We slowly pan back through a bedroom into a bathroom where a young woman sits, on the floor, bawling her eyes out: yes, Deepfake (2026) starts with a relationship breakdown, and the distressed dumpee Jane (Jessica DiGiovanni) is soon doing everything she can to rehabilitate her self-image and social standing, even if that largely seems to mean dating again as soon as possible. We shouldn’t be too surprised by this: as a woman in her thirties, Jane is currently surrounded by nesting couples, baby showers and concerned questions about her welfare. Oh, and her ex is already posting on Instagram; there are pictures of him with someone new. She’s devastated, but how Jane copes with this is an issue. Early on, there are clues that she’s perhaps not being honest with herself, or anyone else. The dating profile spiel she practices again and again as a kind of voiceover changes every time; she clearly wants to please, and will amend her own thoughts and ideas to do it. That’s key for everything which follows in this light-touch, but nicely-realised pastiche on modern, online living.
After a brief but turbid phase of only looking up from her phone to chin large glasses of alcohol, Jane hits on an idea and no, it isn’t to stop drinking. It’s to use an online service called BFFers, to hire a new friend who will, presumably, listen to her list of woes without judgement. If this is a means of getting out of her rut, then it’s soon made apparent that Jane rather likes her rut, but new BFF Zoe (Sophia Lucia Parola) – who is at the more expensive end of the spectrum of available BFFs – is good at what she does, listening patiently to Jane’s self pity/baseless plans for a fresh start. The hired help really comes into her own, though, when Jane declares that she wants to reinvent herself from the ground up; there’s also a website for that. Zoe hooks Jane up with the site, which hands over control of one’s fresh start to a media company, ready to shape her persona, online and offline, into something more palatable. More fashionable.
Before she knows it, Jane is letting in TikTok sensation London (Jocelyn Weisman), plus a team of photographers and SEO experts who essentially occupy her apartment, forcing more and more content from ‘Jane’, but essentially fictionalising a much cooler version of Jane whenever they see fit. This is a new world of snippy affirmations, endless hashtags, content generation and facetuning, and so it goes on. Jane may have had some inkling of social media and how to use it beforehand, even if just to wind herself up by looking at how great other people are doing, but this is a whole different dimension, and it’s not too long before she is almost entirely sidelined. This section of the film is funny, but perhaps it does get bogged down here by two things: continuing to add to the list of apps, campaigns and userhandles which the film is sending up, and Jane’s surprisingly lengthy torpor, where she seemingly accepts – albeit with a scowl – what is happening to her. But if the point here is the bizarre separation which is now possible between a managed online persona and real life, then that point is made; even without a grand reclamation, the film has meaning, offering something recognisable without handing over the easy comfort of full closure.
It’s good to see all of this focusing on a woman in her thirties for a change, actually, rather than (as we often assume) a teenager, but it’s worth remembering that teenagers have never known anything different than this online existence. Slightly older people probably struggle more to navigate an older version of reality vis-à-vis what we have now, and we see that quite clearly with Jane, whose flashbacks to the time she spent with much-missed ex Tyler (Nick Cabot Roderiguez) offer the film’s only real moments of recognisable, relaxed normality. And yet, even she is somewhat seduced by all the likes and clicks; dopamine is a hell of a drug. She is a likeable mess, inhabiting all the requisite modern outlets for self-humiliation with warmth and a plausible nerviness. DiGiovanni’s no slouch when it comes to physical humour, either, although the film never heads outright into pratfalls or similar. A facial expression, or even an abortive photoshoot will do the trick.
Deepfake is essentially a modern take on the doppelganger motif and it could oh-so easily have been framed as a horror or a thriller. Several films have taken that exact approach, and a fair few of them have found their way to this website, which does tend to focus on darker subject matter and its on-screen treatment. However, there’s plenty to laugh at, even if it’s a rather knowing laugh, and perhaps we should be laughing at least a little bit; comedy is a decent fit and a suitable genre choice here. Deepfake boasts a kind of bubblegum-hued picaresque approach, with some satirical aspects (and even some sad plot points) but few lessons learned, just a sense of someone surviving – or just about surviving – the experience of living life online. There’s also some ethics to consider and some surreal touches to ponder, and whilst these don’t offer any essential, stony-faced life lessons, the film as a whole offers a fun and engaging look at how (some) people live now.
