Writer/director Jim Mickle rocked the indie genre film world last year with his domestic horror film “We Are What We Are,” and now he has done it again with his throwback thriller “Cold in July,” starring Michael C. Hall. Watch the official trailer below.
It’s 1989 and in the balmy, unforgiving land of Texas, Richard Dane (Hall) becomes a small town hero after shooting a petty burglar. But his so-called act of heroism yields some dark and dangerous consequences when the burglar’s father (played by Sam Shepard), who has a haunted past of his own, rolls into town with an appetite for revenge.
Mickle and scribe Nick Damici — who also cowrote “We Are What We Are,” about the mundane life of a family of cannibals — adapted the film from Joe R. Lansdale’s grizzly 1989 mystery novel. Based on this tense trailer alone, Mickle’s seems to be harking back to the glory days of grindhouse horror and pulpy action films. Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 memory-scarring “Straw Dogs” certainly comes to mind.
IFC Films will release the film, a 2014 Sundance Film Festival hit, theatrically and on VOD on May 23rd. Read our 2013 interview with Mickle on “We Are What We Are” here.
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