Red Kingdom Rising is an independent fantasy horror film written, produced and directed by Navin Dev. The film is inspired by Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking Glass. It marks Dev's first feature-length film, following on from his similarly themed fairy tale short films. Plot Mary Ann has been tormented her whole life by dreams of a sinister figure called the Red King and his morbid fairytale kingdom. Following the death of her father, she returns to her family home where she recalls the childhood stories of the Red King and Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that her father once read to her. Within the decaying and neglected state of the gothic family house, Mary Ann soon discovers that her once highly religious and abusive mother is now secretly engaging in black magic. A brutal bewitching attack from her mother propels Mary Ann into the twisted, fairy tale dream world of the Red King. In this dream world Mary Ann encounters an unlikely guide in the form of a mysterious, Cheshire Cat masked little girl calling herself Alice. Alice prompts Mary Ann to question the relevancy of the dreamscape and whether this is Mary Ann's dream or that of the Red King's. Haunting events and emergence of suppressed memories force Mary Ann to unlock secrets of her painful childhood as she journeys through the realms of the dream world, landing in a final confrontation with the Red King. Mary Ann must face this embodiment of her childhood fears to forever gain closure to the pains and horrors of her past. Cast Emily Stride – Mary Ann David Caron – Father Silvana Maimone – Mother Etalia Turnbull – Alice Production Director Navin Dev was inspired by real accounts of adult survivors of child abuse and wanted to portray a symbolic, nightmarish world that evoked the psychological horrors they endured. Having researched Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Dev set the film within the fantasy horror genre as it would enable the film to be elaborated upon the mature and symbolic themes found in fairy tales. Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and in particular, Through the Looking-Glass, were used as direct inspirations due to the ideas of dream reversal, occultism, and dream symbolism that Carroll presents in his work and that author Marc Edmund Jones