Deepfake (2026) featured as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Backrooms (2026) is another of those break-out indie horror films from a young director unburdened by the weight of a legacy, whilst still benefitting from the ever-growing wealth of horror cinema which operates like its own microculture, cross-pollinating titles, genres, ideas and styles. Alongside Obsession, it picks up its cues from a pre-existing webseries and its determined cult following – this is a new means of developing immersive fandom which didn’t exist twenty years ago – using these to build something more expansive as a feature-length. However, I don’t think you necessarily need extensive knowledge of the webseries which prompted Backrooms; at least, as someone unfamiliar with anything which came before the feature-length film, it didn’t feel like I was missing out on a wealth of prior understanding by being unfamiliar with what had come before – this puts you on the same level as the film’s characters, after all. Prior understanding is in short supply in the world of the film, and any moments of epiphany are hard-won. Treated as a standalone horror film, albeit one which feels ever more modern, even uncomfortably close via its colonisation of the 90s nostalgia which has now replaced the 80s as the technology of the uncanny, Backrooms works across the great universals of human alienation: part mystery, part existential horror, its spaces seem open only to those already trapped in a kind of limbo on the other side.
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a man who very much fits this bill, stuck in a failing performative role as a failing furniture store owner who also now needs to sleep on-site, and we see him setting up a facsimile of domestic comfort, sleeping in a store bed and watching a store TV, before he sets one foot in the strange world nearby. His forced jollity in the cheap cable ads which have been pieced together by his co-workers – in which he’s not quite a pirate and not quite a sultan due to some flawed and confused, liminal branding – only serves to underline the deep unhappiness felt by this man. He’s lost his home and his wife, he hates his job and he cannot get past this feeling of revulsion for what he’s been left with. However, as we see during his therapy session with Mary (Renate Reinsve), what he really wants is an excuse. It’s deeply possible to sympathise with Clark, and also (or mainly) to see his need for a martyr narrative as key to displacing his own sense of responsibility. The film opens with the notion that people return again and again to learned behaviours even when they don’t really serve them anymore; the brain would rather do what it’s always done, instead of learning new ways to cope. Whilst not quite an everyman, Clark is familiar enough as a person locked into a loop. It’s this festering unhappiness which allows him, at last, to cross into the backrooms. Interestingly, it’s his increasing fixation on the internal rules and regulations of the store, embodied by its haywire electrical wiring, which finally draws him in – a fluke, perhaps, but it seems that the time is right.
We know others have been here; one of the deeply alienating things about the presentation of this space is that there are objects and even people present who could come from a different era. And we’ve seen an explorer getting lost here, too, trying desperately to impose order on the space via the use of contemporary 1990s technology, though it’s deliciously unclear how – or via whom, or when – the computer and audio equipment, together with the cameras, found their way here. Early in the film, the ill-fated Naren attempts to use the computer system to make an announcement, seeking a reunion with his team, but it fails him. Audience responses may vary with regards to the nominal-at-best framing device which is imposed on the backrooms by a small group of engineers and researchers, themselves mysterious, who are trying to quantify the space. However, this does at least suggest that what Clark finds – that you can cross in and out of the backrooms, at least until a point – is a commonality.
We also know that people seemingly untroubled by the pitfalls of entrenched self-doubt can find the backrooms, too: Clark’s unfortunate employees, Bobby and Kat, get drafted in by Clark when he first finds himself compelled to record and understand the place he has found. His instinct is to draw a map, to make notes, very much like the researchers themselves. He even quantifies the unquantifiable by drawing a door shape on both sides of the liminal wall, creating a permanent conduit, something which does, ostensibly, obey some sort of rule. Bobby and Kat can cross through this, but – perhaps because they shouldn’t have found the backrooms, or have no real reason to be there – the space reacts most violently to them. It’s intriguing that Bobby is almost immediately presented as a casualty of this place; he finds some of his own clothing, ageing and mildewed, in a part of the backrooms which feels like a trash pile. Those with the requisite self doubt last longer – why this may be, the film does not explicitly answer, but certainly those unable to escape their ‘real’ selves seem able to spend longer in the backrooms, becoming part of this aggregate space.
On liminality…
Liminal horror has grown to be a very popular topic in recent years, aided in no small way by a proliferation of internet horror and creepypasta fandom, the kind loved and cultivated by Backrooms director Kane Parsons, amongst thousands of others. Due to the strong visual component associated with that particular fandom, there is a possibility that liminality and liminal horror may be somewhat reduced by eager commenters and forum users keen to share creepy images of places, identifying them as ‘liminal’. It’s worth adding that, whilst liminal horror is a huge area of modern interest and a key component in the kind of horror we see in Backrooms, there’s more to it than incongruous images, much as they can be used as fascinating prompts for ideas and storytelling larger than themselves. ‘Liminal’ refers to boundaries or thresholds; these, in themselves, suggest new possibilities, as well as harrowing, epistemic breakdowns and shifts which jeopardise the safety and the sanity of observers and participants. Where something is newly possible, something is possibly harmful, eroding old certainties and notions of safety.
