Despite a level of violence that has proved controversial within the context of the Sundance Film Festival, IFC Films has purchased Michael Winterbottom’s new film The Killer Inside Me, and will distribute the film within the United States. (Check out David’s review of the film.)

No release date has been set for the film, though in the company’s press release about the deal IFC Entertainment President Jonathan Sehring said, “We are incredibly excited to be working with Michael and Andrew Eaton again and we look forward to bringing this film to America via our theatrical and video-on-demand platforms.”

Based on the novel by Jim Thompson, the film stars Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, a small-town sheriff’s deputy within whom a dark, violent instinct has awakened. The controversy around the film arose due in particular to two graphic killings, and we don’t yet know if IFC will request any edits to those sequences, or indeed to the film as a whole. (You can get some idea of the tone of the film here.) The company did release Lars Von Trier’s violent and controversial Antichrist uncut, so there’s reason to expect we’ll see a version of The Killer Inside Me very similar to the one that played Sundance. [Screen Daily]