From psychological thrillers to prestige drama, actor Mia Vallet (Believe) has built a career on bringing depth to complex characters. Now, she’s diving headfirst into the shadows for her latest role in Recluse. It’s a dark, twisted family reunion from hell that just celebrated its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The film marks the feature directorial debut of Henry Chaisson. He’s the wonderfully warped mind behind the screenplay for Antlers and Apple TV+’s “Servant.” If that pedigree isn’t enough to get your skin crawling, Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity, Insidious) is serving as Executive Producer via his genre label, Spooky Pictures.
A Psychological Breakdown
If you like your family dramas served with a side of generational trauma and black magic, Recluse will be your new obsession.
Joan (Sasha Frolova, The Empty Man) is an audio engineer who literally spends her life hiding behind headphones. A sudden phone call from her estranged, ailing father sends her home. He’s a renowned artist who—according to the local gossip column—spent his free time casually dabbling in the occult. Joan must swap her audio board for a ticket back to her family’s country estate.
Once inside, the ambient noise of the old house turns sinister. Joan begins unearthing a malevolent secret that has been gestating in the floorboards for decades. They force her to figure out if the terrifying phenomena are a direct result of her dad’s occult misdeeds… or just her own unraveling mind.
A Certified Genre Cast
To bring this claustrophobic nightmare to life, Chaisson has assembled an incredible lineup of genre royalty. Xander Berkeley (Candyman, The Walking Dead) and Toby Poser (interview), the brilliant multi-hyphenate force behind the indie witch masterpiece Hellbender, also star.
In the film, Mia Vallet plays Emily, the even-tempered, patient live-in nurse tasked with caring for Joan’s father after his accident. Because the estate radiates pure, unfiltered bad energy. Tension builds as dark, long-held secrets surface, throwing the lives of everyone in the home into shocking chaos.
Don’t let her polite nurse uniform in Recluse fool you; Vallet knows her way around a psychological mind-meld. She previously starred in the trippy sci-fi series “Believe.” Since then, she’s spent her career bouncing between sleek thrillers and indie darlings. In fact, she previously starred in Human Resource, proving she was already well accustomed to breathing the uniquely unsettling air of the Chaisson creative ecosystem long before Recluse came knocking.
Fresh off its Tribeca debut, Recluse’s release date has yet to be announced, but we’ll let you know the second the shadows whisper a date to us. In the meantime, watch the interview with Mai Vallet below.
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