Interview: The Yellow Wallpaper's Alexandra Loreth & Kevin Pontuti Discuss Their Frightening Adaptation
Adapted from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, The Yellow Wallpaper is a feminist horror film about a young mother, Jane, driven mad after being holed up in a room adorned with patterned yellow wallpaper. Her husband, having prescribed her a «rest treatment», slowly backs out of the picture and Jane is left in isolation. This causes her to strike an unlikely obsession with the wallpaper, and she begins to form a story about a woman trapped behind it, desperate for releases.
Gilman's tale has cemented itself well into literature and feminist history, having sparked much-needed conversations about the patriarchy and mental illness. The gothic horror story has been adapted in numerous films, plays, and other forms of media — even finding itself referenced in The Twilight Zone. When filmmaking duo Alexandra Loreth and Kevin Pontuti revisited the short story, they knew it was something they had to work with for their debut feature film. Co-writer and actor Loreth told us, «We knew we wanted to take on a bigger project and step up our game a little. We were spending a lot of time trying to figure out like what story we'd like to tell. I read this [Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper] in school almost 10 years ago, and it's stuck with me all of that time.»
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She continued to share, «I don't know exactly what sparked the idea, but it hit me one day, I was like, let's go back and reread that short story and see if this might be something. I had a feeling that everybody would be into it. I locked the team up in their office and was like, 'just read it, it's 17 pages. Read it, shut the door, come out and let me know what you
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