A24 chose opening weekend screenings of Resident Evil to spring a surprise on horror audiences: the first teaser for Slayground, the long-awaited new film from Jeremy Saulnier, director of Green Room and this year’s Rebel Ridge. As of this writing the teaser has not surfaced on an official channel online. It reportedly plays only in theatres, built as grainy security camera footage from inside a haunted Halloween attraction, ending on the title card and a link to a companion site, RunLikeHell.com.
Slayground, known during production under the working title October, follows a man played by Cory Michael Smith (Saturday Night) who becomes the lead suspect in a mass killing, escapes custody, and goes on the run to clear his name while a manhunt closes in around him, a setup more than one outlet has likened to The Fugitive. Saulnier wrote and directed, and by most descriptions of the teaser he is working in the same lean, unsentimental register that has defined his films since Blue Ruin.
The ensemble includes Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me), Young Mazino, Stephen Root, Chase Sui Wonders, Imogen Poots, James Badge Dale, and Matty Matheson. World of Reel has reported that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are composing the score, though A24 has not confirmed this, so treat it as unofficial for now.
No release date has been made official. RunLikeHell.com is running a countdown clock that several outlets read as pointing toward an October premiere, but A24 has offered nothing beyond the site and the in-theatre teaser: no synopsis, no poster, no confirmed date. For a studio that built an empire on tightly controlled reveals, the choice to launch this one exclusively in cinemas, ahead of one of the year’s biggest horror openings, is a statement in itself.
