Garden gnomes might seem an unlikely source of terror, but director Matthias Hoene is determined to make audiences think twice about stepping into their back gardens. Ahead of the Disney+ premiere of Gnomes, Hoene speaks to Christina Brennan about the challenges of bringing murderous garden ornaments to life, and his latest survival thriller, Invertigo.
Garden gnomes have been a familiar fixture of British gardens for generations, their cheerful expressions and colourful hats generally offering little reason for alarm. However, in the outrageous new six-part horror Disney+ comedy Gnomes, these twee garden ornaments have developed an appetite for murder, unleashing bloody chaos upon an unsuspecting small town.
Gnomes: a new type of pint-sized killer
Directed by Matthias Hoene, whose previous credits include Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) and Little Bone Lodge (2023), the series follows hapless police officer Arnold Kipps (Asa Butterfield), whose attempts to save his struggling town become considerably more complicated when an ancient curse awakens an army of murderous garden gnomes.
For Hoene, the appeal of the project extended beyond its wonderfully ridiculous premise, particularly through its opportunities for imaginative storytelling.
“I love telling stories about underdogs who are a little bit down on their luck, don’t really know their place in life, and then through a crazy circumstance rise up to become heroes and save the world,” he explains.
Growing up in Berlin, Hoene developed an enthusiasm for the anarchic horror films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Evil Dead II and Peter Jackson’s gloriously gruesome Braindead. Japanese anime and unusual Czechoslovakian stop-motion films also helped shape his imagination, encouraging an enduring affection for strange creatures and fantastical worlds.
His ambition for Gnomes, however, takes inspiration from another particularly influential horror classic.
“I personally wanted to make a film that does for garden gnomes what Jaws did for sharks,” he laughs, imagining audiences nervously checking behind their garden sheds for tiny assassins armed with secateurs and rakes.
The delicate art of balancing horror and humour
That combination of absurdity and genuine menace captures Hoene’s approach to horror- comedy, as a hybrid genre he believes receives too little recognition for its nuance.
“Horror has very different rules to comedy,” he explains, describing how carefully controlled framing helps horror filmmakers build suspense. Comedy, meanwhile, frequently benefits from wider shots that allow audiences to appreciate jokes and reactions simultaneously. The contrast in genre conventions makes the transition between the two approaches particularly demanding.
“I do feel there’s not enough horror comedies being made because it’s a very difficult genre to get financing for,” he adds, explaining how studios often struggle to market films that combine different genres.
Bringing the murderous gnomes to life
For Gnomes, Hoene embraced the contrast between suspense and the ridiculous sight of miniature garden ornaments committing increasingly vicious murders. Among his strongest influences were films like Ghostbusters and Critters, alongside the small-town policing traditions memorably parodied in Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz.
He particularly admires the elaborate supernatural mythology of Ghostbusters, something the Gnomes team deliberately pushed towards increasingly absurd territory. Working with creature designer Justin Dix and his team, the production developed physical gnomes using clay models, 3D printing and traditional hand-painted finishes.
Puppeteers manipulated the resulting creatures with rods, while digital effects enhanced their facial expressions and allowed them to perform more ambitious movements.
Beyond Gnomes: The escapist appeal of genre cinema
Looking beyond Gnomes, the director has recently completed work on Invertigo, a survival thriller involving five teenagers stranded aboard an unfinished roller coaster during a Florida thunderstorm.
The film, starring Inde Navarrette and Tim Roth, continues his interest in placing ordinary characters within extraordinary situations, this time hundreds of feet above the ground.
For Hoene, the appeal of these projects lies in their ability to transport audiences into unfamiliar circumstances while delivering an entertaining emotional experience. Having started his creative career as a painter and illustrator working on fantasy art, role-playing games and science-fiction imagery, he remains fascinated by the immersive possibilities of cinema.
Ultimately, his enthusiasm for genre filmmaking comes from the pleasure of taking audiences somewhere unexpected, preferably with a generous helping of supernatural mayhem.
“I think especially it’s so important to be able to escape reality for two hours,” he reflects, before acknowledging his continuing enthusiasm for sneaking something “anarchic” and “crazy” into every project.
Gnomes premieres on Disney+ in the UK on 16 October 2026.