Jonas Åkerlund‘s critically-acclaimed Sundance darling Lords of Chaos has finally found a distribution home, Collider reports today, with Gunpowder & Sky in final negotiations to acquire the film ahead of its screening at Fantastic Fest. No information yet on when they plan to unleash it, but the site notes that “a Fall release seems likely.”
Fred Topel reviewed Lords of Chaos for us out of Sundance, writing that the film “isn’t a horror movie per se, but it is gory AF and deals in many of the tropes of the genre.”
“Based on truth and lies, this propulsive “dramedy” depiction of the exploits of the death-obsessed late-‘80s/early-‘90s Norwegian black metal scene’s most notorious bands, Mayhem and Burzum, is at once a poignant exploration of Oslo youth alienation and a rambunctious, taboo-smashing assault on the senses. As characters huff the remains of dead animals and burn centuries-old churches to the ground, Ackerlund – himself a co-founder of Swedish metal band Bathory before becoming the rather legendary film and music video director that he is today – never flinches, cranking his storytelling to “11” as he dives fists-first into the band’s ambitions, turmoils and, eventually, murders, with detours into Satanism and suicide.”
“Starring a fantastic Rory Culkin as Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth and Emory Cohen as Varg Vikernes, Lords of Chaos is a startling and surprisingly funny piece of work that drips charisma and blood. It comes at you from a dark but soulful place, telling a tale of lost boys who want to be evil but have got only partial directions to the specific kind of hell they seek. It’s a tragedy, a comedy and a nightmare; a true-crime oddity laced with corpse paint and inverted crosses. It will stay with you.”
The film is adapted from the Feral House book by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind.
