Eleven years ago Richard Kelly blew us all away with his startlingly brilliant debut DONNIE DARKO, but it’s fair to say the writer/director has pretty much failed to deliver since on that early promise.

While 2006’s SOUTHLAND TALES teemed with impressive ideas, so much so that 3 prequel graphic novels and a two & a half hour running time couldn’t contain them, the overall result was a muddled mess. THE BOX, his third movie, took the magnificent Richard Matheson short story BUTTON, BUTTON and ruined it by indulging in his go-to obsessions, something that his screenplays for DOMINO and HOLES suffered from too.

It will be interesting to see whether or not Kelly can claw back that early respect with his next, CORPUS CHRISTI, a futuristic tale of an ex Iraqi soldier suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome in the titular Texas town. Variety reports that DOMINO co-star Edgar Ramirez has signed on for the lead role, with Robert Rodriguez on board as producer.

Ramirez

With any luck Kelly can restrain himself from creating another film so impenetrable that it requires us to read a series of comic books just to enjoy it, but it’s almost surely going to involve the apocalypse in some way.

We’ll have more on this as it develops…

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