EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off Resident Evil, which is now Zach Cregger’s highest-grossing film at over $280M worldwide, Paul Walter Hauser has inked to star in Garden City, a new crime drama from Magenta Light Studios.

Based on a true story. the film is written and directed by Chappaquiddick‘s John Curran. Production kicks off in Atlanta in January.

Garden City follows Dan Day (Walter Hauser), a quiet resident of Garden City, Kansas, whose life becomes unexpectedly entangled in a plot targeting the city’s Somali Muslim community. As the threat unfolds, the lives of those at the center of the thwarted attack begin to intersect, revealing a community grappling with fear, prejudice, identity and belonging. What begins as an isolated act ultimately becomes a deeply human story about the people caught on opposite sides of a growing divide — and the choices they make when their community is put at risk.

Curran said, “I wrote the role of Dan with Paul in mind, and his commitment to the project and contributions to the script have been invaluable. I’m especially thrilled to be working with Bob Yari and his team again, who share our passion for this timely story.”

Magenta Light’s Yari and Amanda Harvey are producing alongside Walter Hauser, as well as Alex Gayner and Matt Cooper.

Yari commented, “GARDEN CITY is the kind of story that stays with you because it is rooted in real people and events, while also speaking to larger questions about community, human connection and the choices that shape our lives. I’ve had the opportunity to work with John before, and I’ve always admired his ability to approach layered stories. He has created a thoughtful and compelling screenplay, and Paul Walter Hauser has an extraordinary ability to bring depth, nuance and emotional complexity to his characters. We look forward to seeing John’s vision for the film brought to the screen.”

Walter Hauser plays Paul, an Umbrella Corporation scientist, in Cregger’s Resident Evil. Upcoming, the Emmy winner will be seen starring in Scooby-Doo: Origins for Netflix, as well as films including Deep Eddy, The Very Best People, Tommy Karate and Turpentine. He is repped by WME, Artists First and Schreck Rose.

Best known for directing the political drama Chappaquiddick, starring Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy, Curran has more recently worked with Clarke on his Apple series The Last Frontier. Also behind films like Tracks, The Painted Veil and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, he is repped by CAA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.

Magenta Light Studios is behind titles like Strange Darling, the lauded cat-and-mouse thriller from JT Mollner, and Renny Harlin’s Deep Water. This Friday, they take to theaters with James McAvoy’s directorial debut, California Schemin’. Other upcoming titles include Bharat Nalluri’s Flavia de Luce: Girl Detective, in theaters December 4, and Francesca Gregorini’s Anna Nicole Smith flick Hurricanna, out January 8.

First reactions finally in for Other Mommy, and some are pretty scary for Universal.

The horror movie isn’t having official U.S. critics screenings until the last minute, with previews held tonight in New York and Los Angeles before the film opens Friday. But some international influencers, awards bloggers, and a few credentialed Rotten Tomatoes critics have seen the film, and are offering their hot takes.

Despite a killer teaser trailer that had audiences jumping in their seats, the Blumhouse/Atomic Monster production is getting roasted by some members of a crowd that typically skews positive. The film stars Jessica Chastain in a dual role as a mother whose daughter (Arabella Olivia Clark) is being haunted by a demonic entity. The film is based on Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House and directed by Rob Savage (Host). The director had rather surprisingly bragged that the film features around 50 jump scares, which works out to around one every two minutes.

Regardless, Other Mommy is expected to lead the weekend’s box office, opening to an estimated $20 million.

Here are some of the early reactions to the film, which does have a few enthusiastic fans in the mix as well.

The Jam Report: “By the time Other Mommy staggered towards its ludicrous finale, the audience at my screening had abandoned any pretense of fear and erupted into laughter … An excruciating parade of ineffective jump scares, woeful CGI, and increasingly nonsensical storytelling, Other Mommy is comfortably among the most disappointing horror films of the year. It had transformed a promising supernatural premise into an unintentionally hilarious endurance test, all while remaining blissfully unaware of its own absurdity.”

The Matinee Show: “Solid creepy premise, but it definitely starts to lose its grip. Some genuinely unsettling moments, mixed with a few ‘okay… what the hell are we doing?’ moments. Not bad, just messier than scary 3/5.”

Global Box Office: “Other Mommy is a hot mess and Jessica Chastain’s worst movie in a long time. The direction is sloppy, the score is unremarkable, and not even Chastain can save such a terrible screenplay … What should be a straightforward premise is bogged down by cheap melodrama and repetitive, failed jump scares.”

Goldwin Reviews: “Other Mommy is like a buffet of all the other horror movies rolled into one. It can get overwhelming, but that excess becomes part of a meaningful experience. Eventually, it becomes a feast for the soul that yearns for horror with substance. The film isn’t content with settling into just one form. It has many layers, constantly reinventing itself. 4/5.”

The AU Review: “Savage demonstrates an obvious enthusiasm for constructing elaborate sequences that play with perspective, physical space and the vulnerability of a child’s imagination. But while the technical ambition is evident, the storytelling rarely matches it … even Chastain’s considerable talents can only do so much with material that doesn’t offer her character enough depth beyond her unsettling appearance. What begins with the promise of something genuinely nightmarish gradually deteriorates into a disappointingly conventional, occasionally laughable supernatural exercise.”

Sean Kelly on Movies: “#OtherMommy is a film that I initially feared peaked during its pre credit sequence, i.e. the scene from the first trailer, but director Rob Savage delivers a demonic supernatural horror film that’s a mashup of everything from The Grudge to IT to Insidious … While the film is the definition of critic-proof, given how it’s tracking to top the box office, I’m still puzzled why Universal opted not to screen the film for critics and I had to luck out on a +1 to an advanced screening.”

Screen Space: “Ponderously paced, over-directed with gimmicky flourishes and confusing in its half-baked message, Other Mommy wants to be ‘elevated horror’ but stumbles trying to climb above the better films it’s seeking to be … There’s an extended sequence that rips off Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist and some realm displacement nonsense that doesn’t make sense, on the way to an embarrassingly overwrought ending.”

Additional critic reviews for Other Mommy will begin to roll in this evening, with the movie opening in theaters tomorrow.