
Movies & TV

Share
18th November 2025
09:43am GMT

Brides, the new and starry vampire movie from on-the-rise writer-director Chloe Okuno (Watcher), has just gotten a very exciting update from an Irish actress.
Co. Down performer Valene Kane (The Fall) recently spoke to JOE about her excellent new Channel 4 mystery series Summerwater (check out our review of the show and our interview with the actress here).
On top of Summerwater, Kane will also be appearing in Brides, alongside Olivia Cooke (House of the Dragon), Harry Lawtey (Industry), Jodie Turner-Smith (Tron: Ares) and Burn Gorman (Watcher).
The plot synopsis for the horror thriller movie reads:
"In 1961, Sally Bishop (Cooke, who replaced Watcher actress Maika Monroe in the lead role after she dropped out) and her husband vacation to Northern Italy, where they get stranded at a remote villa run by the enigmatic Vova (Lawtey), who presides over a household of beautiful, deathless women and their caretaker.
"As Sally becomes entangled in their world of seduction, violence and illusion, she begins to lose her grip on time and self as her own dark transformation unfolds."
Okuno's debut feature film, Watcher, is one of our favourite thrillers of the decade.
As such, we felt compelled to ask Kane about her experiences working with the writer-director on her follow-up.
While the Co. Down actress obviously couldn't reveal too much about the project, she did provide us with some tantalising details.
Kane revealed that she had only wrapped on Brides the day before we spoke with her.
Praising Okuno as "amazing", she said about the horror thriller:
"I can't [talk too much about it], honestly, because they've got another three weeks left.
"[Okuno's] amazing, Olivia Cooke is a dream, Benji [Benjamin Kirk Nielsen], the DOP [Director of Photography], is a genius. What he's shooting is spectacular.
"I think it's going to be really special. It's kind of fantastical and eerie.
"It's quite different to Watcher. It's a vampire film, so it's obviously much more fantastical. Watcher was very much rooted in reality. But it has Burn [Gorman] again, which is so cool.
"Yeah, I think it's going to be special... but [Okuno's] incredible. She's just a beautiful, beautiful human being, and I think she's super talented."
Brides is filming in Budapest, Hungary. It does not have a release date as of yet.
Kane's new thriller series Summerwater, meanwhile, is available to stream on Channel 4's website in its entirety right now.
Explore more on these topics: