A quick update for all of us looking forward to seeing Mary in the new A&E series The Returned: According to Twitter, tomorrow A&E will be at the winter TCA to present the upcoming show with some of the cast in attendance. Hopefully we’ll get a teaser trailer out of this! 🙂 *Fingers crossed.*
Also, Faults was among IndieWire‘s top ’25 best films of 2015 we’ve already seen’ list. Here’s what they said about the film:
“Faults”
Director: Riley Stearns
Cast: Leland Orser, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Beth Grant, Chris Ellis
Synopsis: A washed-up TV guru/cult expert decides to de-program a young girl from a cult called Faults, in order to pay off the remainder of his debt.
Verdict: Riley Stearns writes and directs his first feature like a man who’s been making compelling, darkly funny, and unpredictably twisted films for years. Films about cults tend to either veer towards undiluted horror (“The Wicker Man,” “Children of the Corn”), eerie drama (“Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “The Master”) or strict genre-fare (“Kill List”), so it’s a testament to Stearns’ talents that he manages such a formidable balancing act of a spooky genre story masquerading as a suburban drama of horrors. Crumbling societal values and power trips with identity make for some of the blackest humor we’ve seen recently, and with the underused Leland Orser absolutely ripping it in a spectacular lead performance, followed so closely by the excellent and instinctive Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Faults” is likely to end up as one of the year’s very top directorial debuts.
Our Review: Here’s William’s B grade review from SXSW
Release Date: March 6th
The Austin Chronicle also praised the film:
Sharing much of the cast with one of my favorite gonzo action/slasher hyrbids ever, The Guest, Faults could not be more tonally different. Leland Orser plays a washed-up cult deprogrammer named Ansel Roth, hired to get a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) back with her family. What quickly and disturbingly unfolds is not just a battle of wits, but a Beckett-meets-Mamet descent into interpersonal darkness. Orser gives one of the year’s best performances, while Winstead’s aura of blank innocence gives director Riley Stearns space to take the movies to incredibly dark places. As I wrote during SXSW, “Stearns’ graduation to the feature leagues may be the most quietly impressive since Craig Zobel opened up the Great World of Sound.”