Netflix Acquires Aaron Burns’ Horror MADRE

Netflix acquired the global streaming rights Aaron Burns’ psychological thriller, Madre. This creepy horror flick is the second project for Burns as a feature director.

The story follows Diana Prieto, a four-month pregnant mother of a severely autistic boy, who is overwhelm due to her husband’s constant work travel which leaves her alone. She hires a gifted Filipino care giver to help her. While her son’s behavior begins to quickly improve under Luz’s supervision, Diana starts to fear that he’s only being taught to speak Filipino and that Luz is using the language barrier and voodoo to turn her son into something sinister.

Chilean actress Daniela Ramírez (La Poseída, Los Archivos del Cardenal) stars as Diana, Aida Jabolin as Luz, and Matías Bassi as Diana’s son. Burns directs from his own original screenplay.

Madre is produced by Nicolás Lopez and Miguel Aseniso Llamas. It is also the first feature film for Purgatorio, a new genre production label within Sobras International Pictures which will focus on horror content for mainstream audiences “using the best of the extensive and rich Latin American folklore.”

The deal was struck prior to Madre‘s debut at SXSW this year. Burns’ Blacktino also premiered at SXSW in 2011. He has appeared in Eli Roth’s The Green Inferno and Keanu Reeves’ Knock, Knock and worked on visual effects for Grindhouse and Machete.

In an interview with Larry Heath from The Iris, Burns discussed his approach to writing a horror film:

In order to enter into the genre and be honest about it I had to come at it from a position of what scares me. In order to make something creepy for other people I had to see what scares me so that I could do it honestly and do it to its fullest.

When asked about his career plans now that he has added directing to his resume, Burns replied:

I have no plans to stop working crew. I dig working crew, I love it. I love working with my people and shooting movies, being camera operator, and just like always being up on the latest trends in tech, and all kinds of stuff like that…At the same time, I really do like directing. Anytime that a project comes about, and in this case it was Miguel and Lopez always making fun of me for being like oh, you’re a fake director, you keep on saying I’m such a great writer, blah blah blah, oh, where’s your script, when are you going to do your next movie, and they ribbed me for like a year and a half. I’m just like man, you guys are jerks, man.

Netflix will stream Madre exclusively by the end of 2017.

Check out the trailer below, if you do not have a phobia of bugs and/or ears…