Over the last decade or so, Jeremy Saulnier has proven himself to be something of a modern master of suspense, quickening our pulses and testing our nerves (complimentary) time and again with the likes of Green Room, Hold The Dark, and — most recently — Aaron Pierre led Netflix action-thriller Rebel Ridge. With forthcoming, punnily titled A24 killer thriller Slayground however, it looks like Saulnier is heading as close as he's gotten yet to pure horror territory, serving up a Halloween-set chiller about a disturbed dude named Michael (Cory Michael Smith) who finds himself at the centre of a manhunt with dead bodies all around him. Luckily nothing like that's ever happened before, eh? Check out the trailer below;
Autumn vibes? Check. Masked menace(s)? Check. An escaped convict on the loose whose bloody history is tied up in a sleepy town's trauma-stricken past? Triple check! So far, so Halloween, right? Well, not quite. Instead of evil incarnate descending on Haddonfield, here the full picture is a little less clear, with Cory Michael Smith playing a guy who wakes up at a Halloween Horror Nights style haunted attraction to the realisation that everyone around him is dead and he's now a fugitive. Did he kill them all? Why can't he remember what happened? And what's with the creepy masked dude at the end of the trailer? Saulnier is playing all tease and little trail for now, but the set-up is clearly here for a slasher/murder mystery hybrid shot through with Saulnier's trademark precision-engineered sense of tension and escalating stakes.
And here's the official synopsis for the movie — which also stars Chase Sui Wonders, Sophie Wilde, Imogen Poots, Young Mazino, Stanley Simons, Matty Matheson, James Badge Dale, and Stephen Root. "Scare-actor “Metal Mike” Graves wakes up in a haunted attraction surrounded by the dead bodies of his co-workers with no memory of how they got there. As a state-wide manhunt closes in, he races to uncover the truth – even if the trail leads straight back to him.”
Curiously, despite its spooky season setting and slasher vibes, Slayground isn't actually heading our way until January 29, 2027 (in the US, at least.) But with a killer cast, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross handling the score, and Saulnier on the script and behind the camera, consider us locked in and ready for a visit to the Slayground. After all, we guess everyone's entitled to one good scare, right?