Matthew Holness's movie debut, Possum, to be released next month

Horror chiller from the Garth Marenghi creator

Possum, the big-screen directorial debut of Garth Marenghi creator Matthew Holness, is to be hit cinemas on October 26, it has been announced.

The horror film, set in a desolate Norfolk landscape, will have a limited release in fewer than 25 screens – including the annual FilmFear festival in Manchester.

And there will be an advance screening at Bristol’s Encounters festival at 9pm next Friday, September 28, at the Watershed

The film stars Mission: Impossible actor Sean Harris as Philip, a troubled children’s puppeteer who is forced to face up to his wicked stepfather, played by acting veteran Alun Armstrong, and the ‘dark and surreal secrets that have tortured him his entire life’.

As Philip deals with his past, he also has to face up to Possum, the hideous hand puppet he keeps in a black leather case. According to the film’s publicity blurb, ‘he finds escaping the will of Possum is as hard as dealing with his demons’.

Possum received its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival earlier this summer, when the Hollywood Reporter described it as a ‘clammily grim homage to low budget British nasties of the early seventies’ adding: ‘At heart is a serious and dark journey into the labyrinths of cruelty and abuse.’

And the US premiere takes place at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 12.

Holness also wrote the screenplay for the film, based on a short story he penned for the 2008 anthology The New Uncanny.

Possum will be screened at Home in Manchester at 6.20pm on October 30, followed by a Q&A session with Holness and a signing of the anthology.

Comedian Toby Hadoke will also be at FilmFear to introduce a 'listening event’ for The Road – a lost 1963 TV play from writer Nigel Kneale that the stand-up has adapted for Radio 4.

It stars Mark Gatiss and Adrian Scarborough as a philosopher and scientist investigating ghostly outbreaks in a country wood in 1768, with a supporting cast that also includes Hattie Morahan, Colin McFarlane, Susan Wokoma, Francis Magee and Ralph Ineson.

The drama will be played at Home at 2.30pm on October 27, free to anyone attending another FilmFear screening, ahead of its radio broadcast later that day.