The scene that left Nicholas Hoult traumatised for life: “It’s seared into my memory”
Nicholas Hoult might be the current Hollywood sweetheart, but over the years, he’s starred in some pretty dark films that juxtapose with his squeaky-clean image. From Warm Bodies to the recent sensation of Nosferatu, with the actor playing a man who watches his wife being snatched away in the clutches of evil, Hoult has starred in his fair share of harrowing moments over the years.
After starting out as a child actor, starring alongside Hugh Grant in About a Boy, the actor has gone from strength to strength within the realm of weird cinema, working with everyone from Yorgos Lanthimos to Robert Eggers and Clint Eastwood.
But considering just how early he started out in the business, it would make sense that there are a few films that influenced this trajectory, perhaps memories of nostalgic childhood classics that sparked his passion and encouraged him to pursue work in the medium. But given the darkness of his choices, it would make more sense that he watched something completely traumatising that sparked his morbid fascination, with the actor describing his love for one 1990s classic that forever changed him.
Danny Boyle is one of those directors who is hard to place in one box, with a body of work that defies simple categorisation due to the fact that each one is vastly different in genre and style. From his harrowing beginnings with Trainspotting and the drug-fuelled adventures of the infamous Edinburgh misfits, to his Beatles rom-com Yesterday, and the darkly dramatic Slumdog Millionaire, the director has created films that each seem to come from someone completely different.
However, most of his films have been huge box office sensations, with the director perhaps being trusted with larger projects as a result of his 1994 film, Shallow Grave. Starring Ewan McGregor at the spring of his career, the film follows a group of flatmates who discover that their ex-roommate was murdered and left a large sum of money, so they agree to hide the body and keep the cash.
Perhaps the only common strand throughout Boyle’s work is his knack for dark humour, with Shallow Grave slowly spiralling and becoming increasingly disturbing as the flatmates realise they have bitten off more than they can chew.
While it is certainly not a film for children, Hoult described his early memories of watching it while in the Criterion Closet, saying, “Shallow Grave. Danny Boyle directed this. This movie I haven’t seen since I was a kid, I shouldn’t have been seeing it as a kid. There’s a scene in this, I’m fairly sure, where someone like power drills into someone’s forehead, and it’s seared into my memory. It’s like one of the most traumatic things I’ve ever seen on film. And so I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, but I want to watch it again because it’s one of the scariest films.”
It’s not a surprising thing to see in one of Boyle’s films, with the director including gnarly and gruesome scenes galore in later films like Trainspotting and 127 Hours, involving people diving into disgusting toilets and breaking their own bones with conveniently placed rocks. It’s not something you’d forget seeing as a child, and perhaps is one of the reasons for Hoult’s own dark filmography.
