The TV Addict 

In my continued attempts to talk every single one of you into checking out TRANSSIBERIAN by one of my “>favorite directors, Brad Anderson, and starring my inaugural Hollywood Crush (Kata Mara), I now present you the films’ one-sheet. I mean look at it. Could a film that results in such a great poster really be bad? Of course not. Mark your calendars, folks: July 18th.

This trailer further fuels my anticipation of the fall release of TRANSSIBERIAN, the latest film from one of my favorite directors, and one I strongly encouraged everyone to check out: Brad Anderson. Admittedly the film doesn’t seem like it carves entirely new territory, especially since there seems to be more than a bit of a Hitchcock influence here with both a “wrong man/woman” situation going on, as well as some heavy echoes of THE LADY VANISHES. Regardless, it seems like it’ll be an effective little claustrophobic thriller, and Anderson has more than earned the benefit of the doubt with me.

There’s a good chance a lot of may not have heard of director (and often writer), Brad Anderson. A precursory glance at his filmography will reveal big gaps between his projects, and few films that were ever really high-profile flicks that garnered a lot of attention. Probably the most recognizable one is THE MACHINIST, which was best known for Christian Bale’s haunting performance, but especially the extreme amount of weight he lost for the role. However, with news that his new film TRANSIBERIAN (which sounds uncannily like Alfred Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES) was recently picked up by First Look Pictures, I thought this might be a good chance to encourage y’all to track down some of his other films.
I’ve been a fan of Brad Anderson ever since I stumbled across his film SESSION 9 (2001), which remains one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen because it employs the most effective (at least for me) means of eliciting horror: atmosphere. In that respect it has a good starting point, as it takes places in an old mental institution that was abandoned in the 1980s and was known for its experimental and often violent treatments (not excluding lobotomies). The film follows a clean-up crew hired to remove hazardous materials from the gigantic building within a challenging deadline of one week. As the men do their work the atmosphere of this enormous, gothic building begins to take its hold, both on the viewer and the stressed workers. Of course what makes it even worse is when one of the team members stumbles across old recordings of psychiatric sessions with a severely disturbed patient. Soon enough strange things start to happen. If you think you know – based on all the horror films you’ve seen recently – that you know where this is going, I can almost assure you that you don’t.

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