Neil Marshall's Next Creature Feature 'The Lair' Has Begun Filming

Neil Marshall has a new movie on the way, and let's all hope it's better than his previous effort, The Reckoning. Marshall's latest is a monster movie called The Lair, and that's promising, because Marshall has done well with monster movies before – see Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Production on The Lair has begun in Hungary, and that news comes with info on the film, as well as the behind-the-scenes image above.

The info comes to use from Bloody Disgusting, who report that Marshall referred to his new film, The Lair, as "a full-on monster movie with action and explosions and blood and guts and everything." Marshall added: "I wanted to come back and do a creature feature, I wanted to do some monsters, and just kind of combine elements from Dog Soldiers and Aliens and Predator and things like that."

This is music to my ears (or I guess, uh, eyes, since I'm reading this). I like Dog Soldiers a lot, and I think The Descent is one of the all-time great horror movies. But Marshall's post-Descent film work has been severely lacking. His most recent movie was the dreary, boring The Reckoning, a movie I tried really hard to like, but just couldn't.

The Lair stars Jonathan Howard (Godzilla King of Monsters), Charlotte Kirk (The Reckoning), Jamie Bamber (Money),  Leon Ockenden (Mr Selfridge), Mark Strepan (New Blood), Hadi Khanjanpour (The Operative) Harry Taurasi (The Borgias), and newcomers Kibong Tanji and Troy Alexander.

So what's The Lair about? I'm glad you asked because I made a whole section here about that very thing! Here's the synopsis:

Sergeant Tom Hook is tasked with leading a command to find Lt. Kate Sinclair, a Royal Air Force fighter pilot shot down in Afghanistan. Sinclair, pursued by insurgents, ?nds refuge in a long-abandoned secret bunker and unwittingly releases a deadly man-made biological weapon – half-human, half-alien and hungry for human ?esh – the Ravagers. Hook and his team, accompanied by a handful of British SAS troops must save Sinclair from the insurgents, and more importantly from the Ravagers before they overrun the area and potentially the world.

Again: if Marshall can return to the promising work of his Descent era, we're all in for a good time here. And Marshall himself seems aware of that fact, too, saying: "This movie really captures the mood and intensity of my early work, not to mention the blood and guts. I think horror and action fans are going to get a real kick out of The Lair."

No word just yet on when we might see The Lair, so stay tuned.