Prevenge Director Is Turning One Of Shakespeare’s Most Famous Comedies Into A Terrifying Horror Film

Alice Lowe is doing the thing I always hope more filmmakers will do: taking a classic everyone thinks they know and twisting the knife. The writer-director of the very dark, very funny Prevenge is turning William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into a horror movie. Yes, that Midsummer. The frothy one with the love potions. She wants to lean into how unsettling it actually is.

The pitch

"I wanted to make a classic and it struck me that Midsummer Night's Dream, which I know so well, is always made in the same way over and over," Lowe told Deadline. "It’s so genuinely funny. But also fey and fairies and blah blah blah. But I don’t see why it couldn’t be revisited with how terrifying and odd everything happens in it, and how the undercurrents are actually so dark and strange."

That tracks. The play is a comedy on the surface, but it is absolutely full of mind games, transformations, and trickster gods messing with people’s lives. Lowe will write and direct, and she is also planning to act in it — not as the lead, but in a key role.

Why this makes sense if you know her work

Lowe has a knack for mixing genre with a sharp, bitter wit. She wrote, directed, and starred in 2016's Prevenge, a slasher-comedy about a pregnant widow convinced her unborn child is urging her to commit murder. This year she followed it with Timestalker, a time-travelling rom-com. So, horror DNA plus playful tone plus big swings with form? A Midsummer horror take is right in her lane.

Quick refresher: what happens in Midsummer?

If your high school memories are fuzzy, this is the one where everyone wanders into the woods and chaos blooms. The play braids three storylines that crash into each other once the fairies get involved:

• The Duke of Athens is set to marry the Queen of the Amazons
• Four lovers get tangled in a very petty, very complicated love quadrangle
• A troupe of amateur actors rehearses a play

All roads lead to a forest ruled by fairies who decide to toy with the humans for their own amusement. It's light on paper, but pretty nightmarish if you tilt your head.

How it has been filmed before

There have been plenty of screen versions, with the most mainstream one arriving in 1999 — that cast included Christian Bale, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Stanley Tucci. Those takes lean into the romance and whimsy. Lowe wants the menace.

Status check

No release date yet. Lowe is writing, directing, and taking a significant (but not lead) role, and that’s what is locked for now. When there’s more — casting, timeline, how gnarly the fairy stuff gets — I’ll have it.