The Big Picture
- There’s Something in the Barn is a holiday horror comedy set in rural Norway, where an American family encounters a malicious barn elf during Christmas.
- The film embraces the tradition of mixing horror and Christmas cheer, drawing inspiration from ’80s slasher films like Gremlins and recent Scandinavian horror Christmas films.
- The movie features a talented cast, including Martin Starr and Amrita Acharia, and is written by Aleksander Kirkwood Brown. It will be released internationally on November 10.
Holiday horror abounds in the new teaser for There’s Something in the Barn. The horror comedy from Magnus Martens (SAS: Red Notice) will premiere November 12. In the trailer, an American family, the Nordheims, move into a rustic farm in rural Norway. Their son (newcomer Townes Bunner) soon realizes that there’s something in the barn – a diminutive but malicious barn elf. And the barn elf doesn’t like it when things change, including the Nordheim’s Christmas decorations.
Can he save his clueless parents (Martin Starr, of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Party Down, and Amrita Acharia, of Game of Thrones and The Serpent Queen) before the barn elf wreaks his deadly, festive vengeance upon them? The film also stars Jeppe Beck Larsen (The Last Kingdom), Zoe Winther-Hansen (Catch and Release), and Kiran Shah (Andor). There’s Something in the Barn has been sold internationally, but does not yet have an American distributor; it will be released November 10.
Horror for the Holidays
The juxtaposition of the chill of horror and the cheer of Christmas has been a long-standing tradition in film, ever since 1974’s Canadian cult classic Black Christmas laid the groundwork for the entire slasher genre. The ’80s were a particularly fertile time for the genre, with slashers like Silent Night, Deadly Night, Christmas Evil, and Don’t Open till Christmas crowding VHS rental shelves There’s Something in the Barn‘s list of rules for dealing with barn elves, as seen in the trailer, hearkens back to one of finest ’80s films of the genre, Gremlins, in which special precautions must be taken with the adorable mogwai Gizmo to prevent the creation of the malicious title creatures. A recent entry in the genre, much like the Norwegian There’s Something in the Barn, also hails from Scandinavia: Finland’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale featured a monstrous, child-stealing Santa Claus. Other notable recent Yuletide screamers include Krampus, starring Starr’s Party Down co-star Adam Scott, and the Grinch-like The Mean One.
There’s Something in the Barn was written by Aleksander Kirkwood Brown. It was executive produced by Carole Baraton, Yohann Comte, and Pierre Mazars. Kjetil Omberg (who produced the Norwegian Nazi zombie horror comedies Dead Snow and Dead Snow 2, the latter of which also starred Starr and Acharia) and Jørgen Storm Rosenberg produced the film, while Aleksi Hyvärinen co-produced.
There’s Something in the Barn will be released internationally on November 10. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and watch the teaser below.
