Australian actors Eliza Scanlen and Toby Wallace are on board for John Michael McDonagh’s new project, Fear Is The Rider, an adaptation of Gabriel Bergmoser’s novel The Hunted, Deadline reports.
Leading the all-Australian project alongside them are Emmy winner Ben Mendelsohn and model-actress Abbey Lee. Also joining the impressive cast are Daniel Henshall, Brenton Thwaites, Thomas Turgoose, Rhys Wakefield, Shane Jacobson, Susie Porter, and Jacqui Purvis.
Fear Is The Rider follows “a lone woman, searching for her missing mother, who is pursued into the Australian Outback by a terrifying family of serial killers, with only an ex-con and a young girl willing to help her.” The film is intended as an ode to Ozploitation horror films from the 1970s.
Ozploitation films are exploitation films—a category of low-budget horror, comedy, sexploitation, and action films—made in Australia.
Eliza Scanlen recently starred in Caddo Lake, a sci-fi thriller featuring Dylan O’Brien and Scanlen as the lead actors, with M. Night Shyamalan producing. In Caddo Lake, Ellie (Scanlen) uncovers a time loop at Caddo Lake, revealing her stepsister is actually her grandmother, while Paris (O’Brien) learns that the girl he saved was his mother. Sounds crazy, right?
The last movie Toby Wallace appeared in was 2023’s The Bikeriders, but he has a few projects lined up for the future, including the Australian prison drama Inside with Guy Pearce and Ron Howard’s Eden with Jude Law. Currently, he’s busy filming the biopic The Last Days of John Allen Chau.
If all goes well, Fear Is The Rider will be the first movie in a planned trilogy. Filming for the first part is set to commence early next year.
BuzzPlayer 
