Simon Barrett’s Seance to Stream Exclusively on Shudder

Filmmaker Simon Barrett has delivered horror fans a number of indie hits over the past decade, from You’re Next to The Guest to Blair Witch, with the writer making his feature-film directing debut earlier this year with Seance. With the coronavirus pandemic still impacting theaters when Seance was released, not all horror fans might have had the opportunity to check out the creepy adventure, with the film confirmed to be making its exclusive streaming debut on Shudder on September 29th. With Shudder being the go-to streaming service for horror fans, the debut of Seance will be just the start of compelling offerings coming to the platform in the coming months.

Per press release, “Known for writing some of the most revered horror films over the past decade, Simon Barrett (You’re Next, The Guest) wrote the screenplay and makes his feature directorial debut with Seance. The movie stars Suki Waterhouse (Assassination Nation, The Divergent Series: Insurgent), Madisen Beaty (Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Ella-Rae Smith (Into the Badlands, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw), Inanna Sarkis (Boo 2! A Madea Halloween, After Franchise),  Seamus Patterson (Channel Zero), and Marina Stephenson-Kerr (Channel Zero).

“In Seance, Camille Meadows is the new girl at the prestigious Edelvine Academy for Girls. Soon after her arrival, six girls invite her to join them in a late-night ritual, calling forth the spirit of a dead former student who reportedly haunts their halls. But before morning, one of the girls is dead, leaving the others wondering what they may have awakened.”

Barrett previously detailed how, while the film might seem like a departure for him, it’s a concept and subgenre he’s immensely passionate about.

“I love murder mysteries and old-fashioned, classical murder mysteries on such an almost genetic level, because my mother herself is a writer of mystery fiction,” Barrett explained to ComicBook.com. “She got a short story published in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine when I was a kid, and Amazing Stories and publications like that, and so I just grew up [on them] ever since I was a really little kid. At first, I would read Agatha Christie, and I graduated to eventually what I read now. I still read Agatha Christie, but now I read a lot more. Actually, I don’t read much mystery fiction anymore, because I have to admit, a lot of modern work doesn’t interest me, and a lot of my favorite authors are now dead. I enjoy Loren D. Estleman, from time to time. It’s a lot of the older, classical stuff by dead authors was really what shaped my personality. Georgette Heyer is another person that I’ve been referencing a lot, because Envious Casca and Death in the Stocks are two big influences on Seance.”

He added, “Also, the mystery writer, Sarah Caldwell, whose book Thus Was Adonis Murdered, was a huge influence. And so it’s just stuff like that, that honestly, if I could say all that stuff to Adam, he would just be like, “Okay, great. That’s fine,” but that’s more specifically my individual interest. So it was really that I wanted to do a film of this nature and I didn’t want to do the sarcastic, insane version of it. I wanted to do the sincere version, which is, I think, what we always try to do, which confounds people so much. I think what I’m realizing is that I am finally achieving my goal of becoming a weird filmmaker, because I’m starting to not think that my choices are weird.”

Seance hits Shudder on September 29th.

Are you going to be checking out the film? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!