‘Brash, gutsy, morbidly funny’: Critics react to horror movie inspired by Jeffrey Epstein
Titled The Scary of Sixty-First, the low-budget film is the directorial debut from Dasha Nekrasova
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Critics are impressed with a new indie horror movie about the crimes of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which hit the industry-only Berlin Film Festival on Tuesday (2 March).
Titled The Scary of Sixty-First, the low-budget film is the directorial debut from Dasha Nekrasova, who co-hosts the popular podcast The Red Scare with Anna Khachiyan.
The film focuses on two young women who find what The Los Angeles Times calls a “suspiciously affordable, gauchely lavish apartment” on New York City's Upper East Side and come to learn that it was previously owned by the convicted sex offender who died in August 2019 while in custody on federal sex-trafficking charges.
“I made a horror movie because it is a horrifying thing,” Nekrasova told The Los Angeles Times about her film, which is currently looking for distribution.
Meanwhile, Variety called the movie “a brash, gutsy, morbidly funny first feature” that "turn(s) enough heads with its button-pushing, of-the-moment fury and no-sacred-cows satire”.
READ MORE: Ghislaine Maxwell ‘physically abused by prison guard’
In her interview with The Los Angeles Times, Nekrasova, 30, spoke about how she personally knew one of Epstein's victims.
“I went with her to the court date they had after his death where they invited the victims to sort of say what they would say if they had their day in court, basically. So I did feel a kind of closeness to it. It’s not that it’s funny to me, even though the proliferating kind of QAnon conspiracies are interesting and amusing.
“I felt very, very grounded in the real kind of horror of it. And in that way, making a psychological horror movie feels truer to me than a lot of the documentaries that have come out. I think making an indie movie that deals with things in a genre-y way gets to a deeper truth about it than something like a documentary would.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments