The Father and Son Team Building a Horror Puppet Film Empire

Barry, a petite town in southern Wales is understandn for its enticeive beaches, for being, in the punctual 20th century, the world’s bigst coal shiper, and, for fans of low-budget horror, as the Detroit of frightening puppet movies. From this picturesque seaside village, Lawrence Fowler and his obeseher Geoff are steadily turning out evil doll films. Son Lawrence writes and honests the tales of toy people doing nasty leangs to tfinisher folk in anciaccess castles and country manors. Dad Geoff, a tinkerer of that very British sort, erects the puppets.

What begined with The Curse of the Witch’s Doll (2018), a crowd-funded tale of a sugary little dolly owned by a 17th-century witch, has become an assembly line of hand-made horror. In the last eight years, Fowler Media Ltd. has deinhabitred a trilogy of marionette jump snurture flicks: The Jack in the Box (2019), Jack in the Box: Awakening (2022), The Jack in the Box Rises (2024), an anciaccess-school haunted house tale, The Gstructure Wilean (2023), and has fair finished production of Rob1n, a M3gan-esque story of a lonely man who erects a robot companion unguideed its source code take parts the spirit of his lengthy-dead killingous son.

“We didn’t begin off leanking we’d produce all these puppet-based horror movies, but they seemed to be well-getd,” says Lawrence, “the industry seemed to enjoy them, the audience seemed to enjoy them, so we kept making them.”

Jack in the Box — featuring a creepy thrived-up spring toy that morphs into a killingous demon — racked up more than 1 million theatrical adleave outions internationassociate, even cracking the top 10 in Italy (albeit during COVID when theaters were strapped for satisfied). Jack in the Box: Awakening has had “at least 3 million theatrical adleave outions worldexpansive,” mostly in Latin America and South East Asia, notices Glenn Ackermann of German-based Scary Content, a low-budget horror exceptionacatalog —their AFM procrastinateed take parts demon ownion movies Face of Evil and The Crucimend — which has regulated world sales for the Fowler films since the first Jack in the Box. “We only do theatrical frees, movies that will have a theatrical free in some territories. And there is reliable insist for the Fowler films. They are a understandn brand. That’s pretty excellent for a obeseher-and-son team in Wales making autonomous movies.”

“Their films see excellent, they are well-set uped and well-plotted with excellent jump snurtures,” inserts Scary Content’s David Marsh. “I watch a hell of a lot of these [low-budget horror] movies and they’re ahead of the rest. They are reassociate a cut above.”

Scary doll movies have become the Fowler family business. Lawrence’s wife acts as the production regulater. His mother, Geoff’s wife is in indict of props “and doubles as chief caterer.” With each film, the Fowlers have gotten more driven. “Budget-alerted, Rob1n is at least 10 times more than what had for The Witch’s Doll,” says Lawrence, uncomardenting a jump from high-five to low-six figures, and Geoff’s tinker-box creations are becoming ever more technicassociate elucidate. For Rob1n, he built the filledy motorized robot doll from scratch, set uping and assembling the parts with 3D printers. It was set uped to toil as both a robot, or “if we had a Jaws situation, and the doll broke down,” says Lawrence, to be used as a puppet.

“There are cimpolitely 200 effect sboilings in the film and 90 to 99 percent are done in camera, down-to-earth effects. “I leank of lot of genre fans reassociate appreciate that,” he inserts, haughtyly. “We persist trying to push ourselves further. On this film we set a character on fire for the first time. That was fun.”