Director Lee Daniels has had an interesting career so far. After helming Precious, a film that garnered quite a few Oscar nods, he went on to direct the bizarre and insane The Paperboy, with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron. This was followed up by Lee Daniels’ The Butler, another film focusing on issues of race in America. Now, the director is set to helm a very different type of film from his previous endeavors, as he signs on for Demon House, a supernatural thriller.
Demon House purports to tell the “true story” of Latoya Ammons and her family who, according to Ammons, were possessed by demons starting in 2011. The Gary, Indiana resident claims that her family were possessed, their experiences rating everything from attacks by ghosts, violent behavior due to possession, hearing voice, ghostly footprints and levitation. Weirdly enough, investigations by authorities have actually supported at least some of the Ammons’ family claims, including the apparent levitation of a child while a health care worker looked on.
Demon House is a very weird idea, though no weirder than some of the “based on a true story” thrillers that have been made in the past. After all, everything from The Amityville Horror to The Exorcism of Emily Rose have been based on supposedly real experiences, some supported and some not. Daniels has not made any films like this before, but he does have an odd and melodramatic sensibility as a director that could lend itself very nicely to a good scary story. It will be interesting to see what he can come up with.
Demon House is set up at Relativity, with no release or start date as yet. Now that Daniels is in place as director, we can expect to hear more about script and casting before long, so we’ll let you know when we do.
