Movies
Metrodome Acquires UK Rights to ‘The Messenger’
Metrodome acquired UK distribution rights to David Blair’s The Messenger, which we’ve been covering pretty heavily here on the site.
Below we have a handful of images and the UK trailer from the psychological thriller in which the protagonist is being tormented.
Joely Richardson, Tamzin Merchant, and Robert Sheehan star.
We all want to believe in life after death and imagine loved ones looking over us, feel their presence in a draft of air, or the faint essence of a familiar smell. It’s what we crave, knowing they wait for us. But Jack isn’t waiting – they won’t leave him alone. Some might call Jack a troubled soul, at odds with the world, unable to conform. If you saw him in the pub – disheveled and drunk, talking to himself – you’d stay well away, think he was disturbed somehow, crazy. But Jack has a sharp mind and a razor wit. It’s not that he doesn’t want to live a normal life, he can’t. They won’t let him.
The Messenger is the story of Jack’s last melt down. A story of frustration and guilt; of love and betrayal; family and blame. How he chooses the victims he’ll help next, how he, stalker-like, becomes embroiled in their lives. In this case, Mark, a journalist brutally murdered in the local park and his television presenter wife, Sarah, to whom he’s desperate to say one last goodbye.
As Jack gets closer to Sarah, obsessed with passing on Mark’s message, he discovers their perfect life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. They had secrets and lies just like any couple; the only problem is that Mark didn’t know about them. It’s the shock of that discovery that finally pushes Jack over the edge. But there is hope… When Jack’s estranged sister, Emma, gets in touch, Jack starts to remember the past they shared together and as the memories come flooding back, he starts to confront the truth about the death of his father. Maybe this time he can start to believe it wasn’t his fault? Maybe this time his father will finally turn up and set him free?
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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