By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The novel by best-selling indie horror author Ania Ahlborn is coming to the screen.
Variety reports that the film version of Ahlborn’s BROTHER will be directed by Guillem Morales, who helmed the Guillermo del Toro-produced chiller JULIA’S EYES and won a BAFTA for the British dark-comedy series INSIDE NO. 9. Fred Strydom scripted, and the story tells of the eccentric, depraved Morrow family, who live in rural isolation and abduct young women from the side of a nearby highway. 19-year-old Michael Morrow yearns to get away from his kin and live a normal life, and falls for a local girl, but his family isn’t going to make escaping them easy.
“Set in the early ’80s, just as Kubrick’s THE SHINING was released in theaters,” Morales says, “BROTHER evokes the thriller and horror classics of the ’80s, having potential to delight both longstanding fans of the genre as well as the younger generation of today. The film will elicit the same dark euphoria as ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS or PSYCHO.”
Says Maya Amsellem of WestEnd Films, which will begin presales at this month’s Cannes virtual market, “BROTHER is a heart-stopping thriller rich in character that will shock and surprise in equal measure. Guillem is a pedigree filmmaker who will bring style and substance to a film that is sure to appeal strongly to genre fans around the world, and we can’t wait to introduce it to buyers.” Shooting is set to begin on U.S. locations this fall.
