A new gruesome creature flick is on the way from The Descent director Neil Marshall. RLJE Films recently released the first trailer for The Lair, which is set for release at the end of the month with Shudder bringing the film to streaming in February of 2023.
Marshall, who has created films like the recent Hellboy reboot and The Reckoning, made waves in the horror world with 2005’s The Descent, in which a group of women on an outdoor spelunking adventure journey into an unexplored cave inhabited by a horrifying world of creatures they must try to escape from. The film has been praised for its mix of feminist themes, monster horror, slow-build dread, and old-fashioned gore.
The Lair stars Charlotte Kirk (The Reckoning) as a Royal Air Force pilot shot down over Afghanistan where she flees opposing forces by hiding in a bunker. There, she finds terrifying bloodthirsty alien/human hybrid creatures created as biological weapons. She returns with her fellow soldiers to investigate only to wind up their prey. Marshall, who conceived the film during 2020 and co-wrote it with Kirk, said in a statement, "I’m thrilled to be back in the world of full-blooded action horror for the first time since ‘The Descent’ and ‘Dog Soldiers,’ and this film certainly holds some kinship with those two movies."
"Originally conceived as a small and contained indie film to shoot during lockdown, my ambitions for the movie grew into something much more action-packed and monster-fuelled, with a sci-fi twist," Marshall continued. "It’s packed full of cool characters, scares, laughs, and of course some grizzly death scenes.” The Lair cast also includes Jonathan Howard (Thor: The Dark World) and Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica).
The new creature feature is a much-anticipated follow-up to a film like The Descent, which is especially terrifying for its gruesome inhabitants of the caves, monsters who feel relentless in the claustrophobic, dark interiors of the underground. Marshall immediately established himself as a purveyor of strong, female-led horror, which paved the way for countless other films that followed.
Those two elements mixed together point the way for The Lair to become a new fan-favorite. In The Lair trailer, the creatures look especially spectacular in the way only a terrible, human-created biological weapon could.
The Lair arrives theaters and on Digital and VOD on October 28, 2022.
Source: Bloody Disgusting, RLJE Films