Liminal spaces in horror are incredibly diverse, but perhaps we can speak about some commonalities. The use of devices and structures which help people to transverse these spaces – elevators, staircases, doors – seem to recur in all manner of liminal horror. If we think about the mild but unshakeable horrors of Severance, a TV series which feels like it has some kinship with Backrooms, if only in its often minimalist corporate-style spaces, then we may remember the importance of the elevator which takes the ‘Outie’ employees up to their offices, transforming them into different people in the process. Even creature features – to summarise a wealth of titles a little crudely – are reliant on stairs and stairwells, gates and doors (think The People Under The Stairs, Nightbreed or even The Gate). Mirrors and other reflecting surfaces are like this, too, used in horror cinema to bend/refract the ‘rules’ of physics and thus normality, inviting other entities through – often to places where they ‘shouldn’t’ be. As a part of a furniture store, the backrooms can boast all of these elements: in fact, it feels semi-natural that they would be there. When Clark finds his way into the backrooms, and as he later acknowledges, it seems to be a continuation of the store, even if it immediately reveals itself to be a place without the usual rules, without certainties. He comments on the strange inclusion of a swimming pool in one of the rooms, for example: it’s a familiar enough feature, but doesn’t seem to belong in the same space as the store. Reflections, movement and accessibility are key features of the backrooms environment.
It’s also a pristine, expansive space dotted with items currently on sale in the store itself – but different, subtly at first, though enough to trigger a response to the uncanniness of the environment. In the first room, which we see alongside Clark, there’s a stack of furniture, with items stacked one on top of the other. There’s also a mirror-image ‘STOP’ sign positioned in one of the nearby alcoves, perhaps blending Clarke’s working world inside the store with the roads which get him there (and keep him on the other side of the looking glass); this is significant, this blurring at the edges, recognisable but warped. When Clark tries to pick up a chair from the first pile of furniture however, it resists his attempts, seemingly, mystifyingly fused to the chair underneath it. In other rooms, things here are much more incomprehensible, spanning from the recognisable yellow wallpaper and plush new carpet to forced perspectives, impossible stairwells and sharp inclines – all of which can, as we may have grown to expect as horror fans, be accessed and used by whatever else is in there. And what is in there? Again to make a link to Severance, there’s a kind of version of people who have been there. A copy, a flawed and static copy, distorted and mute, even if lacking the impromptu humanity of the Innies.
In Backrooms, it’s a suitable limbo state for a failed architect, this massing Escherian nightmare – and the way in which it is inhabited by Clark’s humiliating and failing alter ego is, in its own way, something which makes some kind of sense, at least on the conceptual level. The liminal space further defies norms whilst bolstering its impression as a space populated by half-memories or ideas by having items fused with floors and ceilings, furniture and even bodies half-emerging from structures and places which should be solid, dependable. It provides an overwhelming feeling of alienation. Also, and frighteningly, the trailing cables and audio equipment of the backrooms – suggestive at least of some kind of universality, via repeated announcements in a range of different languages – point to some kind of intent, some overarching design, but the film always retreats from any ‘overseer’ narrative. That would, after all, shrink the horrors of this place. The people who come here are equals, at least in terms of their initial understanding, and perhaps in what happens to them.
“You’re stuck right where you started.”
So are there any answers at all here? You could argue that Clark comes to understand something about his own particular limbo, having spent an unspecified amount of time – possible weeks – inside. He comes to a kind of false epiphany, revelling (unsuccessfully) in the false notion that he, this unhappy, seething and damaged man, doesn’t have to change – he can keep his flaws and even co-exist with his monstrous alter-ego, even if that revelation seems to be misconstrued, only offering a moment’s grace (plus some of the film’s most horrific sequences). The lurching, somehow dangerous and desperate ‘pirate’ which represents Clark’s professional and personal humiliation turns out to be a grave threat to him, and to Mary, who has herself stumbled into the backrooms by now, finding that she, too, is suitably damaged enough to trigger another version of herself which will also remain here, another inmate trapped by trauma. These nightmare avatars seem to reply on stasis in the world outside, as well as the world of the ‘store’. Whilst Mary is able to use her expertise to land Clark with a few unwelcome truths about his life, she is less well-placed to do that for herself, and she is haunted by childhood memories of parental ill-health and familial isolation. It’s fitting, and not a little cynical, that Mary can prompt Clark to do ‘the work’ in therapy which hasn’t helped her to escape her own Window Within (another mention of a liminal threshold). Ultimately, although Mary is desperate to re-orient herself, asking questions and trying to find her escape, Clark’s attempts to map this space are subsumed by his own wish to stay, unjudged and unchanged, in the backrooms. He thinks he’s happy there. This is the sort of belonging he felt he’d lost forever, another shot at a bizarre spin on domesticity and suburbia. Mary wants out – she fights to get out – and the world of the backrooms scales up in response to her terror, even if it still resembles Clark’s failures, rather than her own (for the moment, at least).
