Following the resounding international success of her debut feature film, Tiger Stripes, filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu opens up about her fascination with the macabre and morbid and her journey of overcoming self-doubt
Growing up, Amanda Nell Eu loved a good ghost story.
From urban legends and spine-tingling folklore to superstitions recounted by family members in solemn, foreboding fashion, these were cherished childhood memories for the young creative, signalling her emerging artistic inclination towards the genre of horror.
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One might wonder, did she scare easily as a child? Were these the tales typically used by her older siblings to petrify their unsuspecting younger sister for sport? But even at a young age, Eu realised her true calling was being at the other end of this spooky storytelling tradition; she was the one telling the stories, rather than the one spooked.
“I loved urban myths and folktales that were close to home, macabre stories of what happened in the nearby lake, or that old house we always drove past. I would always scare my younger brother with these stories,” admits the 38-year-old filmmaker, whose love for art and cinema led her to study graphic design at Central Saint Martins, and later pursue a master’s of arts in filmmaking at London Film School, graduating in 2012.
“I would always question old wives’ tales that my elders would tell me. I wanted to know why we believed in so many superstitions, and the answers would always be so fantastic and illogical but somehow it made sense to everyone. I remember being obsessed with horror books about local myths because these were stories that were in our backyard. I had always loved cinema, and it was horror that led me to become a cinephile at a young age.”
Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Eu left to study in the UK at the age of 12. In those tender pre-teen days, her uncomfortable experience with puberty was rattling enough to rile up a rebellious instinct to fight her adolescence. “I remember when I was going through [puberty]—one day you are one way, and the next day you wake up and there are things that have grown on your body,” Eu said in a 2023 interview at the 62nd Cannes Critics’ Week.
“I used to wish that this didn’t happen to me, quite violently. I would punch myself, like punch bones and try to shave things off.”