A visual feast and a seductively stylized affair, “In Fabric” is a dark and demented fable from a visionary filmmaker and a groundbreaking film studio.
If you know me at all, you know I’ve been a huge fan of A24 for quite some time. The company, which specializes in film production and distribution, has been behind some of the best genre films of the past several years. Beginning with their first smaller release in 2013, A24 really start to gain widespread visibility with the release of one of my favorite films, The Witch, in 2016.
Since then, they’ve been behind some of the genre’s most thought provoking and groundbreaking films, including Climax, Hereditary, The Disaster Artist, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, A Ghost Story, It Comes At Night, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Green Room, and so many more.
A24 has been instrumental in helping elevate the status of horror, proving genre films can be both terrifying and exceptionally well crafted. They’ve helped reshape the perception of genre films in recent years and reinforced the idea that these films are as much of an art form deserving of respect and admiration as non-genre films.
At this point, all I have to do is see the A24 logo on a film’s marketing piece, and I’m immediately all in.
It’s become a beacon of films that challenge me, move me, make me think and feel — films almost guaranteed to deliver something perfectly strange and unforgettable.
I had the enormous pleasure of seeing one of A24’s latest genre masterpieces, In Fabric, at last year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin.
The film is about a lonely woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), recently separated from her husband, who visits a bewitching London department store in search of a dress that will transform her life. She’s fitted with a perfectly flattering, artery-red gown—which, in time, will come to unleash a malevolent curse and unstoppable evil, threatening everyone who comes into its path.
It’s as wonderfully weird as it sounds, unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
As you might expect from acclaimed horror director Peter Strickland (the singular auteur behind the sumptuous sadomasochistic romance The Duke of Burgundy and auditory giallo-homage Berberian Sound Studio), it’s undeniably a work of art. Ultra stylish and sumptuous to behold, it’s a rapturous orgy of vivid colors, sound, and textures that ooze off of every frame of the screen. It may be a purely visual experience, but it’s executed so well that you’d swear it’s a tactile one as well.
IN FABRIC is a demented and darkly humorous film that pays loving homage to the high-art, ultra-stylized giallo films of the 70s and 80s. It’s a surreal nightmare that is most effective, not for the story it tells, but for the way it makes you feel. Pure cinematic sensuality, it’s another triumph from the studio that’s become synonymous with the highly heralded renaissance of elevated horror.
Channeling voyeuristic fantasies of high fashion and bloodshed, In Fabric is Strickland’s most twisted and brilliantly original vision yet.
Check out the official trailer for the film from A24 below, which just dropped this week.
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