Few names are as synonymous with the horror genre as Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi and esteemed novelist James Herbert, author of genre classics such as The Fog and The Rats. One name that isn't quite so familiar is Evan Spiliotopoulos.
That's not to say you haven't seen any of Spiliotopoulos's work. As a screenwriter, he's been responsible for blockbusters such as The Huntsman: Winter's War and Beauty and the Beast. Now, after two decades of putting words on the page for some of Hollywood's biggest names, he's finally getting in the director's chair himself for his own adaptation of Herbert's novel Shrine, which Raimi executive-produces.
Spiliotopoulos insists he had never planned on making the transition from writer to director, but his long-standing love for Herbert's novel finally gave him an irresistible opportunity. "It's just that I really loved this book since I was a teenager and I really wanted to make a movie, but as a screenwriter," he explains. "In 2019 [Sony] Screen Gems came on board, but they made the crazy offer to direct it. My initial reaction was no. I've seen what directors go through I don't want to do this."
The addition of Raimi to the mix finally persuaded the fledgling director to make the leap, although he admits that he was initially convinced that the horror veteran would “realise I’m an idiot” and take over directing duties himself. This didn’t happen, and the fruits of Spiliotopoulos's labour will hit screens in the UAE this weekend.
Shrine tells the story of disgraced, former big-time journalist Gerry Fenn (The Walking Dead's Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who travels to a small US town where there have been reports of miracles taking place around a young deaf and mute girl. Alice is being raised by her uncle, the local priest, and inexplicably regains her speech and hearing.
After years of making a living from covering fake stories of the supernatural for nonsense-hungry tabloid readers, Fenn suspects he may have finally found a story that, though fantastical, is true.
Shrine fits comfortably into a well-ploughed furrow of horror with heavily religious undertones. From classics such as The Exorcist and The Omen to more recent films such as the Abu Dhabi-shot Deliver Us from Evil, priests and religious imagery have long been a staple of the genre.
Having both written and directed Shrine, however, Spiliotopoulos says he had a clear idea of how to make sure his own film stood out in a crowded field. "What I really like about this film is that it's a combination of two different genres – the classic, supernatural thriller and the journalism thriller along the lines of Shattered Glass and Spotlight. It's about a journalist who was caught fabricating stories and how his career was ruined," the director says. "So, there's the combination of a totally amoral journalist who's thrown into the story of a lifetime, and then discovers that he's opened Pandora's box and the only way to save this girl that he's come to care about, and the world, is to destroy himself."
Spiliotopoulos even goes as far as to say that he came to see his film as a kind of sequel to Shattered Glass. That 2003 film tells the true story of disgraced journalist Stephen Glass, whose career unravelled when it transpired that most of his stories were entirely fictitious.
In Shrine's reality, the director explains, Glass, or Fenn, is now working for The National Enquirer, home to headlines such as "Hillary Clinton adopts alien baby", when he stumbles across a real supernatural occurrence.
This isn't the only parallel between the film and the real world news agenda: "Fake news has entered the zeitgeist in the last four years, and Fenn personifies this," the director says. "This is a story about how a community suffers when a journalist who has been entrusted with reporting the truth manipulates the facts for their own advantage. We happen to have a ghost story going on, but imagine if the ghost is something like he's hiding pollution, or he twists somebody's words to not what they said. Communities suffer because of that, and we just happen to do it with a ghost."
The film may to a degree be a cautionary tale about the dangers of accepting truths blindly without critical assessment, but Spiliotopoulos and his crew were forced to indulge in some manipulation of the truth themselves, thanks to something even more in the zeitgeist than fake news: Covid-19. The production was shut down in March last year because of the virus. When filming resumed, the crew had to get a little creative.
"We had a big funeral scene to shoot, and we couldn't fill this church with extras," the director reveals. "What we could do is hire teams of families of three up to 10, and space them apart. We had to shoot, change their clothes, move them around. When you see that scene, if you pause it on Blu-ray, it's the same three families, shot 10 times."
Given the circumstances, we can probably forgive the team for using a degree of creative licence since, as Spiliotopoulos notes, the alternative would have been to have no film at all: “It was insane, but what got us through it was that everybody just wanted to finish it,” he says. “The sense of accomplishment, you know? I can’t imagine not having finished it because for all the work that had gone into it just to go like that, it would have been heartbreaking.”
Shrine is in UAE cinemas from Thursday, April 22
The lowdown
Bohemian Rhapsody
Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee
Rating: 3/5
The biog
Hobby: "It is not really a hobby but I am very curious person. I love reading and spend hours on research."
Favourite author: Malcom Gladwell
Favourite travel destination: "Antigua in the Caribbean because I have emotional attachment to it. It is where I got married."
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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South Korea
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein
By Fiona Sampson
Profile
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%3Cp%3EDirector%3A%20Jim%20Strouse%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EStars%3A%20Priyanka%20Chopra%20Jonas%2C%20Sam%20Heughan%2C%20Celine%20Dion%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3ERating%3A%202%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
Profile
Name: Carzaty
Founders: Marwan Chaar and Hassan Jaffar
Launched: 2017
Employees: 22
Based: Dubai and Muscat
Sector: Automobile retail
Funding to date: $5.5 million
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
More coverage from the Future Forum
Company profile
Name: Infinite8
Based: Dubai
Launch year: 2017
Number of employees: 90
Sector: Online gaming industry
Funding: $1.2m from a UAE angel investor
UAE squad
Humaira Tasneem (c), Chamani Senevirathne (vc), Subha Srinivasan, NIsha Ali, Udeni Kuruppuarachchi, Chaya Mughal, Roopa Nagraj, Esha Oza, Ishani Senevirathne, Heena Hotchandani, Keveesha Kumari, Judith Cleetus, Chavi Bhatt, Namita D’Souza.
GAC GS8 Specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh149,900
US tops drug cost charts
The study of 13 essential drugs showed costs in the United States were about 300 per cent higher than the global average, followed by Germany at 126 per cent and 122 per cent in the UAE.
Thailand, Kenya and Malaysia were rated as nations with the lowest costs, about 90 per cent cheaper.
In the case of insulin, diabetic patients in the US paid five and a half times the global average, while in the UAE the costs are about 50 per cent higher than the median price of branded and generic drugs.
Some of the costliest drugs worldwide include Lipitor for high cholesterol.
The study’s price index placed the US at an exorbitant 2,170 per cent higher for Lipitor than the average global price and the UAE at the eighth spot globally with costs 252 per cent higher.
High blood pressure medication Zestril was also more than 2,680 per cent higher in the US and the UAE price was 187 per cent higher than the global price.
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The Written World: How Literature Shaped History
Martin Puchner
Granta
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
if you go
if you go
The flights
Emirates have direct flights from Dubai to Glasgow from Dh3,115. Alternatively, if you want to see a bit of Edinburgh first, then you can fly there direct with Etihad from Abu Dhabi.
The hotel
Located in the heart of Mackintosh's Glasgow, the Dakota Deluxe is perhaps the most refined hotel anywhere in the city. Doubles from Dh850
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Events and tours
There are various Mackintosh specific events throughout 2018 – for more details and to see a map of his surviving designs see glasgowmackintosh.com
For walking tours focussing on the Glasgow Style, see the website of the Glasgow School of Art.
More information
For ideas on planning a trip to Scotland, visit www.visitscotland.com