The Big Picture
- The Bell Keeper is a horror movie that combines elements of true-crime documentaries and slasher subgenres, adding new possibilities to both genres.
- The film follows a group of friends who go to a haunted campsite to ring a cursed bell, only to realize that the legend may be true.
- Starring Randy Couture as the title character, the movie promises a suspenseful and frightening experience that delves into the secrets hidden at Bell Lake.
With the ever-growing popularity of true-crime documentaries, it’s not surprising to see that they are starting to become an important element of horror movies. The great thing about it is that it opens even more possibilities to both genres, and this is what happens in The Bell Keeper. The new horror movie is creeping up to theaters and VOD, and Screen Media allowed Collider to debut the trailer and reveal the premiere date: October 13.
For a while, the trailer for The Bell Keeper almost lets you forget that you’re preparing to watch a horror movie. It lays out the documentary aspects of the story, introduces each character’s role in the making of the film but, of course, you soon realize that there are some secrets hidden even before the horror part gets going.
Turns out the documentary is about a search for one of the filmmakers’ brother, who went missing in a remote place called Bell Lake. In true horror-movie fashion, the young group is warned not to go anywhere near the place, but no good documentary filmmaker would stray away from a good story. And it’s a good story indeed: Legend has it that the bell that stands in the lake is cursed, and you shouldn’t ring it. Again, not something a documentary filmmaker should be told.
In ‘The Bell Keeper,’ Randy Couture Makes Everyone Expendable
Ringing the bell introduces yet another element to the horror movie: The slasher subgenre. As legend goes, the curse comes in the form of a killer – the bell keeper – who will go on a killing spree and won’t rest until everyone involved in the ringing of the bell is dead. Now, the question is: Will the documentary crew debunk the creepy legend? Can this be some kind of far-fetched story to mask something else? We’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to find out.
In case you need further information to get hyped up, The Bell Keeper produced by the creators of Final Destination and directed by Colton Tran, who you might know as Reece from The Sex Lives of College Girls. The cast features Randy Couture (The Expendables film series) as the title character, as well as Kathleen Kenny (The Sex Lives of College Girls), Reid Miller (Joe Bell), Mike Manning (Days of Our Lives), Cathy Marks (The Young and the Restless) and Bonnie Aarons (The Nun). The screenplay is co-written by Joe Davison (South of Central) and Luke Genton (Snow Falls).
The Bell Keeper premieres in theaters and On Demand on October 13. You can watch the trailer below:
Check out the official synopsis here:
The film follows a group of friends travel to an allegedly haunted camp to do exactly what legend says not to do: ring a mysterious bell at midnight. According to the stories, if you ring the bell, a murderer named Hank (Randy Couture) will appear and kill everyone. This group’s plan to debunk the myth goes awry as they discover that the truth is far stranger – and far more frightening – than fiction.
