All eyes have been on Ana Lily Amirpour ever since she turned heads with her breakout picture “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” And for her followup, “The Bad Batch,” produced by Megan Ellison and Vice Films, the director has raised the stakes, rounding up an unlikely cast which includes Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, and Jim Carrey, and headed into a dusty, apocalyptic future.
“The Bad Batch” heads into a dystopian world, and follows a young woman wandering in exile, who is captured by cannibals, escapes, and finds herself with a different group of outcasts. And as these first two clips reveal, the film is going to be bringing some real attitude behind the camera (assisted by “Fish Paste” by Die Antwoord on the soundtrack) and carefully crafted intrigue. Here’s the TIFF synopsis for the movie:
A girl walks across a cannibal-infested desert at midday…. Ana Lily Amirpour’s highly anticipated follow-up to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night feints in the direction of sensationalistic horror — and, be forewarned, blood is spilled and limbs are hacked — but The Bad Batch, like Amirpour’s deliciously low-key debut, uses genre as a springboard for high style and social commentary.
The aforementioned girl (Suki Waterhouse) is one of thousands of Americans deemed unacceptable to civilized society. While wandering in her desert exile, she is captured by a community of cannibals. She manages to escape, soon ending up at a very different enclave of outcasts. Our heroine is safe here, but still does not quite feel that she has found her tribe.
On an excursion beyond the gates of her new shelter, she encounters one of her former cannibal captors (Jason Momoa), who ends up requiring her help. But can she do it without one of them getting slaughtered in the human-eat-human world where savagery is considered central to survival?
“The Bad Batch” will have its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and hits TIFF shortly after for its North American bow.