The Oldenburg Film Festival released a belated edition of its lineup, adding Ned Crowley’s film Drop dead To its official selection the film will have its world premiere at Oldenburg, Germany’s leading independent film festival.
The high-concept horror-thriller, according to the film’s promotional materials, follows a group of eight strangers who “board a freight elevator and find themselves trapped in a escalating life-and-death predicament that ultimately reveals that they are all bound together in a sinister, supernatural, or even biblical nightmare.”
The low-budget feature is Crowley’s follow-up to his superhero western Killing faith (2025) starring Guy Pearce, DeWanda Wise, and Bill Pullman, which was a major streaming success, reaching #2 on HBO Max’s global movie charts and reaching #1 in several territories, including Argentina and Brazil.
Killing faith It got a boost from fan Stephen King, who, shortly after its premiere at Beyond Fest, posted a review on X, calling it a “quasi-supernatural Western with echoes of Cormac McCarthy.” King ranked it as one of his favorite films of the year.
to Drop deadCrowley said he decided to move away from “sweeping landscapes and first-rate actors” to “create something equally compelling within the confines of a closed, claustrophobic 15-foot steel box, driven by the performances of relatively unknown actors.”
“drop dead”
Ned Crowley
The film features an ensemble cast including Melissa Neal, Daniel Adeosun, Victor Rivera, Christina Tam, Alexandra Kitt, Roger Ajogbe, John O’Mahony, and Elijah Kraft.
Drop Dead is Crowley’s third film as a director after Killing Faith and his 2016 debut Middle Man, a crime comedy starring Jim O’Hare, Andrew J. West and Josh McDermitt.
33Third The Oldenburg International Film Festival takes place from September 16 to 20.
