We were offered a look at the trailer for the new film The Bellwether. Writer/director Christopher Morrison’s elevated feminist thriller, shot in an ancient church in Brussels, Belgium, is a deeply character-driven genre piece. It aims to be a horror and thriller film which addresses women’s issues, features a captivating virtuoso performance by Alex Reid, (well known for The Descent and the BBC’s Misfits).
“Genre and BBC favorite Alex Reid is portraying Joanne. A star of the modern horror classic ‘The Descent’ as well as TV’s ‘The Misfits’ Ms. Reid brings a grounded reality to all of her roles. We are honored to have her as the first actress in English to play the lead in a solo female led film and she creates a tour-de-force performance as Joanne Steiger,” said Morrison.
Synopsis: To the outside world Joanne is just a book-store owner, but the Conspiracy knows different. She’s dangerous. She’s a bellwether: a quiet leader who is well on her way to being her whole self. When they kidnap her to break her to make her conform, they discover that Joanne is something so much more than even she ever knew. Joanne is a feminist, one-room, one-character elevated genre thriller. It is a modern rite of passage story which most women have to go through to become a whole human being: How does one be oneself in the face of massive misogyny and hatred (both overt and institutionalized). It is also the world’s first one-person film (a movie with only one on-screen character) that features a woman.
It makes us so happy to see yet another powerful female performance emerging in the horror thriller world. Horror aficionados know how badass women are in general and we will always support the scary scream queens of our genre even if the academy doesn’t.
Giant Pictures will release The Bellwether on February 12 on DigitalHD, and the film will open theatrically in Los Angeles on February 15 with an L.A. exclusive run at Arena Cinelounge Sunset, announced Juri Koll, producer.
