Alyla Browne as Charlotte, with her teeny friend.
RED ALERT HAS WOKEN UP EARLY to catch Kiah Roache-Turner on Zoom. No coffee has been drunk, but that doesn’t matter – the very first story the Australia-based filmmaker tells is terrifying enough to put even the most hardened horror fan on high alert.
“This has happened to me a couple of times,” he says with a grin. “I’ll wake up in the morning and I’ll pull my curtains apart, and there’ll just be a huntsman spider on the glass right in front of my face. I scream like a little girl. They are the size of your hand, but they aren’t as bad as funnel-webs, which are these massive, hairy things that can kill you.”