Eleven years after directing the horror thriller Julia's Eyes (watch it HERE), Guillem Morales is taking the helm of another horror feature, Brother, an adaptation of a novel written by Ania Ahlborn (pick up a copy at THIS LINK).
Fred Strydom has written the screenplay for Brother, which is set
in the early 1980s and located in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. The pic turns on the depraved Morrow family, which lives off the beaten path and preys on young women whom they kidnap from the side of the highway. There’s unrest within the family, however, as their 19-year-old son Michael Morrow tries to break free from their clutches and escape his past.
Ahlborn's novel had the following description:
Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what’s buried in the Morrows’ backyard.
But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn’t like the rest of his family. He doesn’t take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he’s sure that someday he’ll see the world beyond West Virginia. When he meets Alice, a pretty girl working at a record shop in the small nearby town of Dahlia, he’s immediately smitten. For a moment, he nearly forgets about the monster he’s become. But his brother, Rebel, is all too eager to remind Michael of his place…
Morales had this say about the project:
Set in the early eighties, just as Kubrick’s The Shining was released in theaters, Brother evokes the thriller and horror classics of the eighties, having potential to delight both longstanding fans of the genre as well as the younger generation of today. The film will elicit the same dark euphoria as Rosemary’s Baby, The Silence of the Lambs, or Psycho."
Brother is being produced by Danny Davids, Colin Bates, Neil Canton, and Samson Day. WestEnd Films will be presenting the project to potential distributors at the Cannes virtual market.
WestEnd Films' Maya Amsellem said,
Brother is a heart-stopping thriller rich in character that will shock and surprise in equal measure. Guillem is a pedigree filmmaker who will bring style and substance to a film that is sure to appeal strongly to genre fans around the world and we can’t wait to introduce it to buyers."
Brother will be filming in the U.S. sometime this fall.
The set-up of the homicidal backwoods family is quite familiar, but it will be interesting to see what Ahlborn, Strydom, and Morales have done with it.