Mickey Keating’s DARLING, produced by Glass Eye Pix, starring Lauren Ashley Carter (JUG FACE, THE WOMAN, upcoming THE MIND’S EYE), will have its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest! Hollywood Reporter announced the news today, and the Fantastic Fest site has more details on the movie:

In DARLING, a young woman takes a seemingly simple job as the caretaker for an enormous, historical New York home. In fact, as she’s picking up the keys, the lady who hired her mentions that it’s the oldest home in New York. And with that age comes several stories… and then there was that incident with the caretaker. When the young woman asks what happened, the lady begrudgingly admits that the he committed suicide, but they don’t know why and “it’s nothing to worry about. Nothing like that could ever happen again.” With that, the woman is out the door, leaving the young lady with a check and the first pangs of anxiety about her latest career move. But with no other choice, she resigns herself to her decision, and starts to look around. She discovers an odd necklace with an upside down cross as well as a single locked door at the end of a short hallway. Both are strangely ominous, just like the odd noises she hears at night. When she finds herself frightened by an innocuous encounter with a man on the street, she starts to slowly spiral out of control.

Mickey Keating returns to Austin hot on the heels of the SXSW premiere of his film POD. Filmed in black and white with disorienting sequences of fast edits, DARLING feels nightmarish with a thick atmosphere of fear and apprehension that calls to mind elements of REPULSION. Lauren Ashley Carter, who fans will recognize from JUG FACE as well as POD, stars as the main character and perfectly portrays a descent into madness. Punctuated by heightened sound effects and a score that’s constantly evolving to drive the tension, DARLING is a dark, unsettling experience filled with dread and the constant threat of impending doom. (Luke Mullen)