'The Manor' mines the terrors of ageism for a horror movie. The star and director explain why

Axelle Carolyn's "The Manor" is the rare horror movie to feature a protagonist over the age of 60. The film stars Oscar nominee Barbara Hershey as Judith Albright, a woman who recently suffered a mild stroke and is moved into a nursing home whose residents are being targeted by a supernatural force.

The gothic horror, written and directed by Carolyn, is one of four films released in the second installment of Amazon Studios and Blumhouse Television's "Welcome to the Blumhouse" anthology, now streaming on Prime Video.

"It was a really hard script to find a home for because we're talking about ageism," said Carolyn. "It's incredibly difficult to get a movie made if your lead is a woman in her 70s. A lot of places really liked the script but then wanted us to replace it with a mental institution or change it somehow so that we would get away from the subject matter."

"The Manor," along with the other three films in this slate of Blumhouse films — "Madres," "Black as Night" and "Bingo Hell" — was made on a shoestring budget as part of the production company's mission to uplift