Thanksgiving Director Eli Roth Promises A Horror Experience Unlike Any Other In The Faceless Lady VR Series

The first known live-action virtual reality television series, The Faceless Lady, makes its debut in Meta Horizon Worlds on Thursday, April 4. Crypt TV, Meta, and horror mastermind Eli Roth have partnered to create the scripted show following three couples who enter a dangerous weekend competition in an Irish castle. The story is based on the legend of Lady Margaret Hodnett, a ghost said to haunt visitors through mirrors and reflective objects.

Roth expresses enthusiasm for The Faceless Lady, noting that it will differ from the previous work he’s done in the VR landscape. His projects Haunted House: Trick VR Treat and Be Mine: A VR Valentine’s Slasher were not created within the same scope, allowing the new mini-series to stretch even more creative muscles. The main cast includes stars Staz Nair (Rebel Moon), Tara Lee, Daisy Jelley, Mei Henri, Ugo Onwughalu, Sophie Rebecca-Jones, and Ned Dennehy.

Eli Roth chats with Screen Rant about his new VR series and explains how it will differ creatively from his other work in the horror genre.

Roth Has “Never Seen Anything” Like The Faceless Lady

Screen Rant: For people who may not be familiar with this new series, can you tell us a bit about the concept of The Faceless Lady and what it’s going to offer fans of virtual reality?

Eli Roth: I’ve been a big fan of VR, and I’ve really been trying to push the boundaries of, specifically, horror in the VR space. I did two projects already with Crypt TV and each time we were trying different things. We’re trying to create the language of storytelling and VR by going, “Okay, how can you move the camera without people getting motion sickness? How do you create a jumpscare? How do you edit the way you normally would in a horror movie?” One of the things we learned was that you could shoot it and cut it a lot closer to the way you would a feature film. Meta came to us, and they said, “We don’t want to do this as a half hour one-off. We’d like to do a series.

The writer, Jerome, and the director, John, came up with this concept of something that would look spectacular and big and visual, and we shot at this incredible castle in Ireland. Real credit goes to Matt Celia at Light Sail VR. We thought, “How can we make this the premiere VR experience better than anyone has ever done it before?” One of the things was to shoot stereoscopic 3D, using red cameras with a modified canon dual fisheye lens, which is something that Matt figured out how to do. So I’ve never ever seen VR look this good. Normally, up close, it looks super sharp. And then sometimes the background gets a little bit blurry, but here, it is like you’re there.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Everything just really came together. Meta gave us the time to really shoot it right. The cast is fantastic. The crew is amazing. They are about 22-minute episodes, and they are unbelievable. They’re so scary. They’re really engaging. It’s the first time I’ve ever put on a VR headset, and watched storytelling where it feels like you’re actually right there. In the story almost as if you’re another character, it’s completely immersive. You can only get it from watching it in the headset. You can’t really get it from watching it anywhere else.

You just touched on this a little bit, but what are some of the structural or story differences between creating a film like The Green Inferno or Thanksgiving versus creating something as interactive as virtual reality?

Eli Roth: When you’re telling a story like Thanksgiving, you’re a passive viewer. Obviously, there are moments I want the audience engaged and cheering and on the edge of their seat. But the idea with a narrative feature when you go into a theater, and you grab a box of popcorn, is you’re gonna have that collective experience, but really, it’s sit back and I’m going to tell you a story. Now that applies here, but it’s a lot more interactive. If you’ve ever seen Sleep No More, when you went to see those shows, I also saw a show by the same company called The Drowned Man where you’re walking in through the theater—it’s immersive theater.

You can sit and look at the left, you can look at the right, you can watch a different character, you can watch it over and over and have slightly different experiences every time you see it because you’re never going to get everything. If you move your head 180 degrees to the left, and all the way to the right, that’s your field of vision. So when you’re staging the scenes with the actors, and this is with John, our DP, and Matt, what they did so brilliantly is the way that they set everyone up so that you can watch what everyone’s doing. But if you just want to follow one particular character in the scene, you can, but, truly, when you cut to a close-up in VR. In the 3D VR, the way we’ve shot it, it does feel like you’re literally right in front of the person.

It’s very different from a movie close-up where the face gets bigger, and you’re looking at a giant face on the screen. So you’re focusing on the eyes and little subtle emotions. Here, when you go close, it feels like you’re face-to-face with somebody. So it’s just a different emotional reaction. And that’s part of the fun is discovering what those reactions are. Think about the first time cinema began, when people saw the footage of a train pulling into the station, people in the audience were fainting. They didn’t understand how to process it. It was a new sensation for their brains. And it’s very hard to come up with a new sensation for your brain these days, and say, “Wow, I’ve genuinely never seen that before.”

This is incredible, and can be a new form of storytelling. This is the first time that the technology has caught up with the ambition. This is what we always wanted to do with all of our projects. But this is the first time, I think, that the technology, the storytelling, and the ambition are all at the same level. It’s a different experience. You want to create an experience that the audience watches. As soon as it’s over, they want to go back and do it again and look at different parts for things they’ve missed.

The Faceless Lady’s Location Lends Itself To VR

The story itself was inspired by an Irish folklore, so what drew you to the tale of Lady Margaret, and what made you feel it had potential to be a mini-series?

Eli Roth: Honestly, it was the setting. The story with Lady Margaret and setting it in the castle—you can start from hundreds of years ago, you can start in medieval times. That’s what I loved about it. You think you’re watching a ghost thing. It’s set in a castle. That’s gonna be an interesting location that really lends itself well to VR, because once you’re in the castle, anywhere you point the camera, you’re going to have something interesting to look at. But what I think John and Jerome did so brilliantly, is right from the opening, you’re like, “Oh, my God, this is like a scene out of Game of Thrones, and I’m right there.” And they really went for it with the costumes and with the production design.

