There’s been a bits-and-pieces feel to Matthew Modine’s big-screen career of late, with worthy roles in chunky projects like T****he Dark Knight Rises insufficient to satisfy a fanbase he built up with breakthrough turns in Full Metal Jacket and Memphis Belle. Happily, for anyone craving a dose of pure, uncut Modiness, he's soon be popping up in Steve Jobs biopic **Jobs **and according to Variety, he’ll be joining Olivia Williams in Altar, a new British horror earmarked for Toronto’s Frightfest in September
The pair will play an American artist and his English wife and see them fixing up a country pile with a very dark past. There may be shades of The Conjuring, The Woman In Black and other classic haunted house tropes in that back story: a Satanist who sacrificed his wife had been driven to madness by her ghost – a lot of bad feng shui by any standards – and the lingering evil presumably threatens the new inhabitants with a similar fate.
The film is shooting in Yorkshire and stars Adam Thomas Wright and Les Misérables’ Antonia Clarke as the couple’s imperiled offspring, and Sightseers’ Steve Oram in an unspecified role.
Londoner Nick Willing is the man holding the loudhailer and will be bringing his own script to the screen. Coincidentally, considering this morning's big Peter Pan news, Willing has previously directed J. M. Barrie prequel Neverland. He's got plenty of experience helming TV miniseries; it'll be interesting to see what he can do with a feature-length horror.