Thanks to some clever reediting and, as always, the use of Joaquin Phoenix as a next-best-thing substitute, Dark Blood—River Phoenix's final film—will at last screen for an audience on September 27, when it premieres at the Netherlands Film Festival. As reported last October, Dutch director George Sluizer set out to finish the footage he'd been sitting on since 1993, when Phoenix died with only 11 days of shooting left. It appears as though he succeeded, as Dark Blood—in which Phoenix plays a mysterious hermit who holds two rich people hostage (Judy Davis and Jonathan Pryce) after their car breaks down in the desert—will now compete for the festival's Golden Calf award, while also making everyone sad about Phoenix's death all over again. It's not yet known specifically how Sluizer managed to fill in the gaps, though it's expected that he kept his original plans to have Joaquin provide some sound-sort-of-alike voiceover, and then maybe just did the rest of it Clutch Cargo-style.
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