Not even 30 years old yet, Jena Malone has built her career on a variety of complicated characters in challenging movies that often fared better with critics than at the box office. After a strong turn in last year’s Hatfields & McCoys miniseries and a major role in the upcoming Hunger Games sequel, it seemed like Malone might be making her way up the steps to generic stardom, which makes her newest project all the more interesting.
Malone will play the lead role in an upcoming adaptation of Arthur Phillips’ critically-acclaimed seductive supernatural thriller Angelica, according to Deadline. Angelica will be the next project for director Mitchell Lichtenstein, the man responsible for the middling horror-comedy Teeth and the middling dramatic comedy Happy Tears.
Angelica, which takes place in 1880s London, follows Constance (Malone), a shop clerk who falls in love with an older doctor and marries him. The difficult childbirth of their daughter Angelica, puts Constance on doctor-ordered celibacy, which takes a negative toll on their marriage. Soon after, their home is invaded by a sexually-charged spectre that begins haunting the mother and daughter.
Phillips’ 2007 novel, which drew critical comparisons to Stephen King and Vladimir Nabokov, presents its narrative the from the perspective of four different characters, whose stories differ from one another in ways that cast doubt on everyone involved. The reader is left to figure out the mystery for themselves. Something tells me the film version will streamline this plot down to something that doesn’t even resemble a mystery anymore, but the novel’s strong undertones of family, love, and identity should translate well and raise this above the tepid waters of many recent supernatural films.
