Sundance 2023: Scares, Streamers and Sideshows

Published 03 February 2023

Author
Brynn Valentine
3 min read

Having been hosted online for the past two years, the Sundance Film Festival returned in-person to Park City, Utah (January 19-29). Horror dominated as the genre worth watching, global streaming services gathered to secure costly acquisitions, and at an adjacent festival, small-scale productions won plaudits for showcasing alternative approaches to film financing. 

  • Horror Wave: Australian directors and twin brothers Daniel and Michael Philippou were previously known for garnering 1.15 billion views on their horror-comedy YouTube channel RackaRacka. Now, their debut feature, Talk to Me, has secured the perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and has been picked up by A24 for a high seven-figure deal. The film follows a young girl who gets mixed up in conjuring spirits in the hope of hearing from her late mother.

    The rehabilitation of horror as a powerful player in mainstream cinema became widely noticeable last year and is set to shape the film scene in 2023. Audiences are responding to the genre’s ability to explore lingering fears sparked by the shifting social world, from the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology (M3gan) to the complicated nuances of political language, archly explored in Bodies Bodies Bodies. Moreover, horror is big business: psychological horror film Smile surpassed $100m in the first two weeks of its release, due in part to the wildfire-like spread of discussion across social media – on TikTok alone, #SmileMovie has reached 629.7 million combined views.

    Netflix cemented the significance of the fear factor by buying two horror films: Fair Play for $20m and Run Rabbit Run for a reported $16m.
  • Secured for Streaming: Irish director and screenwriter John Carney (famous for his previous cinematic hits Once and Sing Street) returned with the comedy-drama Flora and Son, starring Eve Hewson (daughter of Bono) and American actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film was perfect for an in-person screening, which provided the social space for a roaring audience response, with viewers reported to be singing and clapping along to the closing credits.

    The audience reception at festivals like Sundance has long acted as a barometer for measuring a movie’s potential success. Yet many of these films are not destined for the big screen. Amazon and Apple quickly entered a bidding war for rights for Flora and Son. Apple emerged triumphant, securing global rights for $20m. In contrast, Searchlight Pictures obtained the highest purchase among cinematic distributors – Theater Camp for $8m – far behind streaming services’ acquisition price points.
  • Peripheral Players: Running concurrently with Sundance, the Slamdance Film Festival was first established in 1995 as an alternative space to refocus on the celebration of small-scale independent filmmakers. This year, American writer and director Wendy McColmreleased Fuzzy Head, most notable for using blockchain-powered crowdfunding platform Untold to subsidise its production. McColm’s community-based approach was in pointed contrast to the ever-present and growing grand acquisitions at the Sundance Film Festival, offering a vision of democratised alternative methods for content creators and fan engagement.

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