Editorials
What Happened to Dario Argento’s ‘The Sandman’?
Dario Argento has been in the game a long time. From his directorial début in 1970, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (now out on a beautiful disc from Arrow US), to his most recent film, 2012’s Dracula 3D, Argento has managed to build an astounding resume. Certainly his later efforts have not been on par with his earlier output (though, I think there are more bright spots than most), but fans still hold out hope his next time in the director’s chair will recapture the magic of his Giallo glory days. Enter, The Sandman.
The Sandman was announced in June of 2014 as part of the Off-Frontières co-production market. Little was known right off the bat except that Argento signed on to direct a script written by David Tully (Djinn). These early details were quickly followed with news of rock legend Iggy Pop taking on the titular villain role. Before long we were given solid info as to what the heck the film would be about, and undoubtedly, it sounded like the perfect match for Argento’s phantasmagoric sensibilities.
Inspired by the original Sandman of German folklore that plucked out the eyes of children who wouldn’t sleep, The Sandman website describes the tale as follows:
“THE SANDMAN tells the story of a young student in the city who struggles to forget their childhood trauma at the hands of the serial killer dubbed ‘The Sandman’. As a child the student killed The Sandman years ago, on Christmas Eve, after witnessing the murder of their mother. This memory is repressed until they see the beautiful woman who lives in the apartment across the way dying at the hands of that same masked killer. We follow our protagonist to find out who is the real killer. This is a story of voyeurism and obsession and is a direct homage to Giallo films of the past.”
Needless to say, diehard fans of Argento and Iggy Pop were more than intrigued. In October of 2014, they were given the opportunity to get involved with the project. An Indiegogo page launched to help fund The Maestro’s film; the campaign sought a total of $165k to help “partially” bankroll the production. Tax credits, due to the Canadian/German co-production status, were said to bolster a large chunk of the film’s remaining budget. The launch page stated, “While those monies are secured, it is not enough to make the film. We are dedicated to bringing a quintessential masterwork to the faithful fans of Dario and Iggy. It’s the first time for us to approach you and ask for your support before making the film… because we want to do it right and deliver!”
The perks offered to help drum up that sweet cash ranged from copies of the film, signed posters, and even the chance to don the infamous black gloves of the killer on-screen. That particular perk was “one and done”. It went for $5k! Another exciting addition to the crew of The Sandman was Claudio Simonetti, one of the masterminds behind many of Italy’s finest scores. He would be composing for the film along with Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill series) contributing the theme for the soundtrack.
Everything sounded great. For the first time in a long time, a script written specifically for Argento was handed to him with the promise of full artistic freedom. The crowdfunding campaign was a huge success, exceeding with 119% to goal. With $195,633 raised by 1082 backers, The Sandman was coming. Hopes were that it’d be released in time for Christmas the following year. It has now been three years since the initial announcement. Sadly, The Sandman has yet to go into production.
So, what exactly happened? Personally, I was over the moon with excitement when the word first broke (I didn’t back the project as I was one broke mo-fo in 2014). I’ve stated this before, but to reiterate, Argento is a part of the Holy Trinity of directors that helped shape my genre tastes. Romero and Craven complete that particular trifecta. I was hungry for more info on this movie. Realizing there hadn’t been any substantial news regarding The Sandman in some time, I started to do some digging.
It’s important to note that filmmaking is often a long, arduous journey. Projects can stop and start at the drop of a dime. Unfortunately, a lot of fans who put up their cash during the campaign have yet to receive their promised perks. Obviously, items such as copies of the film will have to wait, but what about signed posters? A quick peek at the comments on the Indiegogo page show a lot of anger from backers. People are requesting refunds and even labeling the campaign a “fraud.” Some commenters are more understanding but remain upset over the “Updates” which have come with less consistency as time has gone on. All hope is not lost, however. Argento has actually spoken on the matter. In August of last year, IndieWire interviewed Argento. In regards to The Sandman, he had this to say:
“Iggy Pop keeps asking, ‘How long do we have to wait on this film?’ Honestly, it’s not my fault. This film is a co-production by many different producers in different countries. They apparently can’t agree on a number of things, including where to shoot, locations, things like that. It goes on and on. I know it’s been dragging on. Time goes by and they haven’t reached an agreement. I must say that I myself have been thinking about some other projects in the meantime. I still need to work on them, think about them.”
While The Maestro’s patience might be wearing thin, he recently hinted at two possible projects in his near future. As quoted by Dark Universe, he stated, “Let’s see what will start first.” There was no confirmation that one of these could be The Sandman, but the producers have recently become more vocal about the production’s progress. Just last month, a post on the film’s Facebook page revealed that locations are locked (Ontario) and financing is still being secured. And those perks? On July 5th, a reminder to backers went out to make sure all mailing info was up to date. The signed posters were close to being shipped!
It’s certainly been a long journey for Dario Argento’s possible return to the sub-genre that made him a horror-household name. Here’s hoping the wait is worth it for fans and backers of the project.
Note: I attempted to reach out to “Team Sandman”. They did not respond to request for comment.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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