Movies
Jake West Takes on Multi-Genre ‘Scribbler’
Evil Aliens and Doghouse director Jake West is back again with The Scribbler. Being produced by Stealth Media Group, shootings is scheduled to begin on March 1 in the UK. The film is a noir sci-fi action thriller about a young woman recently released from a mental hospital, and continuing a treatment programme to rid her of her alternate personalities. She moves into a halfway house for mental patients where the residents begin to die at an unusual rate. Check out more details and word from West below.
From Director – Jake West and writer Dan Schaffer, the creative team who brought you the successful UK horror comedy film Doghouse – starring Danny Dyer, Stephen Graham and Noel Clark… comes The Scribbler
The Scribbler is based on Dan’s critically acclaimed and very commercial graphic novel published by Image comics and will be Jakes 5th feature film after a string of genre successes.
The film is bring produced by Craig Tuohy and co-produced with Spice Factory for a budget of around US$3.5M
At present the producers are out to an up and coming and internationally recognized UK cast which will be announced shortly.
Stealth Media Group is an all rights Film Distributor and International Film and TV sales company. SMG was formed in November 2008 by Sean O’Kelly; founder of film distributor Go For It Entertainment, along with film producers Michael L Cowan and Jason Piette of Spice Factory, one of Europe’s most dynamic independent production companies involved in production and structured film financing.
“We are extremely excited to be working with producer Craig, director Jake and writer Dan. We have wanted to work with Jake for many years and The Scribbler is a great project with a great team that we believe in. As a company, part of what we are focusing on in the UK is working with independent British talent. It is also great when you can work with people you consider friends,” said Michael L Cowan Joint CEO Stealth Media Group.
“It is a great pleasure to be working with Stealth and with such a great team of people who know the business well, are passionate, and believe in us such as Michael, ” add Craig Tuohy.
Jake West explains, “I’m very much looking forward to collaborating with Stealth on what I think is my most exciting feature film project to date, and I am delighted to be working with a team who really know their business and will support my vision to realize this fantastic project.“
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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