Bret Easton Ellis to direct his first film

The controversial writer behind American Psycho is getting into the movie business with a Stranger Things star.

Several of his novels have been spectacularly adapted for cinema, especially American Psycho (2000) and The Laws of Attraction (2002). But this time, Bret Easton Ellis launches his own attack on cinemas. He is about to make his first film, Relapsewhich will be a horror film that he wrote himself.

Joseph Quinnrevelation of season 4 of Stranger Things, will be the star of the casting. He will play Matt Cullen, who checks himself into rehab after witnessing a gruesome death at a drug party. “Three months later, he’s ready to get his life back together and stay at his parents’ mansion in the hills of Los Angeles“, teases the synopsis. “But things have changed around Matt and everything seems out of balance. Fueled by his unstable personality and the pervasive power of social media, Matt’s paranoia grows, disrupting his rehabilitation program. As he begins using again, a mysterious presence begins to grow around Matt, and a monster that has haunted him since he was a teenager reveals itself. His therapist tries to help him, convinced that the monster is actually in Matt’s head…“

In Variety, Bret Easton Ellis explains having “grew up watching the iconic horror films of the 1970s. I wrote Lunar Park, a horror novel, as a tribute to Stephen King. It seems appropriate that my first feature film is a horror film. There is a simplicity in Relapse which seems to be the perfect form for my directorial debut: something direct and impactful.” He continues by specifying that he has not “never seen a monster film in the genre (…) Relapse will be a “monster film with (its) emblematic characters – young, beautiful, rich – at the center. It will also be a personal film with my obsessions: sex, drugs and paranoia.” Nice program.

French production company SND has joined the project as producer, alongside Nostromo. No release date yet.