Maika Monroe

Maika Monroe (birthname: Dillon Monroe Buckley) dislikes being typecast as a “scream queen” in horror movies and with good reason since she has displayed considerable range in a long roster of movies by writer-director filmmakers regularly premiering at the world’s top festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Toronto and top U.S. festivals Sundance, Telluride and South by Southwest.

Monroe’s feature debut was in director/writer/producer Ramin Bahrani’s drama, At Any Price (2012), with Dennis Quaid, Zac Efron, Kim Dickens, and Heather Graham, and premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival (as well as Telluride and Toronto) and released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Monroe next worked with another major American indie filmmaker, Sofia Coppola, in a small role in the true crime The Bling Ring (2013), with Israel Broussard, Katie Chang, Emma Watson, Taissa Farmiga, and Leslie Mann, premiering in the Cannes film festival’s Un Certain Regard competition and scoring $20 million global gross via several distributors including A24.

Monroe had a significant supporting role in director-writer Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s novel, Labor Day (2013), starring Kate Winslet, Josh Brolin, Gattlin Griffith, Tobey Maguire, Clark Gregg, and J.K. Simmons, and released by Paramount Pictures after premiering at the Telluride film festival.

Maika Monroe had her first starring role in the Adam Wingard-directed The Guest (2014), co-starring Dan Stevens, and premiering at the Sundance to good reviews but opening to weak box office by distributor Picturehouse. Monroe’s breakout performance happened with her second starring role in director/writer/producer David Robert Mitchell’s acclaimed horror movie, It Follows (2014), which became a cult hit ($23.3 million global returns on $1.3 million costs) for distributor RADIUS-TWC after premiering at the Cannes film festival.

Monroe co-starred with James Badge Dale, Ethan Embry, William Forsythe, and Owen Teague in director/writer/producer Kane Senes’ Western, Echoes of War (2015), released in AMC Theatres by Echo Bridge Entertainment. Monroe stepped aboard the Columbia Pictures/Sony Releasing sci-fi movie, The 5^th Wave (2016), starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Maria Bello, and Liev Schreiber under J Blakeson’s direction, grossing $110 million.

Maika Monroe stayed in sci-fi mode as part of the cast of the Roland Emmerich-directed sequel for 20^th Century Fox, Independence Day: Resurgence (2016), starring Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Judd Hirsch, but which proved to be a box-office failure turning a gross of $389.7 million (against $165 million costs).

Monroe returned to indie moves as co-star of director-writer Elijah Bynum’s coming-of-age crime drama, Hot Summer Nights (2017), co-starring Timothee Chalamet, Alex Roe, William Fichtner, and Thomas Jane, and premiering at the South by Southwest film festival before an A24 theatrical release, followed at this time by other little-seen indie movies The Scent of Rain and Lightning (2017), Bokeh (2017), I’m Not Here (2017), The Tribes of Palos Verdes (2017), and After Everything (2018), starring Jeremy Allen White.

Monroe played opposite Liam Neeson and Diane Lane in the Ridley Scott-produced political drama directed and written by Peter Landesman, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House (2017), with Marton Csokas, Ike Barinholtz, Tony Goldwyn, Bruce Greenwood, Michael C. Hall, Brian D’Arcy James, Josh Lucas, and Eddie Marsan, and which premiered at the Toronto film festival before a $4.4 million Sony Pictures Classics release.

Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan cast Monroe in his psychological thriller, Greta (2018), with Isabelle Huppert, Chloe Grace Moretz, Colm Feore, and Stephen Rea, and released to an $18.7 million global return via distributor Focus Features after a Toronto film festival premiere. Maika Monroe joined the ensemble of the boisterous indie movie, Honey Boy (2019), directed by Alma Har’el from star Shia LaBeouf’s autobiographical screenplay, with Lucas Hedges, Noah Jupe, FKA twigs, and Natasha Lyonne, and released by Amazon Studios after a Sundance film festival premiere.

Monroe returned to the horror genre as co-star of filmmaking partners Dan Berk’s and Robert Olsen’s black comedy, Villains (2019), co-starring Bill Skarsgård, Blake Baumgartner, Jeffrey Donovan, and Kyra Sedgwick, and released after a South by Southwest premiere by Gunpowder & Sky, followed by Monroe co-starring with Matthias Schoenaerts, Joel Kinnaman, and Ryan Phillippe in director-writer Jeremie Guez’s U.S.-France-Belgium-Netherlands co-production, Brothers by Blood (2020).

Monroe appeared in the casts of more indie films such as Canadian writer-director Christopher MacBride’s mystery, Flashback (2020); as a star of director-writer Chloe Okuno’s thriller, Watcher (2022), premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and released by IFC Midnight/Shudder Films. As co-star with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Jamie Foxx in director-writer Nick Cassavetes’ thriller, God is a Bullet (2023), released by Wayward Entertainment.

Monroe then starred with Nicolas Cage (also producer) in director-writer Osgood Perkins’ serial killer horror movie, Longlegs (2024), with Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Michelle Choi-Lee, and Dakota Daulby, and distributed by Neon in the U.S. and Black Bear International in rest-of-world.

Maika Monroe played twin sisters in the Maxime Giroux-directed and Canadian-produced crime thriller, In Cold Light (date to be announced), with Troy Kotsur, Allan Hawco, Jesse Irving, and Helen Hunt, followed by Monroe reviving her role in It Follows in the sequel, They Follow (date to be announced), directed and written by David Robert Mitchell.