In rural jungle local mythology comes alive
View(s):- High School Junkies return with Hooves
By Yomal Senerath-Yapa
The High School Junkies have struck again! This time, they have something supernatural to chill your bones against a rural Dry Zone village. Gone are the English dialogues and the whole western setting, instead there is scrub jungle and dusky village roads with spreading kumbuk trees.
Hooves – their third film to go to the San Diego Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival – is a tale to raise goosebumps. It’s about a young Colombo ‘townie’ who goes hunting to a jungle village, and hears legends about a local spirit called the Kura-Raaksha, a yakka (like a native Herne the Hunter but bloodier) whose existence the town boy scoffs at.
From left: Shenic Tissera, Ushenya Manuelge, Akash Sunethkumara, Tatiyana Welikala, Kasun Rathnasiri and Michelle Dunumala
If you haven’t heard of the High School Junkies, they are a group of movie geeks who banded up at school (well nigh a decade back) and have since gone places. Their earlier films Eidetic (an action film) and The Summoning (a horror short) made it to the San Diego Comic-Con in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
The genesis of Hooves was when the director and leader of the Junkies, Akash Sunethkumara was driving down Marine Drive one dark evening, and Kasun Rathnasiri, a core-member of the group and camera whiz (director of photography in Hooves), repeated a yarn about this town boy who goes to a village and quizzes a farmer he meets about local folktales regarding a hoofed spirit. Finally the farmer reveals his own cloven feet.
It’s a simple but eerie tale like something by M. R. James – but fleshing it out and getting it off the ground required a few years. With a crew of some 50 and a cast of five, they have done a great job.
Folk horror is doing very well in the market right now as Akash admits readily enough but the film has much soul as well.
The actors in Hooves were professional rather than the ‘Junkies’ themselves- including Dhanushka Dias, Sanjeewa Upendra and Kavishka Warnakula.
Hooves is the first film the Junkies have shot outdoors. With their obsession with quality, the scenes with night-time jungle and the village roads had to be beautiful yet spooky.
The weather was a constant adversary when they shot in the Pannala area; shooting in the tropical elements Akash says, is no cakewalk! One time, travelling through the jungle, Akash was startled by a python dropping off a tree.
As with all their films, the pre-production was the most important aspect and they spent a lot of time with rehearsals and testing. With their experience it was important to “iron out the pitfalls and mitigate possible risks” prior to everything else.
The most laudable aspect about the film is probably that local mythology – such a rich ancient body of material – gets celebrated. It may seem like the surface being scratched but it’s a worthy beginning.
The Junkies are planning a feature film off Hooves as well. It’ll be a ‘more monstrous version’, they promise.
Hooves has been to no less than 19 film festivals so far and had an enthusiastic response, and now Kasun and fellow cameraman Vihanga Weerasinghe will fly to San Diego, California on Tuesday for the Comic-Con Festival from July 24 to 27.
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