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A hypnotic TV commercial for a local department store beckons — summons, really — shoppers for what amounts to a culturally mandatory annual winter sales event. It’s an ad that’s not unlike the ones for Silver Shamrock in “Halloween III: Season of The Witch,” and in “In Fabric,” it succeeds in the same way, bringing in unhappy bank employee Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) to look for a first-date dress.

She finds the Ambassadorial Function Dress, color: Artery Red. It’s an alluring garment summed up in the store’s catalog with hyperbolic copy like “body sensual, captivating, candlelight glances, canapé conversations.” Not really Sheila’s size, it somehow fits her perfectly. And though she protests that she normally wouldn’t wear something so bold, the commandingly seductive saleswoman, Miss Luckmoore, doubles down: “Daring eclipses the dark circumference of caution.” There’s really no arguing with that.

Naturally, the dress is haunted.

After a long and successful run on the festival circuit, Peter Strickland’s In Fabric is finally headed to theaters this Friday, and onto VOD and Digital platforms December 10th, courtesy of A24. The story of In Fabric is centered around a haunted dress and how its influence condemns everyone that it comes in contact with. The film stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Gwendoline Christie, Hayley Squires, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, and Jaygann Ayeh.

Daily Dead recently had the opportunity to speak with Strickland about In Fabric, and he discussed why it was important to use a straightforward approach to the material, the design of the malevolent dress at the center of his story, and the parallels between In Fabric and 2012’s Berberian Sound Studio.

I would love to talk about the idea of In Fabric, because I feel like the concept, if it was in different hands, it could have been treated as a joke,...

Last night Old Billingsgate in London played host to the 22nd annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), the yearly celebration of some of the most unique voices in film. It was a pleasure to be on the red carpet and talk to the likes of Asa Butterfield, Sam Adewunmi, Jessie Buckley and Armando Iannucci, and you can find all of our interviews below the list of winners announced on the night.

The phenomenal documentary For Sama won four awards including Best British Independent Film, while Armando Iannucci’s festival favourite The Personal History of David Copperfield took home five. A sadly-absent Renée Zellweger won Best Actress for her portrayal of Judy Garland, while The Last Tree’s Ruthxjiah Bellenea won the Best Supporting Actress award. Currently seen in Netflix’s The Crown as Prince Charles, Josh O’Connor won Best Actor.

There’s a full list of the winners from the...

Good news for those who are (or will be) disappointed that Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” riff is a rebuke to the florid stylings of Dario Argento’s original: “The Duke of Burgundy” writer-director Peter Strickland is back with another mordantly funny and unapologetically fetishistic homage to vintage Euro-horror, and there’s no disguising its dark lineage. Unfolding like the giallo remake of “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” that you never knew you always wanted, “In Fabric” tells the bloody story of a department store in Southern England, and the cursed red dress that fits perfectly on the women who have the misfortune of wearing it.

As much of a loving ode to the transformative power of fine clothing as it is a cheeky condemnation of the consumerism that drives people to buy it, Strickland’s long-awaited new delight might lack the cohesion of his previous film, but “In Fabric...

The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel is pleased to welcome the elegant and sophisticated pianistsinger, Ms. Jo Thompson, for its new Second Act, A Late Night Series of Fun and Entertainment at the Cafe Carlyle from March 21st-23rd, and March 28th and 30th. Ms. Thompson, a timeless, knockout beauty of 80 plus years, plays piano and vamps, purrs and romps her way through jazz and standards from the 1930s through the present, along with her own original material in her new program, 'Slender, Tender and Tall - An Evening With Ms. Jo Thompson'. She will be joined by bassist, Calvin Hill, and drummer, Mike Campenni.