By MICHAEL GINGOLD
After helming three installments of the SAW franchise, along with REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA, the DEVIL’S CARNIVAL movies and others, Darren Lynn Bousman tackles period Southern Gothic horror with ST. AGATHA. Read on for details and comments.
Octane Entertainment has announced that it has picked up worldwide sales rights to ST. AGATHA, which was written by Andy Demetrio, Shaun Fletcher, Sara Sometti Michaels and Clint Sears and stars Sabrina Kern, Carolyn Hennesy, Courtney Halverson, Trin Miller and Seth Michaels. According to the official synopsis, “ST. AGATHA is set in the 1950s in small-town Georgia, where a pregnant con woman named Agatha is on the run and seeks refuge in a convent hidden in deafening isolation. What first starts out as the perfect place to have a child turns into a dark layer where silence is forced, ghastly secrets are masked and every bit of willpower Agatha has is tested. She soon learns the sick and twisted truth of the convent and the odd people that lurk inside its halls. Agatha must now find a way to discover the unyielding strength needed to escape and save her baby before she’s caged behind these walls forever.”
“I have always been attracted to the dark, sinister and macabre,” Bousman says. “But, as I find myself getting older and now being a dad, blood and guts no longer amuse me. I need something more. I look for content, character and themes. ST. AGATHA spoke to me, as it takes a look at the unflinching horrors that befell women in the 1950s and how that parallels to the not-so-different horrors that are befalling them today. It was amazing to work with such a strong female cast, and I look forward to pulling back the curtain and letting others glimpse into our sinister world.”
“Making this film was amazing,” says Michaels, who also produced ST. AGATHA with Srdjan Stakic and Tara Ansley. “The intensity of the film will keep the audiences holding onto their seats until the end. Under the direction of Darren Lynn Bousman, we had strong female actors who embodied not only their characters, but also the era in which the movie took place, the atmosphere as well as the eeriness of the story. To see the film from the inception of the script through the process of finding an investor, to preproduction, to principal photography and finally to the finished product was an amazing experience. I am very proud to be a part of this project.”
Octane will be selling ST. AGATHA at the American Film Market this month; we’ll keep you posted on distribution!