Others retain more curiosity; they want to keep a link to the backrooms, but not to remain there indefinitely. They want, perhaps, to be the framework which seems to be lacking from the equation. Most notably, the research team which seems able to remotely view what is happening in the backrooms have a longer, curious history with this place, even if they retain far more questions than answers. The CCTV network in situ seems to be theirs, or at least they have co-opted it somehow; you can only guess at what has had to go on in order to establish this link to the outside world, and what exactly they may have seen happen as a result. As explained by Phil in the film’s closing moments, they are still at a loss as to understand this location – but they persist. This dogged determination to impose a framework could operate as an allegory all its own, but perhaps their understanding, from the point of view of being as disinterested a set of bystanders as this place will permit, is naturally curtailed by their want of a personal connection, as enjoyed by Clark and endured by Mary.
What do they hope to gain from it? What is the nature of the knowledge they seek? Little wonder that this bizarre dimension can layer its metaphorical dimensions so effectively, holding some people away, holding some people within. As an allegory for labyrinthine personal trauma – expansive, expanding, looping and recurring, utilising the trappings of recognisable and entrenched nightmares – Backrooms does sterling work. But it also works brilliantly as a more literal, if lawless liminal space, full of incomprehensible and unheimlich visual elements which are both intriguing and profoundly unsettling. In many respects, it feels like the end point of a steadily modernising trend in horror to newly colonise – and then to render terrifying – the spaces and places we recognise in our everyday lives. Our homes, our places of work: these now bleed into one another, morphing and threatening us, with no grand gesture – no admitting the mysterious stranger, no solving a puzzle box, no selling one’s soul – now seemingly needed on our part.
Part mystery, part broad strokes eco- or folk horror, Broken Beak (aka The Burning of Broken Beak, 2026) is flawed in execution, but not without engaging thematic and visual ideas of its own. Moreover, it my be flawed, but it isn’t flippant.
We start by hearing the last mating call of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō bird, now extinct, but its call was captured in the mid-1980s, seeking a mate which did not exist. This very poignant opening segues into a singularly unsubtle scene, where two suits discuss a new environment-blitzing resort development being planned in New Zealand; the second that one of the men is left alone, however, he’s cut down by a huge, bird-like figure which leaves him dead on the beach.
The dead man is called Gregory; when, in New York, fashion designer and photographer Emma (Briar Rose) finds out that her uncle Gregory is dead, she has to rush home to NZ to attend the reading of the will. This is apparently a stipulation for any would-be recipients. Taking partner Jackie (Lydia Peckham) along with her – which is a choice (the woman brings a surfboard with her from the US to NZ, a country which presumably has a fair few of them) the two women arrive at Gregory’s old home, an old converted power station in the town of Devonport, and once settled in they link up with housekeeper Paula (Katlyn Wong) to discuss all that’s been happening.
Paula is surprised that Emma knows so little: she explains the peculiar circumstances around Gregory’s death, and cites the legend of ‘Broken Beak’ as being responsible for what has happened. Despite being ethnically Chinese, Paula is well-versed in regional traditions and tales, describing the legend of a mythological being which was once a flesh and blood entity. Captured, tried and killed by the arriving European colonialists, Broken Beak now lives on, roaming the land anew since the outright greed of the recently-mooted land sale brought it back to life. Via a curse on Emma’s family, Paula goes on to claim, Broken Beak is making her way through them in the order of inheritance which was stipulated by Gregory’s will.
That would be one thing, but it turns out that Emma herself is amongst the beneficiaries, inheriting the converted power station – on the stipulation that she has to spend a whole month in residence there before she can make any decision on selling, or otherwise dispensing with the property. That’s odd; even odder, she begins to be plagued by dreams and visions of Broken Beak, dreams which seem to go beyond her previously solely professional interest in bird mythology as used for her photographic work. Soon, more family members are rocking up deceased – and all whilst Emma has to balance new accusations of her own guilt against fears for her safety.
