Any time Ben Wheatley makes a movie, it has our full
attention. And he has a new movie coming, and it’s finished, and has a title,
and a premiere date, and there are some new details. It’s called Happy
New Year, Colin Burstead and now we know some things about it.
Thinking of arthouse powerhouse A24, what comes to mind?
Deft, off-kilter indie dramas? Unusual coming-of-age tales? Prestige horror? Odds are,
when you think of A24 and their output, you probably don’t immediately go to
gritty Muay Thai prison dramas. Well, with the release of Jean-Stephane
Sauvaire’s A Prayer Before Dawn, that line of thinking
certainly has to change.
A24’s A Prayer Before Dawn has been one
of my most-anticipated movies since I heard it was happening. It has Muay Thai,
tells an insane true-life story, and was partially filmed in notorious Thai
prisons using real prisoners. All that sets my movie spider sense a-tingling. And
a new U.K. trailer has me marking off days on my calendar and contemplating
buying a plane ticket.
A real-life story of drug addiction, prison, and Muay Thai.
You bet your ass I’ve been tracking A Prayer Before Dawn
since I first heard about it. There hasn’t been a ton to follow—it debuted at
Cannes back in May, but even though it garnered positive reviews, it didn’t
make a huge splash. But A24—not necessarily the company I expected to drop a
Muay Thai prison movie in my lap—rectified that with this new trailer and it
looks like everything I hoped it would be.
