Premiering at Fantastic Fest 2025
FANTASTIC FEST SCREENINGS:
Sunday, September 21 around 5 pm CT (timing TBC)
Tuesday, September 23 around 11 pm CT (timing TBC)
Attendees:
Director/Co-writer Glenn McQuaid, Co-writer Clay McLeod Chapman and cast including Chris Colfer and Alice Krige (schedules pending) and Gabriela Garcia Vargas, Declan Reynolds and Matthew McMahon
SYNOPSIS
Uneasy expectations shake the foundations of Grayson Manor.
Boyd Grayson and his mother, Jacqueline, reluctantly share their sprawling family estate, a mansion that feels more like a gilded cage than a home. When an accident leaves Boyd handless and helpless, Jacqueline spares no expense, converting an entire wing of the house into a state-of-the-art recovery ward. But beneath her generosity lies a single expectation: an heir to continue the Grayson legacy. Boyd, however, has other plans. Welcome to the standoff between mother and son.
Now under Jacqueline’s care, Boyd becomes the first patient in history to pilot a radical new technology: prosthetic hands powered entirely by his subconscious.
But as Jacqueline’s Gothic fortress is transformed with state-of-the-art machinery, so too is Boyd. Tempers flare, tantrums erupt, and Boyd begins to explore the potential of his new hands, hands that, in the service of a sound and rational mind, would be perfectly harmless. But Boyd has never been accused of being sound, or rational.
Chris Colfer stars as Boyd, whose appetite for sex, drugs, and gentlemen callers are all-too-common blots upon the family name, with Alice Krige as Jacqueline, a matriarch determined to rebuild her son at any cost. Add to the mix disembodied hands that lash out with Boyd’s most primal impulses, a decaying estate echoing with barbed arguments, and a gallery of characters as despicable as they are magnetic.
Directed by Glenn McQuaid and co-written with Clay McLeod Chapman, The Restoration at Grayson Manor embraces Gothic melodrama with fearless sincerity and a razor-sharp eye. Heightened melodrama, soap-operatic theatrics, and a love of twisted familial genre fare collide in this subversive play on the killer-hand subgenre.
Directed by:
Glenn McQuaid (I Sell the Dead)
Written by:
Clay McLeod Chapman (Ghost Eaters: A Novel)
Glenn McQuaid
Starring:
Chris Colfer (Glee, Struck by Lightning)
Alice Krige (Thor: The Dark World, Star Trek: First Contact)
Daniel Adegboyega (Skyfall, 6 Underground)
Declan Reynolds (Sunphlowers, Puffball: The Devil’s Eyeball)
Gabriela Garcia Vargas (Pagan Peak, Barcelona Crime)
Matthew McMahon (The Rainmaker, Redemption)
Running Time:
90 Minutes
