“A Head Full Of Ghosts” has spent years in development, but the Paul G. Tremblay adaptation now seems firmly back on track. “The Pitt” breakout, Fiona Dourif is the newest addition to the cast, joining a film written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the Austrian horror duo behind “Goodnight Mommy,” “The Lodge,” and “The Devil’s Bath.”
Dourif joins an ensemble that already includes David Harbour, Rebecca Hall, Esmé Creed-Miles, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, and Hollie Hill-Pearson. Lionsgate boarded the project earlier this year, taking worldwide rights as the film moved toward production.
The setup remains nasty enough on its own. The Barrett family’s suburban life starts to unravel when their teenage daughter’s descent into madness becomes the subject of a reality show. Fifteen years later, her sister Merry is pulled back into the wreckage as a journalist tries to figure out what really happened—and whether anything supernatural was ever there at all.
The latest casting also gives the family shape. Hill-Pearson will play young Merry, while Creed-Miles plays her as an adult. Breathnach is set as Merry’s older sister Marjorie, and Dourif and Harbour are playing the parents. Hall is among the previously announced leads, though her role has not been detailed in the newest casting report.
Dourif is also arriving with a little more visibility than she had even a year ago. While she had already built a solid genre résumé through “Chucky” and “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency,” “The Pitt” gave her a bigger mainstream platform as Dr. Cassie McKay and seems to have widened her profile at exactly the right moment.
Behind the camera, the package makes sense for Franz and Fiala, whose work has long lived in that anxious space where family collapse and psychological horror bleed into each other. Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey are producing for Team Downey, with Fifth Season and The Allegiance Theater also backing the film.
No release date has been announced yet, but after a long stretch of false starts, “A Head Full Of Ghosts” finally looks like a real movie again.