This is, by and large, an eco-horror, though it’s unusual in that it has a comic book feel. Some of this is aesthetic – its sharp contrasts, bright blue skies, animation and fantasy sequences and use of visual motifs like silhouette remind you of comic book panels – but much of it is tonal, too, and due to that tone, the film can struggle to reconcile everything it wants to achieve. After that rather poignant opener, the film the veers far more into comic territory, with very overblown characters, skit-like scenes (such as the will reading) and rather clumsy interactions. It takes some time to be able to settle into what the film wants to do with that tone, which makes the film feel a little uncertain for perhaps too long into its (modest) runtime. On the whole, Broken Beak is thinly plotted, in the sense that it wants to allot some plot to a long list of issues and social commentary ideas, and it just can’t do everything it sets out to do. The film becomes a jumble of interesting, well-intentioned but ultimately minimally treated plot points, which will be frustrating for some.
That all being said, there does seem to be a broader resurgence (or even a surgence) of NZ horror cinema in recent years, with different subgenres and styles moving to the fore, either to emphasise or de-emphasise old narrative forces and norms. Broken Beak will no doubt take its place alongside these newer titles, with some engaging overlap of ideas and styles, even if it’s perhaps not held up as one of the best of the bunch. But is NZ or more specifically, Māori eco-horror a good thing? Absolutely, with lead actor Briar Rose doing a good job overall here, particularly in the film’s final act.
Films like Recluse (2026) come along so rarely: with meticulous handling and careful control of atmosphere, it weaves something quite extraordinary out of what, on paper, sounds recognisable.
We begin with a painter, a renowned ‘tortured artist’ type, Lawrence Wyatt, working in his fracturing, but still comfortable family home. He is putting the finishing touches to a canvas when he’s disturbed by a sound; flames suddenly rush towards him – but is this real? Recluse often layers its elements together in ways which cast doubt on what is real and imagined, and the vision of the fire blends with some audio work being done by sound engineer Joan (Sasha Frolova). Joan is an odd fit for the project she’s working on and, we infer, an odd fit in day-to-day life more broadly. Wyatt is her father; she finds out that there’s been an accident. He’s alive, but now hovering in a liminal state between life and death. The fire was real.
Everything so far feels off; discordant, overwhelming and suggestive of imminent breakdown. Joan is able to speak to her father (or is she?) and he avers that “she” is in the house – Joan instinctively knows he’s talking about her mother, who went missing when her daughter was still a child. This, and her father’s declining condition prompts her to head home.
At the house, she’s greeted by longtime housekeeper Lydia (Toby Poser) and a little later, by Lydia’s son Todd (Kimball Farley). Lydia explains Lawrence’s current condition and the condition of the house itself; Lawrence had taken to living and working only in limited areas of the old place, but his work is everywhere, inside and outside. It’s not perfectly clear why, but Joan begins to explore the house using her audio gear. It could be that she uses her tech in a similar way to the protagonists in The Blair Witch Project, refracting the irrational through the rational for comfort, but in any case here it feels emblematic of a kind of amplified, but distorted outsidership. Joan surveils her old home like a stranger, which indeed she seems to be.
There are other reunions and meetings. She meets Emily (Mia Vallet), the only one of her father’s nurses so far who has been able to stick around: they talk about him, but Joan still seems more interested in old tapes, listening to her mother’s accounts of why she had to leave. “There’s something in this place,” the old voice says. This concurs with her father’s beliefs about the house, and Joan believes that her dad’s practices have created a kind of bad energy, something which clings. You could call it a ‘curse’, but it’s deeper and more complex than a pronounced word, and any occult possibilities in the film are framed as subtly as everything else.
In many respects, writing this review so far feels like unnecessarily, or even clumsily overlaying a familiar framework on a film which doesn’t have one itself. Sure, you could comment on the tormented artist or the possibly-haunted house motifs – but that calls to mind very different approaches than the one chosen here by writer and director Henry Chaisson. It’s even possible that spotting those elements and tropes, however they are treated, will impact upon some audiences, affecting how they finally respond to the key plot elements. Let’s be clear, though: this film has such a singular, careful and restrained approach, that from its very opening moments it manifests a kind of crushing atmospheric weight which is highly distinctive. This film is unnerving, whether offering something supernatural, natural, or other. Recluse makes the cinematic space as a whole feel haunted; it works on our emotions, and feels dark and intolerable. Fusing together different sensory media – sound design (which needs to be, and is flawlessly executed) but art, too – contributes to the dual sensory impact of the film; there are questions raised here about art and sound, their effect on people. This isn’t just in the moment; we also consider topics such as fandom, estates and legacies. Whilst the sound design motif has some overlap with last year’s breakout horror The Undertone (bearing in mind that comparison can be a curse of its own to independent films), Recluse‘s blend of audio recordings and hearsay regarding home and estate remind me most of all of The Woman in Black (1989), even if TWIB is in nearly all respects a more straightforward piece of ghostly tale-telling than this.
