Latched: Chilling short horror film premieres at TIFF 2017
Are you ready for Latched? Newly-single mom Alana (Alana Elmer) and her 14-month-old son Bowen (Bowen Harding) are alone in the off-season on an island cottage, with only a strange old neighbor (Peter Higginson) for company. A choreographer looking to get back into the dance world, Alana uses her time of solitude to practice her moves and prepare for a new adventure involving an experimental dance company. Then on a walk in the woods with Bowen, they discover the decomposing remains of what is dubiously identified as a bat.
It is not a bat.
That’s the chilling premise of Latched, directors Justin Harding and Rob Brunner’s latest horror short film, which is debuting at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, opening the Shorts Program.
No stranger to the concept of terror-and-children, Harding and Brunner recently turned heads with Kookie, a short, terrifying film about a greedy little girl, a haunted cookie jar and a killer clown, which earned an Official Selection at SXSW and won of over 30 awards. What distinguishes Latched, however, is that it is a meta-project involving Harding’s real-life wife and child, a maternal dynamic the filmmaker knew would translate to the screen powerfully.
“It’s a new type of genre film,” says Harding, “inspired by a desire to produce something uniquely beautiful and shocking involving immediate family and cherished friends.”
“Latched was designed to dance between the frightening and the artistic,” Brunner adds. “This story could only be told with the honest dynamic of a mother and son whose real relationship lures the viewer deeper into an unexpected nightmare.”
In anticipation of the micro-macabre movie’s premiere, we have an exclusive clip to share (as well as the official trailer), where the “bat” is discovered in the woods. Have a look…
