Skincrawl Studios has debuted a first glimpse at Chilean filmmaker Patricio Valladares’ supernatural horror feature “The Divine Comedy,” a modern re-telling of Dante’s “Inferno.”
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The Irish production and distribution shingle, which specializes in horror and adjacent genre movies, is handling worldwide sales on the film, which recently wrapped principal photography.
“The Divine Comedy” is a co-production between Italy’s Anxur Films and Skincrawl Limited. Alessandro Gatto produces for Anxur, with Corrado Camilla and screenwriter Loris Curci producing on behalf of Skincrawl.
Starring Christopher Rygh (“Vikings: Valhalla”), Matthew Metcalfe, Tilda Metsola and Fadhillah Othman, the film is a contemporary reimagining of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century narrative poem describing a journey into Hell.
Valladares directs from a screenplay by Curci (“The Ghosts of Monday,” “Havana Darkness”) that follows Dante, a grieving writer who descends into the realm of the dead in an attempt to bring back his deceased wife, Beatrice. Guided by Virgil, a former priest, he journeys through increasingly nightmarish circles of Hell, confronting supernatural entities and manifestations of guilt, desire and suffering.
“The challenge here was to turn Dante’s ‘Inferno’ into a visual experience,” Curci tells Variety. “We took into account only the Hell segment of ‘The Divine Comedy.’ Of course, given the context and the complexity of the epic poem, we tried to focus mainly on the relationship between Dante and Virgil, and their voyage to the very bowels of the Inferno. We also took the liberty of giving Beatrice a different, more dramatic role.”
Taking a cue from Dante himself, Curci also borrowed motifs from popular mythology.
“When writing the screenplay, I thought I’d use elements of the Greek tragedy. Dante populated his realms of Hell and Purgatory with figures, monsters and moral frameworks borrowed directly from classical Greek and Roman myths. He borrowed extensively from them, and then so did I. But our ‘Divine Comedy’ is after all a modern fantasy-horror film. It’s definitely the most ambitious film we’ve worked on at Skincrawl, albeit it’s small budget.”
Curci co-penned Skincrawl Studios’ recent thriller “The Sarajevo Murders” with Barry Keating (Valladares’ regular collaborator) and also directed the company’s upcoming “Island of the Minotaur.” He previously worked with Valladares on the director’s 2017 horror pic “Nightworld.”
“The Divine Comedy” marks Valladares’ latest international genre production following his recent works, “Invoking Yell” and “Invoking Scream,” both written with Keating. Earlier works include “Hidden in the Woods,” starring Michael Biehn (“Terminator,” “Tombstone”).
The 2023 found-footage horror feature “Invoking Yell” is currently available on AMC Networks’ horror streaming service Shudder in multiple territories. His latest film, “Invoking Scream,” recently bowed at FrightFest in London and is set to hit theaters in Chile next year.
Dublin-based Skincrawl Studios will present “The Divine Comedy” to international buyers at next month’s American Film Market and early next year at the Berlinale’s European Film Market.
“We’ll have a teaser-trailer ready for AFM and plan to have the film screened at the Berlin film market in February,” says Skincrawl’s Camilla. “From then on it’s doing as many festivals as possible. We’re fully aware that this is not your average horror movie, so we plan to reach out to all sorts of different markets, and see how they react.”
Among Skincrawl Studios’ other recent titles, “The Sarajevo Murders,” directed by Giorgio Bruno, about the disappearance of a documentary film crew in Bosnia, is distributed in the U.S. by Cleopatra Entertainment. “Island of the Minotaur,” currently in post-production, follows an archaeologist and his team who discover more than they bargained for after awakening an ancient and monstrous bull-headed creature deep in the bowels of a forbidden island.