There are plenty of other elements to admire: the sets are phenomenal, lit and framed brilliantly, with Wyatt artwork popping up in frame readily enough to begin triggering a limbic system response; all of those strange faces more than contribute to the rest of the strangeness, although the film wisely eschews jump scares, defaulting to a go-slow approach which makes any sharper, briefer scenes doubly unbearable. Performances here are subtle, the dialogue minimal, matching a sense of the house and the present-absent father as always being at the crux of proceedings, with everyone else holding their tongues. Whilst Recluse does have to find a way to drive towards some semblance of truth and understanding, it does this in just as strange a manner as it does everything else, never quite allowing us to walk away knowing what has unfolded, but rather being privy to a few glimpses of something more quantifiable; there are still lines, and scenes, and artefacts found along the way which hold us apart from just consigning events to ‘understood’. To explain any more would do the film a disservice.
Recluse reads like a haunted house movie, and it can be enjoyed as one, but there’s something much more unusual in how things play out here. It has a different molecular weight. This hideously unsettling story about legacies sticks to your bones; it’s an exceptional, creepy, destabilising piece of work which will be best beloved by audiences who appreciate experience and ambience over a snappy, grisly return to reality. This being a debut feature is extraordinary.
Recluse (2026) will feature as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
We hear a link between music, chaos and quantum theory being suggested as Turn It Up! (2026) gets underway: someone is explaining to us, via a voiceover of sorts, that just the right kind of noise could, quite literally, open (interdimensional) doors. This is just before – in a fun, pace-setting title sequence – we meet a band. They could be any band. They’re on the road, and we see them undergoing all of the annoyances that come with the lifestyle, as well as noting the close bonds which form along the way. In particular, frontwoman AC (Justine Nelson) seems to be off her game. She mentions tinnitus, but there’s clearly more to it; but never mind, this is the end of the tour, almost time to go back to the real-life jobs which pay for all this (the point being made that touring is not lucrative – for most bands at least). She gets past her misgivings, and her strange physical symptoms, because the show must go on.
The band heads to the last scheduled venue. This place is ancient and deserted: weirdly, the sound desk is already set up, with signs indicating that it’s not to be altered. In effect, the vibes are off, but ever the professionals, the band carries on getting ready to play. Needless to say, perhaps, but this not a normal set. The timeline gets a little choppy here, but to sum up, the band does play – but to no audience, almost as if they are possessed. AC sees something strange whilst at the venue, and it seems like something, not a creature or a person exactly, but more of an otherworldly vibe, follows her home. She starts to see and hear things more regularly. It’s a memorable gig, then, but for all the wrong reasons…
Suspicions are further raised when more gig offers start to come in. Gigs, at real venues, where there may be an audience. More unusual still, one ‘Miss Vee’ (Liv Collins), a renowned manager, gets in touch and seems to take a real interest in their music. This is weird. The band, suddenly, seems to be on the up: but how? Is it something to do with their brand-new song, the one they’ve nicknamed ‘The Odyssey’? Is someone, somewhere taking an interest in their music for nefarious reasons?
Breaking away from the far more usual heavy metal/Satan connection usually present in horror cinema – fun though that is – Turn It Up! does things differently. Here we have an indie rock band, not a metal band, with a link to a different dimension rather than anything to do with Ol’ Scratch (though in some respects, this different dimension operates in a fairly hellish way). You could argue that the film is a riff – yep, noted – on the idea of the Devil’s Tritone, something more usually affiliated with metal, given that we have a specific musical sequence with mysterious supernatural power – but there’s more at play here, too. In the modern world, alongside everything else which is going on, both in the film and more broadly than that, perhaps it’s inevitable that we also end up tackling the exploitation of small bands, because that’s exactly what we see here. There’s an imbalance of power, to say the very least. But there’s pushback – some heartfelt, some hilariously inept – and even if there’s a bit of a surfeit of Bad Science in some spots, there’s really so much to enjoy and admire overall in this bold, economical little indie movie.
Alongside the strong performances and very funny script, there’s a strong sense of visual flair throughout. With some animations added to the film in places, the use of split-screen, high contrast, great colourisation and blended fantasy sequences, this team has wrung everything possible out of a no doubt modest budget. It’s great to see practical SFX in here too, adding a little horror to what is, overall, more of a sci-fi flick, and offering some crowd-pleasing sequences which are almost certain to land, especially at a festival screening.
