Abigail Breslin is keeping her CV nicely eclectic at the moment, with roles in blockbusters (Ender's Game), dramas (August: Osage County) and kids' movies (The Wild Bunch) all on the horizon. But there's a definite recurring horror thriller theme to her work lately - Perfect Sisters, Final Girl, The Call, Wicked Blood, and upcoming Schwarzenegger zombie flick Maggie - and for a glimpse of how her scream queen chops have developed since Zombieland, here's the trailer for Haunter, directed by Vincenzo Natali.
As the title suggests, it's a ghost story, and it's Breslin who's the ghost. Suddenly realising that she's in some sort of supernatural Groundhog Day scenario, she makes a connection with the new incumbent of the house she's been spectrally trapped in, and finds that she's by no means alone. Turns out that the reason for her predicament is the unpleasant Edgar Mullins, a craggy killer played by the craggy Stephen McHattie (also recently in Pascal Laugier's The Tall Man).
There are mixed reactions coming from the festival circuit so far, but while some of the above looks pretty standard, it certainly has a decent atmosphere and the set-up is interesting. Natali, of course, previously directed the inventive Cube, Cypher and Splice, so we're optimistic that this be somewhere up with those, quality-wise. He seemed to jump into Haunter when things went a bit quiet on his planned adaptation of William Gibson's cyberpunk classic Neuromancer. Will this allow him to get back to that?
Haunter comes simultaneously to US theatres and iTunes on October 18. We're still awaiting a date in the UK.