Fox Corp.’s Tubi, its free, ad-supported streaming TV service, has pounced on two high-profile Fantasia titles, led by “Where the Devil Roams,” the Adams family’s follow-up to “Hellbender,” Rotten Tomatoes No. 1 movie on its Top 10 of best-rated horror films of 2022, just besting Eskil Vogt’s “The Innocents.”
Estimating that it reaches 64 million monthly active users, Tubi also pounced on doc feature “Satan Wants You,” which world premiered at March’s SXSW. Both Fantasia titles will have their exclusive streaming premieres on Tubi this winter.
Written and directed by daughter Zelda Adams, father John Adams and mother Toby Poser at their Wonder Wheel Productions, “Where the Devil Roams,” the Adams seventh feature, marks yet another a step-up in scale for the family of filmmakers who first broke out hitting Fantasia in 2019, world premiering “The Deeper You Dig” Zelda, not yet 18, was too young to watch herself.
Set deep in Depression era America, “Where the Devil Roams” turns around a family of sideshow performers at a traveling carnival which is on its last legs, their act featuring daughter Eve (Zelda Adams), dressed in white with angel wings singing a plaintive voice a horror-tinged song, beginning “Correct and broken bones is all I’ve ever known.”
The star of the show however, is Mr. Tibbs (Sam Rodd), who cuts off his fingers with scissors in plain daylight, explaining to an attracted Eve that he has made a pact with the Devil. They soon begin an affair.
Hugely ambitious, the film’s first 16 minutes packs a black and white prologue where a legless orator recites to a packed theater a poem about fallen angel Abaddon, whose figure seems replicated in Tibbs; a scene of two young daughters stabbing their parents to death; Eve shoplifting at the local grocery store, her walk to it accompanied by a modern-day rock song performed by the Adams; the family and Mr. Tibbs’ shows at the carnival, cutting away continuously to audience reactions; a night time fireside gathering where one carnival members strums a song.
The cinematic ambition of “Where the Devil Roams” won it on Saturday a best cinematography award at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival, the largest genre event in North America, where the film world premiered on July 27. It will now screen at Sitges and Frightfest.
Playing at Fantasia Fest on Monday, “Satan Wants You,” written and directed by Steve J. Adams and Sean Horlor, investigates the so-called Satanic Panic, sparked by an 1980 memoir, “Michelle Remembers,” co-written Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife) Michelle Smith who revealed, during chronicled recovered memory therapy, that she had been the victim as a child of Satanic ritual abuse. The Panic destroyed lives, led to wrongful convictions.
Using archival footage of talk shows, new reports, and in-depth interviews with those closest to the controversy, Horlor and Adams break into the mystique of these reports of ritual abuse and the fervor it created, according to Tubi.
Distributed by Cargo Film & Releasing, a New York-based documentary film global sales agent and distribution company handling Tribeca Fest title “The Conductor” and Paramount+ title “Black & White Stripes: The Juventus Story,” “Satan Wants You” is produced by Michael Tanko Grand and Melissa James, and executive produced by Horlor and Adams.
Sci-fi, most especially, and horror, along with anime, are the favourite genres with European AVOD viewers, compared to viewing habits on SVOD services, according to an Ampere Analysis study.
Likewise on Tubi, after thrillers, horror movies are the second most predominant of genres among its original film releases to date this year.
“Tubi is a prime destination for horror fans. We have long seen a hunger for the horror genre on the platform and we continue to super serve these viewers with compelling titles like ‘Where The Devil Roams’ that have broad appeal,” Adam Lewinson, Tubi chief content officer, told Variety.
“We also feel confident that both our horror fans and our dedicated true crime audience will find the real life horror depicted in the unbelievable documentary ‘Satan Wants You’ to be compelling.”
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