By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The distribs are building a strong slate of chillers for the warm-weather months.
IFC Films and Shudder have announced a pair of new debut dates to follow the previously announced IN A VIOLENT NATURE, arriving in theaters May 31 from IFC, and THE DEVIL’S BATH, which has its Shudder premiere June 28. First up is ODDITY (pictured above), seeing IFC theatrical release July 19 after winning the Midnighter Audience Award at the SXSW Film & TV Festival and the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Overlook Film Festival. Written and directed by Damian McCarthy, it stars Gwilym Lee, Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, Caroline Menton, Jonathan French and Steve Wall. The synopsis: “When Dani is brutally murdered at the remote country house that she and her husband Ted are renovating, everyone suspects a patient from the local mental health institution, where Ted is a doctor. However, soon after the tragic killing, the suspect is found dead. A year later, Dani’s blind twin sister Darcy, a self-proclaimed psychic and collector of cursed items, pays an unexpected visit to Ted and his new girlfriend, Yana. Convinced that there was more to her sister’s murder than people know, Darcy has brought with her the most dangerous items from her cursed collection to help her exact revenge.”
The following month, on August 23 to be exact, Shudder debuts HELL HOLE, the latest from the Adams Family that has its world premiere at next month’s Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. John Adams directed from a script he wrote with Lulu Adams and Toby Poser, and the cast is headed by Poser, John Adams, Max Portman, Anders Hove, Olivera Perunicic, Aleksandar Trmcic, Petar Arsic and Bruno Veljanovski. The synopsis: “In the Adams Family’s celebration of the classic creature feature, an American-led fracking crew working deep in the Serbian wilderness find themselves at odds with government assigned environmental advisors. When they get approval to drill, the workers uncover the unimaginable: a dormant parasitic monster entombed deep in the frozen rock. Now awakened, it tears through the mining facility in search of the perfect host.”
