So Terry gets a heart transplant. Only the heart begins mysteriously controlling his behavior. He starts going all evil! Turns out the dude who donated the heart was murdered! And if Terry doesn’t find out who killed the dead dude, he might get killed too!
Sounds like the set-up to some schlocky horror flick, right? But then you find out the film’s source material comes from 19th Century horror godfather Edgar Allan Poe. And the man sitting in the director’s chair is Michael Cuesta, whose credits include the devastating suburban drama, “L.I.E.” And the cast brings together Josh Lucas, Brian Cox and Lena Headey. Suddenly you’re very much looking forward to catching “Tell Tale,” which premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday, April 24.
It was just this mix of high-brow literary pedigree and horror genre thrills that attracted Lucas (“Glory Road”) to the role of Terry. “I’ve never been a big fan of horror films in the usual format, unless there’s something exploring a deeper level of human experience—not just slasher films,” he told MTV News. “[Tell Tale] is like an arty genre film.”
And, of course, the opportunity to share screen time with Cox (the Jason Bourne films) and Headey (“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”) was not to be missed. Headey plays the doctor caring for Terry’s daughter, who suffers from a rare degenerative bone disorder (yup, in addition to the whole possessed-by-a-dead-guy’s-heart thing, his daughter’s dying). Cox plays the detective Terry consults when he starts to ask questions about where his transplanted heart came from and why it’s starting to turn him, in Lucas’ words, “from the nicest man in the world to this absolute tortured killer.”
“[Brian’s] so formidable,” explained Lucas. “You feel like you’re in the room with a lion and the lion is gnawing on a piece of meat and glancing up every once in a while and making sure you don’t get too close.”
Of Headey, Lucas says, “The moment you see her you just go, ‘Wow, that is a jaw-dropping woman,’" Lucas admitted. “But she also has that really quirky, light English sense of humor that isn’t taking anything very seriously and is the opposite of the neurotic actress. She doesn’t have that level of ego that you run into particularly with that level of beauty and that level of success.”
This won’t be Lucas’ first Tribeca fest—he’s been both a juror and a participant (during a gala premiere for 2006’s “Poseidon”). “I really love this festival,” he says. “It feels like a true community festival. It doesn’t feel like an industry event at all.”
And he’s looking forward to gauging people’s reaction to the horror-thriller-arty hybrid that is “Tell Tale.” “Genre is such a big, money-making device these days,” Lucas says. “It seems to me like people are really looking for escapist fare.”
What other Poe stories should be turned into big screen movies? What other Tribeca films would you most like to see?
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