Fan-favorite horror director Scott Derrickson has joined forces again with his Doctor Strange, Sinister, and The Black Phoneco-writer C. Robert Cargill for a new horror project — this time with the king of Indonesian horror cinema, Timo Tjahjanto.
Derrickson teased the new project on Twitter today with a screenshot from Tjahjanto’s Instagram. The teaser image featured a very intentionally placed skull emoji censoring out part of the film’s official title and a snake emoji blocking out the end of a year referenced for a title card. Of course, film fans are doing what they do best, and Derrickson’s replies are now a speculatory frenzy of excitement.
pic.twitter.com/rMdxWLegEf
— N O S ? ? I ? ? ? ? ? ? O ? S (@scottderrickson) July 23, 2021
This announcement marks the sixth collaboration between Derrickson and Cargill, but the introduction of Timo Tjahjanto makes the evocative title page description all the more intriguing: a future world filled with crime and violence but a unified continent of Asia. For the uninitiated, Tjahjanto’s films are a masterclass in cinematic brutality.
Who is Timo Tjahjanto?
Mainstream audiences likely had their first introduction to Tjahjanto with his standout short films “L is for Libido” in The ABCs of Deathand the horrific “Safe Haven” as part of V/H/S/2, both shorts almost universally agreed upon as some of the strongest entries in each anthology. However, fans of Asian cinema are likely familiar with Tjahjanto’s rich career as both an independent filmmaker and as part of the Mo Brothers with longtime collaborator Kimo Stamboel.
In 2016, the duo were nominated for Best Director for the brutal action film Headshot at the Citra Awards, Indonesia’s equivalent to the Oscars. Considering our Oscars barely acknowledge horror and high-action films even exist, the fact that the Mo Brothers were nominated for Best Director for a bloodbath of a movie starring The Raid‘s Iko Uwais is electrifying.
Fortunately, thanks to Netflix’s continued deliverance of popular Asian cinema, Tjahjanto’s films May The Devil Take You, The Night Comes For Us, and Headshot have become some of the most popular foreign offerings on the site. Just last February, Tjahjanto was announced as the director for the upcoming remake of Train to Busan, produced by James Wan and, while no one on the planet was looking for a remake of a pretty dang close to perfect film, if anyone can do it, it’s Timo Tjahjanto.
The combination of Derrickson, Cargill, and Tjahjanto is a dream team of horror creativity, and this announcement is exciting, even though a legion of horror fans are now going to spend the entire weekend turning into Charlie Day’s “Pepe Silvia” It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphiameme. As of publication, no one has been able to correctly guess the title of the film, so if you think you’re the one to crack the code, Derrickson has promised he will privately message whoever figures it out.
Even Cargill cannot guess correctly pic.twitter.com/MsWj1e0DIh
— N O S ? ? I ? ? ? ? ? ? O ? S (@scottderrickson) July 23, 2021
Good luck, though.
Regardless of the outcome, audiences are the true winners today.
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