Shane Carruth is best known for his critically acclaimed and ambitious features Primer and Upstream Color, and now he’s front and center as an actor in the inspired horror thriller The Dead Center. Take a listen to Episode 104 below, as Anderson Cowan and I discuss The Dead Center, Semper Fi, and Wrinkles the Clown!
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The Dead Center focuses on Daniel Forrester (Shane Carruth), a dedicated psychiatrist whose interest is peaked when a catatonic patient (Jeremy Childs) enters the emergency psych ward with no knowledge of his identity. This John Doe, however, actually committed suicide and for some inexplicable reason he has returned from the dead.
Forrester checks in his client to the ward without permission from his supervisor Sarah (Poorna Jagannathan), and his actions lead to tragic results in the hospital as well as the outside world. Click on the media bar below to hear Carruth elaborate on how the storytelling ambiguity of The Dead Center appealed to him:
Directed and penned by Billy Senese, The Dead Center is an immersive, atmospheric, and downright terrifying look at an evil force that has come to wreak havoc on humanity. Credit goes to Senese for giving viewers a tightly wound narrative that feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone crossed with the sheer dread of 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (My rating for The Dead Center: 4 out of 5)
Carruth and Childs deliver solid work in a feature which, thanks to Senese deliberate and patient use of pacing, is downright terrifying. The feature hits theaters October 11 and comes out on Blu-ray and DVD on October 22 via Arrow Films.
Also covered in CinemAddicts is Anderson Cowan’s thoughts on Monos and Wrinkles The Clown, and during the episode we announced that we are covering the year 1986 on this month’s bonus Patreon episode. Anderson will be reviewing At Close Range and I will take on Salvador (both films made in ’86).
Take a listen to our Episode 104 of CinemAddicts below, and you can subscribe to our program via Apple Podcasts and Stitcher!
