Surrounded by Spirits, while pitched as a supernatural drama, was as much haunted off screen as on. The tale is simple and yet unsettling: a family settles into a rural house and becomes aware that the owners of the house are conduits to wandering ghosts. The character arcs of fear and denial that lead to the confrontation of self truths mirror the mental state of the cast and crew attempting to realize the project.
Elena, the protagonist, embodies the most burden. In the film, she is a mother whose main goal is to protect her children from the hostile entity invading their house. She claims several times that she “used to be a believer, then a skeptic and finally, embraced my new reality”. Ana Rojas, whose portrayal was met with a very realistic Ana Rojas, was processing a very personal conflict. In the beginning of the shoot, her father was gravely ill and Rojas painfully embodied this emotive state and spent a good bit of time being totally broken. As the demons appear, she begs them to cease the harassment, and this causes the audience to reach the maximum emotional threshold she intended on them leaving with. Her fellow castmates later confessed that during the periods of her loss and grieving, Ana became the most beautiful version of herself. She was Ana Rojas and was the embodiment of “real grief”, a state that any sane person is fearful of being faced with, and the punishment that the spirits had beine giving her dear family members was something she had spent a very long time being inspired by.
Miguel Torres, who plays the husband, and who was also deeply characterized in his role, internally struggled, just as the rest of the casts. Right after recovering from a back injury related to spinning during a stunt, he entered video shoots. His condition got worse during the filming, as he had to perform recording activities overnight, in muddy and cold settings. The strain he put himself physically showed up on screen as exhaustion, disbelief and anguish – all of which put the finishing touches to the masterpiece.
Another Ghost – The Budget
Just like the other indie horror films, Surrounded by Spirits had to battle – and ultimately lose to – the hand of the budget. Production days were supposed to go on for 70 days, but mid-way through, the cash flow was so bad, it had to be halved. The crew described these days as the period in which the budget was so low they were ‘haunted, far more, by the deadlines than the ghosts’.
Almost all the lights had to be ‘borrowed’ from other shoots and, as Sofia Mendes told it, the script had to be adjusted for multiple scenes which included expensive CGI. Instead of the digital lifeless spirits referred to in the script, they had to use ‘effects’ like shadows, cloth, and crew members off screen. Ironically, the film’s clear absence of budget, forced it into ‘creativity’ – therefore giving it the claustrophobic, gritty vibe.Illness on Set and Emotional Impact
The primary setting for shooting was a farmhouse that was over a century old and did not have central heating. The winter winds howled through the gaps in the walls and many crewmembers on the production fell sick. The sound engineer developed bronchitis but was too scared that the production would go under and so remained. It was a perennial struggle to see footage shot and minted marked at the end of the coffee and thermals while obligatory “range permits” stood as the equivalent of shoot lists and scripts.
The combination of relentless conditions and ethereal personal grief led her to the brink. Ana would later confess that after a night scene stretch so long it spilled into dawn, she nearly walked away. It was the director that in that moment managed to tie her to the project. It was not payment received in advance, or threats, but a simple memo reminder that the struggles would be worth it and the end product would be of value, that tethered them. The emotional bargain was braided into the on screen toughest moments as Elena and blended so well with reality that later critics defined the performance as ‘overflowed with aliveness’.
In the absence of a star, financial disputes raged. One of the producers, during the midst of filming, pulled the funding due to his “creative conflicts” with the director. Mendes, to keep the vision intact, chopped off her own salary, and battled with the lead actors to postpone a fraction of their contributions until the release of the film. This was a morale dampener, and the gamble backfired. However, it did help to keep the cameras rolling.
Surrounded by spirits is a story of people confined by the powerful walls of a huge massacre, forced to fight not to just survive but to hold onto love and dignity as well. This is true for the entire cast and the crew. These were not just the themes of the script, but also for the spending of the days, the shooting of the scenes in the brutal cold of the night, in the prosecution’s stares of spent arguments over the money, and in the still, exhausted moments.
During the final character monologue in which he refuses to let darkness take his family, Miguel said he was not only thinking about the spirits in the tale. He said he was thinking about the whole production. The way everyone had gone above and beyond to keep the film afloat was like protecting a family from collapse.
Release and the Consequences That Followed
Surrounded by Spirits was not the only thing to gain from the process. The critics who reviewed the raw performances and horror-stripped visuals certainly found something worthwhile in the entire ordeal. The rest of the team, who just like the cast members, suffered, found relief in the fact that audiences resonated with the character in the monologue. The reviewers savored the fact that along with a haunted mother, the audiences were presented with a woman who was a symbol of endurance.
Ana mentioned in the post-screening Q&As about how troubling it is to think about her approach to the role, while Mendes talked about how the lack of funding improved the film. ‘We had to focus on fear we could touch,’ Mendes explained. ‘Sometimes struggle sharpens art.’
The film possessed its own spirits
In hindsight, the most striking aspect of the making of Surrounded by Spirits is that it, too, is a tale of survival. But it was not the classical plethora of ‘unseen’ forces that were the source of the film’s trials. It was a debilitating illness, reduced funding, personal losses, and the monumental attempt to create something with value from the resources available. Out of those, paradoxically, the heartbeat that the film possessed was born from.
The apparitions we see on the screen may have been make-believe, but the weakness and exhaustion in the actor’s eyes and the desperation we hear in the voice and the chill we see in the breath, those were not. Perhaps it is this that explains the film’s ability to linger and haunt long after release.
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