None of it is cheap, and it looks incredible. It really got me thinking, not just horror stories, but imagine if you were watching a film like Braveheart, but you’re right there with them. During the battle scenes or Game of Thrones, like you’re actually there. It’s a pretty wild sensation. I thought it actually lent itself really, really perfect because we could flashback between the two time periods. You’re getting the scope of traveling through time, but also the same scares, the same kills. It’s really fantastic. I just thought that Jerome and John had a really terrific idea and a terrific take, and something that could sustain six episodes, especially with the elimination game of wondering who’s going to get it.

And then a little twist at the end that keeps you hooked. The first time I saw it all put together, I couldn’t believe it. I really just couldn’t wait to watch the next episode. I think the guys have done a really, really clever job of creating the cliffhangers and giving everybody a satisfying episode, but keeping you hooked to want to come back to see where the story goes. Especially because the castle is pretty endless. There’s wings. There’s always new rooms and different tunnels and different dungeons and different courtyards and different chambers and different bedrooms. It’s really an astounding location, and it just felt like the tale really lends itself well to a VR series.

As you were just saying, the opening scene takes place in 1685, but much of it takes place in modern day. What was the process of modernizing this story for 2024?

Eli Roth: That’s definitely a Jerome question, for sure, but I think part of the fun is that the people are going to an old castle. There’s not gonna be Wi-Fi in these castles. It’s putting modern people in that setting, but still, you have the suit of armor, and you’re just waiting for that thing to come to life. As soon as you go into a castle and there’s a suit of armor, you know that thing’s going to attack at some point. It was really fun. The great thing about the castle and the medieval setting is that you can change some of the costumes. The battles were outside, but once you’re inside, the way it’s decorated, the way it was dressed, I think they really did a brilliant job of preserving what we love about being in an old castle.

You don’t fill an old castle with modern furniture. It is like you’re stepping back in time a bit, but putting modern people there. There’s a brilliant episode in the hedge maze where you really feel the scale and the scope, and it’s the kind of thing that you could only shoot in an actual location with that. Obviously, we know the hedge maze from The Shining, but it’s really great what these guys did, because using a VR sequence in a hedge maze is something that I haven’t seen before. You really feel like you’re lost in there. You feel the claustrophobia, you feel the panic, and you feel the scope of it. It’s just unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

The way John and Jerome and Matt and everybody and the whole cast really embraced the technology and embraced the medium. And that’s the trick. We’re not trying to make a movie and shooting it in VR. You’re actually creating a story for virtual reality. The way they move the camera just to reveal certain things—I found myself leaning forward. I always heard the stories about Rosemary’s Baby, where Polanski put the camera and didn’t quite reveal what was around the corner, and everyone in the theater would lean to the left to look and see. And he’s like, “That’s why I did it.”

So I actually feel like you can really achieve that here, where the cameras just around the corner enough that you can’t quite see it. That you find yourself leaning forward and craning your head just to see what’s there. And then of course, it’s a setup for a jump scare. The scares work really, really well. I just think that horror fans are going to have an experience unlike any they’ve seen before. There’s really nothing you can compare this to. I’ve never seen it look this good or be this scary in VR. Every other time, I get dizzy, I get motion sickness, there’s none of that. It’s just pure, exciting, immersive storytelling.

You have an incredibly talented cast on board. What did actors like Staz Nair and Tara Lee bring to the project?

Eli Roth: Staz is terrific. I was not on set in Ireland during the shooting, but I hung out with Staz. We were both at a Brazilian comic con. I was there for Thanksgiving, and he was there for Rebel Moon. He was talking about completely submitting to the process of this. That when shooting in VR and acting in VR, you just have to trust that we’re doing something that is in-between theater and film. You’re acting for a film camera, but you’re doing it in a way you would normally a play because you’re not going to be shooting the coverage the way you would for film. As an actor, a lot of the times they’ll pace themselves slightly less. They don’t go screaming full tilt in a wide shot. You save that for the close-up.

Or if you’re gonna get really emotional, and you have to cry in a scene, you want to wait until the camera gets close. Otherwise, by the time it gets close, you’re kind of burned out. In this, we’re all going to be acting the one scene in this one angle. He said it just was strange. They shot it in 26 days, so he really just gave into it. I’ve been talking with the actors, and they said that it was a great experience. They loved it. They had an amazing time shooting it, but they can’t wait to see it. You don’t really get a sense of what it’s like until you’re playing it back in the headset.

All the actors saw shots as they were doing them, so they understood what it was going to look like when they saw it on the other side. They all said that they had to kind of adjust a little bit in the way in which they act and really just take the leap and trust the director, trust that John had it at hand, which he absolutely did. The performances across the board are really fantastic. They really work. Everybody across the board is really great in the show. You can sit and watch a whole character. When all of them are in the scenes, they’re all there all the time. It’s not like, “Oh, this person got more coverage than this person, or they cut to them more.” You’re with them. You are with all of them as if you’re right there.

About The Faceless Lady

The Ireland-set storyline is inspired by the real life seventeenth century Irish folklore of Lady Margaret Hodnett who is said to haunt Belvelly Castle in Cork stalking visitors through mirrors and reflective surfaces. Adapted for modern day with a supernatural twist, The Faceless Lady follows three couples who have been invited to a medieval castle in Ireland for a weekend competition where they will either win her games or lose their lives.