Adam Mason Descends Into Madness With His New Horror Film The Ladder
British filmmaker Adam Mason has never been afraid to make audiences uncomfortable. Whether he is turning found footage into a nightmare in Hangman or making a pandemic thriller at the height of an actual pandemic with Songbird, Mason has built his career on stories that crawl under your skin and stay there. Now, he is going deeper — literally — with his next psychological horror film, The Ladder.
Announced by Deadline, The Ladder comes from A Higher Standard and Nickel City Pictures and follows Emma and her husband Clay, who move into a converted church in Ireland. Everything seems serene until they discover a mysterious hatch in the basement with a ladder that disappears into darkness. Emma, being the sort of protagonist who clearly has not seen a horror movie before, decides that the only logical next step is to find out what is at the bottom. Naturally, obsession follows, and so does danger.
The screenplay was written by Adam Mason and his long time creative partner Simon Boyes, who together have carved out a reputation for crafting smart, tense genre films that balance grounded psychology with full blown terror. The pair have collaborated for over two decades, with Mason directing and both sharing writing duties on projects that run the gamut from bleak thrillers to high concept horror.
Mason first made waves on the indie circuit with The Devil’s Chair in 2007, a brutal and surreal psychological horror that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was violent, stylish, and strange, setting the tone for what would become Mason’s signature approach: intense emotion, surreal imagery, and a fascination with characters who unravel in confined spaces. He followed it with Blood River (2009), another psychological descent into guilt and paranoia set in the Nevada desert, which established Mason as a director who thrives on tension more than spectacle.
In 2015, Mason directed Hangman, a found footage thriller starring Jeremy Sisto about a family who return home from vacation only to discover that someone has been secretly living inside their house. It was deeply unsettling, capturing the voyeuristic fear of being watched long before home security horror became a subgenre. The film was co written by Boyes and shot in a grim, documentary style that turned domestic safety into a nightmare.
Then came Songbird (2020), the controversial pandemic thriller produced by Michael Bay and starring KJ Apa and Sofia Carson. Set in a near future ravaged by a deadly virus, the film was shot during the early months of the COVID lockdown — one of the first productions to resume filming in Hollywood. While divisive, Songbird proved Mason’s ability to make bold choices under pressure, both thematically and logistically. It was part cautionary tale, part dystopian romance, and a fascinating experiment in filmmaking under extreme circumstances.
With The Ladder, Mason seems to be returning to his roots: claustrophobic horror with a psychological edge. The setting — a repurposed church in rural Ireland — is ripe for atmosphere, and the concept of a bottomless ladder is exactly the kind of slow burn terror Mason excels at. It combines his knack for psychological obsession with his visual skill at turning ordinary spaces into waking nightmares.
Producer Jeffrey Greenstein of A Higher Standard praised Mason and Boyes’ work, saying, “The market is in desperate need of compelling stories that stand out, and Mason and Boyes have done it again. The Ladder is tense and gripping, based on a legend that is scary enough alone and there’s no better person to bring it to life than Mason.”
Mark Fasano of Nickel City Pictures echoed that sentiment, adding, “Audiences are responding to horror films more than ever, but they have also gotten more sophisticated and more demanding in what they expect from a horror film. The script has to be intelligent, with compelling characters, shocking and terrifying all at the same time and Adam and Simon have hit it out of the park with The Ladder.”
The project is being produced by Fasano and Greenstein, with Matthew Goldberg serving as executive producer and Emily Hromin co producing for Nickel City Pictures.
With his past work already spanning festival horror, found footage nightmares, and apocalyptic thrillers, Mason’s latest project sounds like a perfect synthesis of everything he does best. It is confined, character driven, and just absurd enough to make you want to scream at the screen.
Whatever lies at the bottom of that ladder, we are betting it will not be salvation
