NEW YORK — Following weeks of speculation, A24 announced the star-studded cast of its upcoming horror film would be joined by an esteemed, classically-trained senior actor in the role of Naked Old Guy Watching You From Treeline, sources report.
“I’m beyond excited to tackle the role,” said Cecil Newton, a 68 year-old actor with a degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, whose storied career spans three decades of not exploiting his naked body for jump scare value. “Some parts are just made for certain actors, or maybe it’s more accurate to say some actors are just made for certain parts. That’s how this feels to me. Can you imagine Forrest Gump without Tom Hanks? Lincoln without Daniel Day-Lewis? Half-Nude Girl Pissing Herself in Kitchen without Alexyss Spradlin? So yes, you could say Naked Old Guy was a bit of a dream role. You know, no one wanted me to do nude scenes when I was young, that kind of thing just wasn’t done in my Hollywood. But now that my body has succumbed to the natural wasting of time, senior actors like myself are a hot commodity in the horror genre. A lot of my peers have been stuck playing wise old inmates and grandparent characters who suffer a health scare halfway through the movie to remind the protagonist not to lose sight of what’s really important, but now they’re booking all kinds of horror roles! My friend Art just landed the part of Old Man in Hospital Gown Who Smiles to Reveal Rotten Teeth in a new NEON film, and my wife Paula wrapped filming yesterday for her third consecutive role of Naked Grandma Barely Visible in Door Frame (Uncredited). The breadth of work available is really astonishing.”
“If I’d known it was this easy, I would’ve gotten naked and stood silently in the background of the scene years ago,” continued Newton, who originated the role of Hamlet in a 1989 production by The National Theatre. “I’m no prude. If audiences want to scare themselves silly at the sight of a regular 68 year-old body, let them. I’m laughing all the way to the bank— which is where I work to supplement my meager income.”
Newton isn’t the first to recognize the rise of senior nudity in horror cinema, with several critics reportedly tracing the phenomenon back to “Hereditary,” “It Follows,” and earlier films like “The Shining.”
“Horror has been a haven for the subversive and grotesque since the genre’s inception, which makes this recent focus on naked old guys all the more curious,” said Hailey Duncan, a psychologist who pays for Letterboxd. “There’s nothing inherently scary about a flaccid penis or butt cheeks so saggy they moonlight as coattails. The feeling you get looking at that isn’t terror or some primal fear response like mice have with cats. It’s something else. In psychology, we actually have a technical term for it: yucky. It feels yucky, just like super icky. It provokes an immediate chemical response in your brain my peers have taken to calling ‘Eww Christ is that a dong? I don’t wanna see that.’ In the context of such a visceral reaction, it’s easy to see how naked old men and grandma skittering across the ceiling with her cheeks flapping like the twin buns of Tatooine are dominating the silver screen right now.”
Though notoriously tight-lipped when it came to details about the film’s plot, A24 did tease several familiar faces would appear in unexpected roles that were sure to delight theatergoers.
“We are thrilled to be working closely with our creative partners to bring this incredibly special project to life,” said an A24 representative. “There are no small parts in cinema, which is why we’re happy to announce we’ve assembled a dream team of on-screen talent to play roles we know horror audiences will love— including Ellen Burstyn as Vacant-Eyed Nursing Home Resident, Riley Keough as Nude Body Facedown in Lake, and Messi as Dog Eating a Corpse. We can’t wait to begin filming, and to share this wildly entertaining chiller with audiences around the world next year, assuming we remember to market it.”
At press time, A24 hinted that following the success of NEON’s “Longlegs,” it would be making use of innovative, bold new tactics to promote its upcoming film, an approach the company described as “two moody trailers explaining nothing and then hope for the best.”
