If you know the name Jorge Michel Grau, then you're probably familiar with the Mexican director's 2010 debut We Are What We Are, an extremely dark tale about a family of cannibals who must rise up and survive once their patriarch has died. Needless to say, it put Grau right into the consciousness of horror fans sick of teenagers trapped by psycho killers. Of course, Jim Mickle (Stake Land) already premiered his American remake at Sundance in January, but thankfully Grau is following his debut up with more original material, which may have found its star.
According to Variety, Mexico's Damián Alcázar is in talks for the lead in Grau's oddball thriller Keep Quiet. Alcázar is probably best known to American audiences from 2008's Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. It's rare for American horrors to hire 60-year-old American actors to take the leading role, but it's refreshingly common under the border.
Grau, who also scripted Keep Quiet, sticks to his guns when it comes to offering a unique angle on violence and other social issues plaguing Mexican communities. Should he sign on, Alcázar will play a father of a 14-year-old son who witnesses the rape and murder of his mother. The father moves the son to a new home in a run-down housing complex, and the decrepit situation fuels the son’s violent schizophrenic urges. Eventually he begins to believe that his father is a werewolf, and that he must be the one to kill him. It’s always interesting when psychological horror is taken beyond the stereotypical serial killer tripe and actually has a story to tell.
“The important thing about ‘Keep Quiet’ is its social context, the moment, its immediacy,” Grau says. “Family disintegration through violence has never been as common as it is today.”
Keep Quiet will begin filming in Celaya, Guanajuato later this year.
