Dragging a wheelie case behind them, Ashley arrives at an isolated beachside cottage. They hope that this weekend in the countryside might be the change they need: a change from depression, from heartbreak, from the pain of a shifting identity. As the weekend unfolds, however, their hope wavers: things go wrong in their body, or perhaps in their mind — or perhaps there really is something, outside, developing an appetite for them…
Ashley is a semi-autobiographical rural horror film filmed on the West Coast of Scotland, designed for cinema viewing. Its only character is played onscreen by me, and voiced in narration by the poet and performance maker Travis Alabanza. Drawing on the conventions of the rural horror genre (seen in television series such as the BBC’s West Country Tales, 1982–83) and of Margaret Tait’s work in the Scottish landscape tradition, the film takes an experience of modern femininity and mines it for terror. In doing so, it animates the fears, stresses, and vivid transformations of a certain kind of trans life.
