Making its world premiere next month at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, Italian director Giordano Giulivi’s new film The Laplace’s Demon is a haunted-house movie that’s comfortingly familiar and intriguingly odd at the same time. In the trailer for the film, premiering exclusively at The A.V. Club, we see a group of fearless adventurers enter a creepy estate for an “experiment” conducted by the mysterious Professor Cornelius. But as anyone who’s ever watched a scary movie knows, this is never a good idea, and the gang soon discovers that the entire house has been rigged into a giant mechanical game in which they are the pawns.
With its arch, faux-vintage aesthetic and Gothic storyline, “The Laplace’s Demon unfolds like an all-time great Twilight Zone episode directed by the three-headed offspring of Guy Maddin, Mario Bava, and Val Lewton,” as the festival puts it. Fans of all three will have to stay tuned, as it’s currently traveling the festival circuit.