Inspiration can be deadly like in Alexander McGregor Birrell’s indie thriller The Latent Image.
The film stars Joshua Tonks, William Tippery, and Jay Clift. It’s adapted from the director’s award winning short film of the same name ( It won him a best feature nomination at Miami’s OUTShine Film Festival.) . When gay novelist (Tonks) moves to a country house where he is confronted by a handsome stranger in need of help. The handsome stranger gives him inspiration, sexual interest and fear.
Thriller writer Ben (Joshua Tonks), struggling for inspiration, retreats to an isolated rural cabin to start on his latest novel and to escape the growing tension with his boyfriend Jamie (William Tippery.) Working late into the night, he wakes to find a wounded man in the cabin, claiming to be a hunter (Jay Clift) whose car had broken down nearby. Intrigued and attracted to the mysterious and handsome intruder, Ben decides to secretly use him as inspiration as the antagonist for his new book: a savage murder believed to have taken place in the very cabin he has rented. As the man begins to help him enact increasingly dangerous and detailed scenarios for the story’s captive protagonist, Ben becomes aroused by the prospects, but finds himself rebuffed by a homophobic slur. Searching the man’s car, he uncovers stolen property belonging to several other young men hinting he may be a serial killer, a perfect twist for Ben’s novel. Discovering his own car sabotaged, and unable to escape, Ben enters a lethal game of cat and mouse. But it’s only when the fate of Ben’s boyfriend Jamie is revealed that Ben’s dark, erotic, fantasy becomes a stark, inescapable, reality.
The Latent Image will be released in select UK cinemas, plus DVD and VOD Digital platforms from 8th October.
