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After the death of her father, a grieving young girl moves to an isolated house in a new town with her mother and grandmother, only to discover there is something monstrous hidden in the town’s history and the woods behind their new home.
+ MoreAfter the death of her father, a grieving young girl moves to an isolated house in a new town with her mother and grandmother, only to discover there is something monstrous hidden in the town’s history and the woods behind their new home.
Writer-director Vera Miao’s ambitious, potent feature debut explores the legacy of generations of immigration and racism through a distinct and original genre lens. Spanning centuries, Miao draws from a real-life historical atrocity and Chinese beliefs about the nature of the afterlife to compose a singular portrait of inherited trauma and a stirring ode to the persistence and resilience of diasporic communities.
Kelly Marie Tran grounds the film with her portrayal of a mother’s desperate concern for her child, while Benedict Wong’s visceral performance brings the terror and tragedy of the past to the forefront with dreadful clarity. A sense of foreboding engulfs the film, as Heyjin Jun’s seamless cinematography amplifies the aura of suspense, suggesting the unhealed wounds of these characters and their world. As the goings turn increasingly supernatural, so too grows the specificity of Miao’s vision. — HZ
Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 29–February 1) and credentialed press and industry (January 28–February 1).
Library Center Theatre
Park City
Megaplex Redstone - 1
Park City
Open Caption
The Ray Theatre
Park City
Broadway Centre Cinemas - 3
Salt Lake City
Megaplex Redstone - 4
Park City
Vera Miao
Vera Miao
Stephen Feder
Kiri Hart
Charles D. King
Poppy Hanks
Greta Talia Fuentes
Jason Michael Berman
Matthew Lindner
Jordan Moldo
Vera Miao
Heyjin Jun
Kathrin Eder
David Marks
Farnaz Khaki-Sadigh
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Leslie Woo
Judy Lee
James Lopez
Mike Downing
Christine Yi
Brian Nemes
Shawn Angelski
Caroline Connor
Kelly Marie Tran
Benedict Wong
Kelly Marie Tran
Benedict Wong
Jimmy O. Yang
Aria Kim
Fiona Fu
MACRO
Greta Talia Fuentes
gfuentes@staymacro.com
3237908472
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Vera Miao is a queer filmmaker whose early work in community organizing, along with her love of horror and sci-fi, shape her unique brand of propulsive, character-forward storytelling. She created The CW’s Two Sentence Horror Stories and was a writer and supervising producer on Amazon Prime Video’s Expats.
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