Reclaiming the Monster: How Black Magpie Productions is Redefining Scottish Horror

There is something fitting about speaking to Holly Lawrenson Evans and Chantel Hiden-Livingstone while discussing Scotland's landscapes. Every hill, loch and stretch of woodland seems to hold a story, and for the founders of Black Magpie Productions, those stories have become the foundation of a new kind of horror. Their work isn't interested in cheap scares or shock value. Instead, they use Scottish folklore to explore violence against women, misogyny and female survival, proving that horror can be as emotionally resonant as it is unsettling.

Founded by director Holly Lawrenson Evans and writer Chantel Hiden-Livingstone, Black Magpie Productions grew from Holly's desire to challenge how women have historically been portrayed within horror. After completing a Master's in Experimental Filmmaking at the University of Glasgow, she became fascinated by feminist body horror, Barbara Creed's The Monstrous-Feminine and Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. Rather than accepting the familiar horror archetypes of women as helpless victims or terrifying monsters, Holly wanted to dismantle them.

"I was just fed up with seeing horror films where women were either the victims or the monsters," she explains. "There was never any space for women to simply exist as complicated people."