LOS ANGELES — The contained-outbreak movie is one of horror’s oldest pressure cookers, and “Deadlocked: Dad of the Dead” — which arrives for an exclusive premiere on Screamify July 1 — stakes its claim on the smallest pressure cooker of all: a public restroom. The first trailer, released this week, lays out the film’s economy of means with some confidence.
Written and directed by Casey Jackson, the picture follows Iverson (Derek Theler), an accountant who accompanies his daughter on a work errand that curdles into a full-blown zombie outbreak. Cornered, the pair shelter with a handful of strangers, and the film settles into the close-quarters dynamics — fear, friction, improvised courage — that the subgenre lives or dies on.
For Theler, best known to television audiences from “Baby Daddy,” the role is a notable step into indie horror, and the trailer frames him less as an action hero than as an ordinary man rebuilding his nerve in real time. It is a smart bit of casting against type for a story whose engine is parental fear rather than firepower.
The ensemble gives Jackson room to work. Eric Roberts — an Academy Award nominee whose filmography runs to hundreds of credits — lends the production its most recognizable name, while Hayley Law, Melissa Peterman and John Omohundro round out the strangers sharing Iverson’s very bad day. At 84 minutes, the film is built for momentum.
What distinguishes the project, on the evidence of the trailer, is tone. Jackson is steering a horror-comedy, mining the absurdity of catastrophe in a confined, unglamorous space without abandoning the stakes that make an outbreak frightening. It is a balance plenty of bigger films have fumbled.
Whether the execution matches the pitch will be clear soon enough. “Deadlocked: Dad of the Dead” begins streaming exclusively on Screamify July 1; the trailer is available now — link in bio.
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