Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions is one of those companies that specializes in a particular genre. In this case, we're talking about low-budget horror. Their upcoming The Keeping Hours sounds like it’s right in their wheelhouse. It’s about two parents whose lives fall apart when their son dies in a car accident. The catch is, this one is also going to be a romance.
According to the folks over at the The Hollywood Reporter, Lee Pace and Carrie Coon have signed on to play the two lead roles in The Keeping Hours. It’s being called a "supernatural love story" and follows the two estranged parents of the dead child who have an opportunity to reconcile 10 years after a tragic accident. It’s not entirely clear how the "supernatural" part will play into the overall story. Whether their dead son is playing cupid, haunting them, or shows up as a brain-eating zombie, is not mentioned.
A studio known for horror making a love story sounds like a recipe for something truly bizarre. While love stories with supernatural elements are hardly new, the rest of them often take a fairly similar approach. Star-crossed lovers who can't be together because one of them is dead, a ghost, a zombie, from another time period, etc. In this case, our supernatural element is the son. Is he going to work to get his parents back together? Will he try to keep them apart because he's pissed off that one of them doesn't know how to drive?
Pace is most well known recently for his roles The Hobbit films, as well as playing Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, though his character is a successful lawyer in the new film. I feel obligated to point out that if his role was as a successful pie-maker he could have solved this dead son issue with a single touch. Coon can be seen on HBO’s The Leftovers and recently played Ben Affleck’s sister in Gone Girl.
Seeing a love story coming from Blumhouse is more than a little surprising. The production company that built its name on Paranormal Activity has mostly followed it up with more of the same, including The Purge and Insidious franchises. There have, however, been a few non-horror films sprinkled in amongst their offerings, including the Academy Award nominated Whiplash. Another of the studio’s upcoming productions, Jem and the Holograms, isn’t supposed to be a horror movie, but based on the trailers we’re not so sure.
Whether playing a Marvel villain or a supernatural pie-maker, Pace is always entertaining, and Blumhouse has a track record of making movies that far surpass their minuscule budgets. It will be interesting to see what they do with their first romance.
