IFC Midnight has unveiled the first trailer for the horror film Carnage Park, and boy do things look unpleasant. The film comes from young, prolific filmmaker Mickey Keating (Pod, Darling) and revolves around a woman (Ashley Bell) in 1978 who finds herself taken hostage after a bank robbery goes wrong. However, when the woman and her two captors wind up on the desert outpost of a deranged ex-military sniper (Pat Healy), things go from bad to worse, and they find themselves caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

In her review of the film from its Sundance debut earlier this year, Collider’s own Perri Nemiroff hailed Carnage Park as “a stunning display of sheer brutality”, and brutal certainly appears to be the name of the game in this trailer, which brings to mind the grindhouse films of yore. Aesthetically, Keating strikes a sepia tone that sets the picture apart from the gritty and grimy look of many indie horror flicks these days, and I’m curious to see how his handle of tension and terror play out over the course of the film—if I can stomach it.


Check out the Carnage Park trailer below, and click here to watch Perri’s extended interview with Keating from SXSW earlier this year. The film also stars James Landry Hébert, Larry Fessenden, Michael Villar, Alan Ruck, Graham Skipper, Bob Bancroft, and Andy Greene. Carnage Park opens in theaters and VOD on July 1st.

Here’s the official synopsis for Carnage Park:

It’s 1978 and a bank robbery gone wrong leaves Vivian (The Last Exorcism’s Ashley Bell) the hostage of two criminals on the run. But things go from bad to off-the-rails berserk when she and her captors wind up on the sun-baked desert outpost of a deranged ex-military sniper (Pat Healy), who ensnares them in his deadly game of cat and mouse. Rising horror auteur Mickey Keating (PodDarling) directs this gritty, grisly homage to the glory days of grindhouse cinema.

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