Ritual and Pod director Mickey Keating is taking on survival horror with Carnage Park, which is based on a shocking true story.

“After a bank heist goes awry, two criminals and their hostage flee deep into the wilderness only to find themselves in Carnage Park, a remote stretch of desert used by an unhinged ex-military sniper to recreate his own twisted war games.”

Just ahead of Cannes the film’s initial cast has been revealed, and includes horror fabs Ashley Bell (pictured; The Last Exorcism, The Last Exorcism II), Darby Stanchfield (“Scandal”), Pat Healy (pictured below; Cheap Thrills, The Innkeepers) and Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller’s Day)

“Carnage Park will be a nod to the mean and dirty crime films of the 1970s, and the intense, unflinching energy of the fight for survival films by directors like Boorman and Peckinpah,” said Keating in the film’s initial press release. “It’s a harrowing story, set almost entirely during the day, against a blinding backdrop of the California desert.”

“It’s going to be a very vicious horror film set entirely during the day, in a cruel stretch of California desert,” Keating told us in a previous exclusive interview. “It’s my first period piece – set in 1978 – and it’s about a botched bank heist that quickly spirals into a horrific fight for survival. It’ll be a nod to the legendary Sam Peckinpah and his masterpiece The Getaway, the new French Extremism films of the 2000s, and The Most Dangerous Game…I’m very excited to make a cruel, pulpy horror film.”

Shooting begins next week in Los Angeles.