It’s no surprise that Jennifer Lynch is smart and enjoys discussing the darker side of life but she is also disarmingly jolly considering that her credits include Boxing Helena and Surveillance.

Myriad Pictures is selling international rights to her new thriller Chained at AFM. The project is in post after a brisk summer shoot in the Canadian locale of Regina, Saskatchewan.

“It’s about how monsters are made,” says Lynch (pictured on the set of Chained), hair dyed pink and sipping an iced coffee at the Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica over the weekend [Nov 4]. “It’s a genuine Frankenstein story about how violence on a child [can create] violence in an adult.”

Vincent D’Onofrio plays a serial killer who kidnaps a boy and holds on to him for 10 years in a twisted effort to teach the youngster his evil ways. The boy is played by Evan Bird in his younger years, morphing in the later years into Eamon Farren, who won the role after a Skype audition from his native Australia.

Lynch cannot lavish enough praise on the youngsters. Of D’Onofrio she says: “He explained to everyone that his job as a performer was to make it scary and his job as a human being was to make it safe and comfortable for everyone.”

And what of her famous father, David? “He’s a wonderful father and very supportive,” says Lynch. “His very best advice to me has always been, ‘Jenno, it’s about common sense.’” 

Paramount-based Envison Media Arts financed the project and Envision partners David Buelow and Lee Nelson produced with Rhonda Baker. Anchor Bay Films has US rights.

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