Shelley Duvall (The Shining) is gearing up to get back to screens by means of The Forest Hills — an indie horror-thriller from writer-director Scott Goldberg, which denotes her first project in 20 years.
Likewise featuring Edward Furlong, Chiko Mendez and Dee Wallace, The Forest Hills follows an upset man who is tortured by nightmarish visions, subsequent to persevering through head trauma while setting up camp in the Catskill Mountains. Duvall will play the mother of the mentally and emotionally disturbed Rico (Mendez), who serves as his inner voice.
Scott Hansen is producing the pic close by Dreznick Goldberg Productions and Digital Thunderdome Studios, with Goldberg serving as co-producer.
“We are huge fans of The Shining and it’s honestly one of my favorite horror movies of all time, up there with John Carpenter’s Halloween and George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead with the dark tones they delivered in their movies, along with perfect scores and elements that make them my personal favorites,” said Goldberg. “Shelley contributed to The Shining being an absolute masterpiece by giving her all, and performing in a way that really showcased the fear and horror of a mother in isolation.”
DuVall is an actress, writer and producer known for her collaborations with everybody from Robert Altman and Woody Allen to Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam and Steven Soderbergh. The screen icon is most popular for her work on the film side on classic titles including Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Thieves Like Us, Nashville, Annie Hall, Three Women, The Shining, Popeye, Time Bandits, Roxanne and The Portrait of a Lady. She’s been honored over the course over her career with a Peabody Award, the Cannes Film Festival’s prize for Best Actress, two Emmy nominations and a BAFTA nom, among numerous different honors.
Her work in The Shining has been the subject of much conversation over the years.
The actress told Deadline’s sister publication in The Hollywood Reporter in 2021 that playing a woman whose husband is gradually unraveling during their isolated time as caretakers at a snowed-in hotel took its toll. She was expected to cry virtually every day over the course of the 56-week shoot.
That’s what duvall said, “after a while, your body rebels. It says: ‘Stop doing this to me. I don’t want to cry every day.’ And sometimes just that thought alone would make me cry. To wake up on a Monday morning, so early, and realize that you had to cry all day because it was scheduled — I would just start crying.”
Found out if Kubrick, as reputed, was purposely savage to her to upgrade her preformance, the actress told THR, “He’s got that streak in him. He definitely has that. But I think mostly because people have been that way to him at some time in the past.”
DuVall last showed up close by Shirley Jones, Cloris Leachman and Louise Fletcher in the 2002 comedy Manna from Heaven, declaring her retirement that same year. The actress reemerged in November of 2016, after numerous years out of the spotlight, in an interview with Dr. Phil on his equivalent name talk show, in which she focused on her battles with mental illness, exclaiming, “I am very sick. I need help.” The segment broadly saw as exploitative of Duvall immediately became a lightning rod, with everybody from Kubrick’s daughter Vivian to Mia Farrow and Patton Oswalt taking both the talk show host and his program to task. “McCABE & MRS. MILLER, THIEVES LIKE US, THE SHINING, 3 WOMEN, ROXANNE (et al),” wrote the latter actor and comedian on Twitter at the time. “Shelley Duvall deserves respect, not exploitation.”
It’s unclear whether Duvall is working with any delegates at this time.