Sometimes, you need to call a master to help out. The showrunner of True Detective: Night Country, Issa López, called Guillermo del Toro to help her with the corpsicle that would be featured in the first two episodes of the series. The filmmaker known for his monster movies pointed her in the right direction to find someone who could craft this monument of body horror.
The series follows Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as they investigate the deaths of a group of scientists. At the end of the pilot, they discover the bodies. They are frozen together in an icy version of something we would see from The Thing.
Behind the Scenes of the True Detective: Night Country Corpsicle That Received Guillermo del Toro’s Help
The task at hand of creating this nightmarish centerpiece was daunting for a multitude of reasons. In an interview with IndieWire, the showrunner revealed that she “decided to ask the master of horrible creatures.” She called and said, “‘Maestro, I’m going to be shooting in Iceland. So I need someone in the U.K. I need someone who can create something as complex as this.” He recommended Dave and Lou Elsey of Igor Studios to help craft this image, which would sear itself into the minds of viewers. With production designer Daniel Taylor, VFX supervisor Barney Curnow, and cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, the team had been assembled.
The process went through multiple stages after Guillermo del Toro gave the True Detective crew his recommendation on whom they needed to collaborate with. From there, it took coming up with reference photos, how they wanted the bodies to look, sculpting the model, and how to shoot it in the open landscape and the ice rink when the police transferred it to better conditions.
The basis for the idea came from López, who wrote, directed, executive produced, and served as the showrunner for the season of the HBO anthology series. She had written a horrific description to bring to the screen. She detailed what she wrote to explain how that translated to what was shown in the first two episodes of the season.
The naked, mutilated bodies of at least four men are frozen solid on the icy ground, partly covered in the hardening snow. The wild expressions of pure panic on their faces are almost not human, but still we recognize the faces from the Tsalal Station: Molina, Jie, Lund, Emerson. Naked. Dead. Frozen. And absolutely terrified
Issa López
This season has been taking a hard turn toward horror. New episodes will be released on Max every Sunday at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET.
