One of the horror films I’m most curious about this year is Ti West’s found footage thriller The Sacrament, set for release in May. AJ Bowen (pictured at top), who broke out in last summer’s You’re Next as Crispian, is set to star as one of several photographers who uncovers a sinister presence at play inside the seemingly idyllic commune of Eden Parish. Bowen will face off with Gene Jones (pictured at bottom), playing the commune’s creepy but charismatic leader, known only as Father. Buzz on the project is very positive (with a lot of early praise going to those two performances), and evidently the two enjoyed working together so much that they’ve now found another film to star in: the psychological horror flick Dementia.
Courtesy of up-and-coming shingle BoulderLight Pictures, the film will find Jones playing a military veteran diagnosed with dementia, who begins to suspect that his live-in nurse is harboring a dark secret. Bowen will play the son of Jones’ character, who becomes drawn into his father’s paranoia and begins to investigate the nurse. Also starring are unknowns Kristina Klebe, Marc Senter, Graham Skipper and Hassie Harrison.
Bowen has become relatively well-known in the horror genre thanks to his roles in The House of the Devil, A Horrible Way to Die and, most significantly, You’re Next, and his star seems to still be on the rise. In addition to The Sacrament and Dementia, he’s set for a major role in Synchronicity, a sci-fi noir from the creators of The Signal.
We previously saw Jones demonstrate his dramatic chops in an episode of Netflix’s House of Cards and the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, in which he played a gas station proprietor terrorized by Javier Bardem’s sinister hitman Anton Chigurh, but The Sacrament is the actor’s biggest project to date. If all goes well when the film arrives in May, he could be headed for a breakout.
Mike Testin, who previously served as director of photography on BoulderLight’s horror film Contracted, is set to direct from a script by Meredith Berg, who recently made the Blood List (basically a horror-specific Black List for best unproduced screenplays) for her script Faceless.
No release date has yet been set, but Bowen and Jones are set to start filming Dementia soon.
