After The Substance, Margaret Qualley Is Going For Scream Queen Status With Another Horror Flick
If you’ve stomached The Substance, or any of the few other 2024 movies she’s been part of, you know how exciting of a talent Margaret Qualley is to Hollywood. After the 30-year-old pulled off one of the most terrifying movies that’s even giving the biggest horror fans on our staff nightmares, Qualley is staying close to the genre for another movie.
Margaret Qualley is one of those actors with famous parents, considering her mother is Andie MacDowell, but she’s going a different route as her career keeps getting bigger and bigger. The latest movie she’s signed on for is called Victorian Psycho, and per Deadline, it will have Qualley playing a governess with psychopathic tendencies.
The movie is set to be directed by Sanctuary’s Zachary Wigon (which Qualley was also in), and it involves one of the producers of another one of 2024’s best horror movies, Longlegs. Victorian Psycho will take place in the year 1858, with Margaret Qualley playing a character named Winifred Notty. The governess’ story starts when she begins working at a remote gothic manor called Ensor House.
While completing her duties to help out the house’s children with their education, other staff members of the manor begin to mysteriously disappear. Winifred becomes a suspect, and it sounds like she might be a palpable one.
Upon the announcement of the film, Margaret Qualley shared that the opportunity feels like a “rare gift” for her as an actress, while her director said he is “beyond thrilled” to be working with the actress once more for Victorian Psycho. Wigon called the character of Winifred a “complex antihero” and the script by Virginia Feito “an audacious blend of psychodrama, satire, gore and mystery”. Count us in!
The latest of upcoming horror movies is set to start filming in March 2025, though it does not have a release date yet on the calendar to go with it. Qualley’s latest role comes after the actress having a sneaky big year, though mostly with more under-the-radar films. She started the year by teaming up with Ethan Coen for Drive Away Dolls before starring in her second Yorgos Lanthimos movie after Poor Things, and we gave the movie a near-perfect score in our Kinds Of Kindness review.
That brings Qualley to her latest critically acclaimed film, The Substance, which won Best Screenplay at Cannes. Given how good The Substance is, we wouldn’t mind if Qualley stuck with the horror movie route, because she’s quickly earning herself the title of Scream Queen among other horror darlings of recent years, like Anya Taylor-Joy, Mia Goth, Maika Monroe, Samara Weaving and Jenna Ortega.
If you want to see The Substance, the movie is set to start streaming on Mubi on Halloween. Happy screaming!
