Exclusives
New ‘Offspring’ Image, Behind-the-Scenes Video!
B-D stringer JM wrote in with an exclusive pic from Offspring, along with a little word from director Andrew Van Den Houten. As an added bonus, over at BDTV you’ll find the first of a series of webisodes of behind-the-scenes footage of the making of OFFSPRING. In the film survivors of a feral flesh-eating clan are chowing their way through the locals. Amy Halbard and Claire Carey strive to survive their abduction by the cannibals and save their children. A subplot involving Claire’s despicable husband, Steven, gives an opportunity to cleverly compare predatory civilized folk to the appetite-driven primitives.
Andrew van den Houten, Director of OFFSPRING, chats a bit with JM about the cave scenes and how he approached filming this adaptation. Click the image to see it much larger.
“Upon reading Jack Ketchum’s book OFFSPRING, although ultra-violent and dealing with cannibalism, I realized that the story is not as far fetched as most horror yarns.
Thematically and developmentally, the characters and world by which OFFSPRING takes place are very real.
While doing research for the film, I found it interesting that in some South American Amazonian rainforests there are still cannibalistic head-hunting tribes in exsistence. With deforestation and other disastrous ecological encroachments, the separation between the two worlds is continuing to decline. I enjoyed filming Ketchum’s story and screenplay, as I found it really allowed for a true exploration of a tribalistic people – desperate to survive and maintain their rituals – all while having to deal with the modern world at its front door step.
The violence in the film is scary to me because it comes from a very basic animalistic need for survival. I guided myself after calling action everytime, to commit to the belief that there was no other moment – no last chance – to save this this fading species, this clan, in each filmed frame. After motivating the action in the cave scenes I found myself pushing the actors to experience the pain, take after take, in order to get the intensity relayed to the screen as believable as possible. We made every effort to maintain the intensity, as we did with Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door – never giving the viewer a moment to regather themselves, until the film itself is immersed in the depths of true horror.“
A hospital stay grows more nerve-frazzling when memory loss distorts reality in our exclusive clip from This Tempting Madness, inspired by a true story.
The mind-bending psychological thriller will be released in select theaters and on demand on June 12 via Vertical.
Simone Ashley (“Bridgerton”) stars as Mia, who awakens from a coma, grievously injured, her memory fractured. As she puts the pieces of her past together, she starts to question her own actions and her perception of reality.
In This Tempting Madness, “Mia awakens from a coma grievously injured, her memory fractured. As she puts the pieces of her past together, she starts to question her own actions, and her perception of reality.”
Jennifer E. Montgomery makes her feature directorial debut from a script she co-wrote with director of photography Andrew Davis, inspired by Montgomery’s first-hand experience with tragedy involving her best friend.
“Months before the incident, there were signals that her world was unraveling,” says Montgomery. “I could feel the pressure building, though I didn’t know what form it would take. I never could have known what violence would come, and I certainly never imagined making a film about it.”
Austin Stowell (“NCIS: Origins”), Suraj Sharma (Happy Death Day 2U), Mojean Aria (Reminiscence), Amol Shah (“For All Mankind”), and Zenobia Shroff (“Ms. Marvel”) round out the cast.
Smoke Jumper Films and Mango Monster Productions produce in association with Catchlight Studios (Heretic, The Blackening).
This Tempting Madness is rated R for “language, violence/bloody images, and brief sexuality.”