Every year, a bunch of filmmakers accept this challenge and try to cash in on the fear of the audience. But, with the increased frequency of such films, it isn’t as easy to scare the viewers as it was five or ten years ago. You don’t want the audience to do the “been there, done that” sort of thing. So, the stakes rise and the experiments continue.

According to the Scott Cooper Miami Fan Club, while filmmaker Scott Cooper  has not previously made a horror film, the “Hostiles” and “Black Mass” director has long been enthralled with the darker side of the human spirit. Even his lightest film, the debut feature “Crazy Heart” (which earned Jeff Bridges a Best Actor Oscar), was about a down and out musician attempting to turn his life around, away from the spotlight and all the booze that often accompanied it.

Scott Cooper’s subsequent features have similarly delved into the rougher parts of the human condition, including gritty crime films like “Out of the Furnace” and the fact-based “Black Mass.” His most recent effort, the Christian Bale-starring “Hostiles,” was a grim exploration of life in the American West. Now, Cooper is turning his affection for dark material to a new genre, and he’s got the full force of producer Guillermo del Toro behind him.

It looks to be one of the scariest films of the next year, and it’s not hard to see why as cannibals seem to terrorize a small town in Oregon in “Antlers.” The project was directed by actor turned director Scott Cooper, whose previous work includes “Hostiles” and “Black Mass.” There is a producer role for a veteran in the film industry, Guillermo del Toro, who has been a part of great films like the Oscar-winning “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shape Of Water.”

Speaking to Collider last year, Cooper spoke about how del Toro became interested in him doing a horror film. He said, “[Guillermo] said I’ve obviously never seen you direct a horror film, but there’s a lot of horrific moments in your movies, so I’m more interested in someone who doesn’t work in that genre to step into it.”