Three things that never bode well in spooky stories, especially in combination: 1. Remote homesteads; 2. mysterious spellbooks turning up in one’s cellar; 3. a dead mother. Throw in something creepy in the woods, and you’ve got Queen of Bones, a folk horror film coming from writer Michael Burgner (The Darkest Corner of Paradise) and director Robert Budreau (Stockholm).
Genre stalwart Martin Freeman (The Hobbit, pictured above) stars as the widower; Julia Butters (The Fabelmans) and Jacob Tremblay (Room) play his twin children, Lily and Sam. As Deadline explains, “When Lily and Sam find an Icelandic spell book in the cellar, they begin to suspect a connection between their mother’s death and dark forces in the woods. They then embark on a dangerous mission to force their father and his friend, Ida May ([Taylor] Schilling), to reveal the truth.”
Queen of Bones is set in 1931 Oregon, though Deadline’s announcement doesn’t specify where. Speaking as a born-and-raised Oregonian: it matters! There are a lot of different kinds of potentially horrifying forests in this state. But screenwriter Burgner no doubt knows of what he writes; his previous feature, co-written with director Henry Weintraub, was the indie The Darkest Corner of Paradise—which was made in Eugene.
Queen of Bones is in production in Canada; no release date has been announced.
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