as ‘The most haunted house in England’. The legends attached to the rectory at Borley and famed paranormal investigator Harry Price’s subsequent investigations of them, caught the public’s imagination during the late 20’s in time becoming one of the world’s most notorious ghost stories. Borley Rectory will examine the legend, the controversial investigations and a ghost story that may well reveal more about what might have been missing from Borley rather than what might have been invading it.