By Travis Johnson
The new thriller Happy Hunting, starring Australian actor Martin Dingle Wall (pictured), will play at ScreamFest in Los Angeles later this month. The film is the feature directing debut of Lucian “Louie” Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who co-directs with Joe Dietsch.
Here’s the synopsis: “Warren (Wall) is a degenerate drifter, scraping by, suffering from debilitating alcohol withdrawals on a daily basis. On his way down to Mexico, he finds himself stranded in Bedford Flats, a one-horse town nestled deep in the American desert. It was a once-prosperous hunting community that has been reduced to an impoverished dust bowl. Unfortunately for Warren, it turns out that the town’s pastime is rounding up drifters and hunting them as part of an elaborate sporting event. To make matters worse, he’ll go into alcoholic withdrawal unless he finds a way to stay intoxicated. It all builds to a blood-soaked, live-or-die showdown deep in the desert.”
When Wall spoke to us recently he alluded to the project, saying that the script was one of the strongest he’d seen. “When I signed onto the project, I read it, it was incredible on the page,” he told us. “You don’t have that experience day to day in Hollywood, where you read a script and you’re like, that just hums.”
The trailer promises a brutal, unflinching film, which is only underlined by the ironic use of “Shall We Gather at the River”, which astute cineastes will recognise from the opening bank robbery sequence in The Wild Bunch:
ScreamFest runs from October 8 – 27. For more info, hit up the official site.
