By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Produced before the coronavirus swept the world, Francesco Giannini’s first feature has its debut at the end of this month.
Part of a new series of horror productions from Montreal-based Franky Films, HALL will world-premiere as part of Britain’s digital Arrow Video FrightFest on Sunday, August 30 at 6 p.m. local time. Directed by Giannini from a script he wrote with Derrick Adams and Adam Kolodny, it stars Yumiko Shaku, Carolina Bartczak, Mark Gibson, genre vet Julian Richings and Bailey Thain. The synopsis: “When a hotel hallway is ravaged by a dreadful airborne virus, pregnant Japanese runaway wife Naomi [Shaku] is tragically thrust into the fight of her life. After getting infected, she wants to escape but is forced to crawl her way through other helpless and scattered victims. In the room next door stays Val [Bartczak], a mother trapped in a toxic marriage. Val must also navigate her way out of the hotel and walk through the long and narrow stretch of isolated carnage, all while desperately looking for her young daughter Kelly and keeping out of sight of the remaining contagious sufferers. Will these two women get out of there alive?”
“It’s a strange coincidence that our film is coming out at the same time as the devastating COVID-19 crisis,” Giannini says. “I never thought that the fictional story of virus contagion we’ve created in HALL would become a reflection of reality within such a close time frame between the release of the film and the pandemic occurring right now. However, the ideas and themes explored in the movie have been in my thought process for a while due to the previous virus outbreaks I’ve had witnessed.”
For more information on FrightFest, which is geo-locked to UK audiences, head over to its official website.
