True crime sensation and best picture winner “The Scarapist” from Seasons & a Muse (SAAM), the award-winning producers of festival darling “Night Rain,” helped shape the new Hollywood psychological thriller. Movies like “Get Out,” “Split,” “Unsane” and others draw from its story and execution. “The Scarapist” garnered over one million views every month of its second run on Amazon Prime and now returns for a third turn later this month.
“The Scarapist” was penned by multi-award-winning writer, director, and actress Jeanne Marie Spicuzza (“Night Rain”). The chilling suspense movie is based on the essay with the same title published by Rachel Thompson and the horrifying true story of an abusive hypnotherapist in the Pacific Palisades area, the wealthy ocean suburb recovering from the Los Angeles fires, and a corresponding litigation. Helping bring the story to life are actors Katy Colloton (TV Land’s “Teachers”), R. Michael Gull (“Cactus Jack”), and Kyle Walsh (“The Dark Knight”). Synthian Sharp (Jorja Fox’s “How I Became an Elephant”) co-directs.
Lana (Spicuzza), a novelist struggling with career and family problems, is seduced into “treatment” by a demented therapist named Ilse (Colloton). Her “patients,” like Sweenie (Gull), assist in terrorizing Lana, Lana’s daughter and husband (Walsh).
Dubbed “The New Noir” by publicist Jeremy Walker (“The Blair Witch Project”), “The Scarapist” ushered in a new era of female-driven, multi-genre psychological movies and television series like “Greta,” “Homecoming” and more. A suburban setting provides the eerie backdrop. The cinematography and autumnal Midwestern landscape offer panoramic beauty and unease.
“The Scarapist” made its world premiere at LA Femme International Film Festival, and garnered awards like the Verein Deutscher Und Filmemacher Award for Best Film at Berlinale. It enjoyed a limited theatrical release at Landmark Theatres before its first streaming appearance in 2016.
Called “[O]riginal, disturbing” by celebrated film critic and historian David Luhrssen, “The Scarapist” is the first motion picture devised by the subject PTSD and abuse survivor. It exposes the dark side of hypnosis, with a sinister therapist who prefers controlling to curing, where her own issues turn her into a new kind of villain – one who perverts the tenets of the New Age pseudo-spirituality she preaches. “The Scarapist” is also the first film to use a gun of its opposite purpose, as a tool for forgiveness instead of violence.
Spicuzza is currently prepping comedy-horror series “#VampOUT” for its network premiere with executive producer Barney Cohen of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” fame and Organic Media Group. Other announcements to follow.