Light in tone, but still trippy and pithy with points to make, Turn It Up! is a fantastical spin on how bands get exploited, but it’s also just a great, entertaining fantasy with real character arcs and fun ideas. It’s sure to find its audience: it’s a refreshing, ambitious little gem.
Turn It Up! (2026) premieres at the Tribeca 2026 Film Festival on June 4th, screening again on June 5th and June 7th.
A vehicle races off through the Saudi desert, leaving a young woman dead in the dunes. That’s our opening to Unidentified (2025) – a film which is intriguing due to its background (directed by the first female Saudi filmmaker, Haifaa Al-Mansour), but also a nicely-paced and structured crime thriller, even if for some audiences it may feel a little domestic, or even reactionary, in some respects. For this reviewer however, that’s what really makes the film a success, for reasons discussed below.
We cut to one of the film’s many contrasts with a woman called Nawal (Mila Al-Zahrani) who enjoys a strange podcast, one which blends make-up tips with true crime exposés (though to be fair, this is a pretty neat encapsulation of the interests of millions of young women worldwide). Nawal is living independently, having left her husband and home behind: she hasn’t even unpacked her belongings yet, and her brother is already knocking at the door, urging her home. But Nawal has a job with the Riyadh Police, digitising old files as ‘everything is going online’. She’s briefly taken away from the tedium of this role when the girl’s body is finally discovered and she’s drafted in as a kind of chaperone, something which is apparently necessary even for a dead woman. Nawal, given her interests, is immediately absorbed by the case: there’s almost no information to go on, and only a two-week cut-off before the girl will go into an unmarked grave. As another woman now on the fringes of society, Nawal finds this unconscionable, and begins to take an interest in the case which goes far beyond her admin role remit. Perhaps there’s a sense of ‘could have been me’ here: we glean enough about Nawal’s background to know that the breakup of her marriage was very traumatic. However, as she investigates, she seems to start being watched herself, and may even be at personal risk.
Let’s be honest here and admit that one of my key motivations behind asking to review this title was to get a glimpse of a version of Saudi life, given that Saudi Arabia is usually either very closed off from the West, or else viewed through a very specific kind of lens: Western commentary tends to focus on its religious conservatism, even if under the de facto reign of Mohammed bin Salman, things have relaxed to some extent. For example, women may now drive in Saudi Arabia, something which is key to Unidentified: Nawal makes extensive use of her vehicle throughout the film, and beyond its timeline too. The world of the film is perhaps surprisingly progressive in some respects (Riyadh has the kind of nightlife you’d expect from any big city; women can live independently, hold down careers and many of them go where they please) but it rings with Islamic cultural conservatism in others (one of the reasons mooted for the mystery girl’s death is an ‘inappropriate relationship’, which her fathers or brothers may have acted upon). Here, girls just ‘go missing’ – from home, from school – and people may not wish to claim them, even if they turn up – living or dead. And, as one girl says in response to Nawal’s questioning, “Once your family decides on something, it spells the end for you.” Challenging this can literally mean death. That’s the strange, blended reality we witness in the film.
At its core, then, Unidentified is a film about the push and pull of modern life, albeit on one woman in particular, trapped between two worlds. It’s not limited to the expected divide between Nawal’s actual job and her interest in a case which goes way beyond her professional responsibilities. We have already discussed the podcast, where a girl applies lipstick as she warns against the perils of enraging men; we get a dolled-up headmistress, very much in charge of her domain, doling out arch warnings about immorality. We meet schoolgirls who have devised their own wall of silence, even as they sneak out at night to go to hookah bars and talk to men, just before they are married off. The film does successfully present a rather paranoid, secretive world which masks a lot of its worst excesses (though of course, all societies do this to a greater or lesser extent). Its violence typically happens off screen; this is never gratuitous, and in fact may feel too quiet for some crime cinema fans. It also opts for a recognisable structure and story arc, right down to the late addition of some surprises, though on the whole these work, the film is well made and well edited, with some wonderful stylistic visual flourishes, offering clever symbolism. On the whole, there’s a pervasive, uneasy religious context where religion – in lockstep with a harsh and unforgiving patriarchal culture – overshadows everything which takes place here. Nawal is a feisty character, to the upper limits that she can muster. She finds ways to push back against a world full of restrictions, and the film does grow increasingly tense as she gets closer to the truth.
