British Horror ‘Rise of the Rats,’ Dark-Web Chess Thriller ‘The Rules of the Game’ Head to AFM With Black Mandala, Red Owl (EXCLUSIVE)

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Killer rats overrun a village in British horror “Rise of the Rats,” one of eight genre titles that New Zealand sales company Black Mandala and its Red Owl label are taking to the American Film Market (AFM).

Black Mandala is handling four of the films, while Red Owl is bringing four independent features. Between them, the slate covers horror, psychological thriller, supernatural and dark fantasy.

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Directed by Stephen Roach, “Rise of the Rats” follows Kayla Thornhill, a punk who travels with the father she is estranged from to Ditchfield, the village where he grew up. The infestation there turns out to conceal something worse, old violence and village secrets resurface, and a figure known as the Rat-Man sets a bloodthirsty swarm loose, leaving Kayla fighting to survive. Grace Gallagher, Adrian Annis and Mark Collier star.

Black Mandala is also handling Remington Smith’s “Landlord,” which plays out over a hot summer in a run-down apartment block. A Black bounty hunter who has come to retrieve a stolen briefcase ends up having to shield a young boy, Alex, from the white vampire who owns the building and so has no need to be invited in. Once the vampire has killed Alex’s mother, the pair team up to take on him and the humans who work for him. Adama Abramson, Cohen James Cooper and William McKinney lead the cast.

Myles McEwen and Ripley Stevens co-direct “Haunted,” set in One Season, a remote Australian town hit by a fierce storm and an event nobody can explain on Oct. 19, 2003. Four years later, local teenagers start going missing, and a recluse whose house is slated for demolition is forced to leave his solitary life behind as a supernatural force pursues him. He has to face a hidden truth connected to the town’s trauma and to who he really is. David Daradan, Joseph Baronio and Nathaniel Kelly star.

Rounding out the Black Mandala titles is Oliver Hollingdale’s dark fantasy “The Realm of Eldervin: Gallowmere,” which Variety previously reported the company had acquired. A strange illness caused by dark magic has struck Gallowmere, a village in the woods of Eldervin, and Jonas the Mage puts together a band made up of Dagon, Nimue and Solomon to trace its origin. Their quest pulls them into a bleak world where a second chance always comes at a cost. Martin Portlock and Craig Standen star, with Jason Flemyng (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) providing voiceover narration.

On the Red Owl side, Lani Castle and Jon Cohen’s psychological thriller “The Rules of the Game” centers on Evie, a gifted chess player who is abducted along with her sister, who has a chronic illness, and forced into a lethal game streamed on the dark web. She and seven other prisoners each stand in for a chess piece, and any piece that is taken is killed. Evie is the only one who knows how the game works, and she has to make agonizing calls as the others turn on one another. Lola Merewether, Gezel Bardossi and Alyson Rudlin star.

Chad Costen’s horror-comedy “Mister Sandman” sees a group of onetime summer camp outcasts reunite at a deserted camp to dig into a ghost story they all recall. Each of them, working through grief’s five stages, must face a personal fear that surfaces as a nightmarish vision linked to an old trauma. Elodie Doumenc, Justine Warrington and Amy King star.

Daniel Lerch’s “Saturnalia,” a homage to Italian giallo, is set in 1979. After her parents die in mysterious circumstances, Miriam Basconi is enrolled at Alstroemerias Academy, an elite school run by the cruel Headmistress Hemlock, where pupils disappear after dark and strange men lurk. Her investigation uncovers a surreal hidden world inside the school, where dreams and waking life have started to blur. Sophia Anthony, Velvet and Dante Blake star.

Tim Connery’s anthology “The Driftless” draws on the folklore of the American Midwest. An enigmatic antique dealer introduces four stories: cults along the Mississippi River, a musician and a bottle of liquor that carries a curse, a motel pool attendant who recovers objects that alter time and a woman who takes bloody revenge after death. Ira Amyx, Torrey Hanson and Justin Marxen star.

Black Mandala has built an international profile as a sales outfit devoted to horror and genre fare, and Red Owl extends that remit to independent titles with distinctive premises. Teams from both banners plan to meet buyers, distributors, platforms and festivals at AFM.