Maria Bello has been cast as the female lead in James Wan's new untitled thriller that's set up over at Dimension Films. Wan, who started the Saw franchise and directed Insidious is producing the film, and Will Canon is set to direct it. Canon has made a handful of short films and a feature length film called Brotherhood which I've never seen.
The story centers on a "detective and a police psychologist (Bello) who are investigating the massacre of five college kids in a decrepit home and must deal with a suspect, a survivor of the killing, who explains the group [were] amateur ghost-hunters and that it was the house that is to blame."
It's not specified in the report at THR, but I believe this is Wan's film House of Horrors, which was announced last year. Canon is the third director to be attached to the project. It sounds like a cool horror movie, and with the casting of Bello, it seems like the movie is finally starting to move forward. Here's the full synopsis for the movie:
The Devil made me do it.
The House of Horror is a horror-thriller that centres around a gruesome crime scene. The film is shot with a blend of found footage, interrogation video, news cameras and classical cinematography. The film focuses on the aftermath of a horrific massacre; five college students, brutally murdered inside a decrepit, abandoned home.
We are thrown right into the mix as the lead Detective, Mark Lewis, and the police department’s psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Klein, question a suspect. The young man at the centre is John Ascot, bound by handcuffs in a mobile command station. During the interrogation, John explains everything leading up to the deaths of his friends.
We discover that they were amateur ghost-hunters, seeking out paranormal phenomenon at the abandoned house believed to be haunted. What started out as a harmless activity turned into something truly terrifying and more than they ever could bargain for. John explains to the police that he isn’t responsible for his friends’ deaths, but rather, it was the house. He tells them he believes the house is a gateway to hell; a place of concentrated evil.
We slowly witness an eerie change in John’s demeanour through the course of the movie. Things take a disturbing turn when John hints at the notion that he is possessed by the Devil. Detective Lewis and Dr. Kleinare forced to unravel the mystery of how John’s friends were murdered. All this leads to a stunning revelation about the man they’ve been interrogating and a gut-wrenching conclusion.
The movie is set to start shooting in January 2013 in Baton Rouge. Bello recently starred in NBC’s crime drama Prime Suspect and is set to appear in Grown Ups 2 with Adam Sander. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out!