Carrie-Anne Moss's Baba Yaga series gets a film-festival world premiere, then makes you wait until 23 October
AMC+ has set a date for its witch-hunt horror-mystery led by Carrie-Anne Moss.
Right, so AMC+ are at it again with a new horror-mystery series—this time they're rolling out something genuinely offbeat called YAGA. And if you think that's an odd title, yes, it's a nod to the whole Baba Yaga legend, but don't expect bog-standard fairy-tale nonsense. Instead, they're going for a proper atmospheric thriller, anchored by Carrie-Anne Moss (yes, Trinity herself, looking moody as ever) and a peculiar dose of ancient folklore weirdness.
YAGA will have its streaming launch on 23 October, with a world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival on 17 September.
So here's the gist: before you can see it on telly, YAGA gets a world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival on 17 September. They're also carting footage off to New York Comic Con (9 October) for what they're calling a 'special panel' where presumably some behind-the-scenes awkwardness will be discussed.
The Set-Up
This one kicks off with Noah Reid (a familiar face if you watch Canadian stuff) playing Rapp, a private investigator flown into a bleak coastal town called Whittock. He gets chucked into the deep end straight off, tasked with tracking down a missing heir to some local fish empire. Typical detective drama? Not quite. The town's barely-functioning police force ropes in local detective Olivia, played by Clark Backo, as his helper. And in among it all is Carrie-Anne Moss as Katherine—a university professor who’s a bit too interested in her students, if we’re putting it mildly.
Plot-wise, things start where you’d expect (missing persons, bad coffee, frosty locals) and spiral into a “web of secret lives, ancient magic, and enigmatic suspects.” So yes, there’s a supernatural layer, but it’s grounded in contemporary drama, not kids-in-the-woods chanting nonsense. The script apparently borrows from the stage production by Kat Sandler—she’s writing, showrunning, and executive producing this version, so the fingerprints are all hers.
The Cast and Crew
- Carrie-Anne Moss as Katherine—the enigmatic professor
- Noah Reid as Rapp, the investigator dropped in from elsewhere
- Clark Backo as Olivia, the put-upon detective
- Hudson Williams as the missing person (yes, they’re listing the missing person in the actual cast)
- Supporting cast: Megan Follows, Hiro Kanagawa, Sheila McCarthy, Katharine Isabelle, Patrick Gilmore, Ezra Franky
- Kat Sandler doubles as executive producer and head writer
- Directed by David Frazee and Rachel Talalay, both with some serious telly pedigree
- Carrie-Anne Moss, Mackenzie Donaldson, and Andrew Miller on board as executive producers too
Judging from the sneak peek footage, there’s helicopters, gloomy sea views, and plenty of suspicious small-town types who clearly have something to hide. It’s very much in the vein of folk horror but wrapped up as a modern police procedural.
It’s an eight-episode run, dropping its first two episodes on AMC+ come 23 October. After that, you’re on a one-a-week drip feed every Friday, closing out with the final pair of episodes on 27 November.
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