Will you begin to wonder whether things have in fact all been put to bed, giving a glance to the remaining runtime, when it looks as though we’ve reached that point – The Truth? You might. And by the time you actually get to the end credits, you may feel either enlivened, or enraged, by the way things are finally wrapped up. I’d recommend taking a step back here, even getting a bit (whisper it) meta, and considering what the film’s structure and denouement has to say about Saudi life, even as a fictionalised and subjective glimpse of Saudi life. If filmmaking offers a distilled version of current social and cultural anxieties, then Unidentified has far more to say than it might at first seem to say. For this reviewer, it speaks quiet volumes of its own, adding an additional layer of ideas to consider – which prompts a look back over the whole narrative arc anew. That’s a real compliment to the film. It’s surprising to see such underwhelmed reviews already out there; there’s lots to ponder and admire here.
Unidentified (2025) will screen at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, starting with Tuesday, June 9th at 8:30 pm (US premiere).
If there’s one thing to take away from The Killing Moon (2025), it’s to wonder why some married couples are married couples – and the film leans into this immediately, as we meet key protagonists Elliot (Ryan Caraway) and Olivia (Victoria Diamond), lost on their way to a swanky mountain retreat somewhere in Colorado (discoverable from the film info – we’re not given the specifics of the location). When they finally get where they’re going, they continue to squabble. Then, as they settle into their vacation, we learn two key things: Olivia is crypto-wealthy and her husband resents her wealth by presenting as at least mildly snippy at all times. Let’s just say that the dynamics here are awkward, and it’s almost a relief when there’s an unexpected caller at the door.
Ah, but we’ve seen this caller: in the film’s opening scene, we saw this guy sat at a campfire, hiding his wedding ring before building up to a horrific self-injury, slashing his leg with a knife. Now he’s here, he’s bleeding profusely and asking for help. Shocked, Elliot and Olivia bicker a little more, but agree to let in the man, Rory (Matthew Leone) – the better to disregard basic first aid, but panic can do that to a person. Rory lives to see another day, and seems happy to hang around the next day too: a trip to a local beauty spot thereby turns into a heated masculinity contest, replete with odd decisions and behaviours (just like Rory sticking around, to be honest). Whatever Rory has planned, it feels like it’ll be justified if it shuts up Elliot, who is clearly being painted as inept and bitter. Certainly, Elliot’s smug bluster paints Rory in the better light, leaving The Killing Moon with the potential problem of turning Rory into the film’s villain – if the film needs a villain. Or does it have one? What’s the film to do?
The film does implicitly acknowledge that it needs some sort of new addition or direction after more than enough chest-beating and it endeavours to deliver this, which shows both a sense of whole-film crafting and some ambition too. Frustratingly, this still can’t link up with the bigger, more significant ideas it reaches for: some of the film’s more puzzling, or less appealing aspects are by this point a little too entrenched, centring almost wholly around the script and the tone chosen for the film (although the lead actors always give their best here, doing much with what they are given).
From the start, the signposting of marital issues – vital to the film – is clumsy, with each partner moving quite arbitrarily from one set of beliefs about their partner to another. Olivia sees Elliot as hopeless, then indispensable. Elliot is racked with sexual jealousy, then isn’t, and Olivia doesn’t notice the shift, or at least responds to it in a very brief way. This want of more, nuanced characterisation, with the suggestion of backstories, has a large impact on everything that follows – this plot foundation cannot slip or it’ll take everything with it, including Rory’s much more interesting arc. There’s no question but that The Killing Moon is a very well-made film in its technical aspects: it looks and sounds great, it’s sensibly edited in terms of its runtime (pushing this past the ninety-minute mark would only have harmed it as a whole) and it creates a sense of time and place. There’s lots of skill here. Director, writer and editor Daniel Bogran is a young filmmaker and this is his very first feature. With some deeper realism and complexity in the script, it would be great to see what he could do; it would better test his evident skills. As it stands, it’s very hard not to ask, ‘But how would that even work?’, something which could potentially be weeded out by a few productive screen development meetings.
The Killing Moon has some great strengths and works hard to move things along in a timely way, though at its heart it is a broad-strokes marital breakdown, even if reaching for something bigger. It isn’t sharp enough to really innovate around its topics and there are some issues around its plausibility, although it does move closer to a broader backstory, with glimpses of the broader resonance it clearly wants to convey. There are hints of good things here, even if not fully formed, and Leone in particular is an actor to watch.
The Killing Moon (2025) will feature at this year’s Raindance Film Festival from June 21st.
As she prepares a meal, a woman is disturbed by the arrival of a package. She collects it from the doorstep, and when she opens it, she immediately seems emotionally affected by what she finds inside. So much so, in fact, that she starts to asphyxiate herself with the bubble wrap which the items arrived in.
That’s how we kick things off with Sender (2026), an often tense little tale about modern life which has some elements of satire along the way. It picks an interesting focus, too, given that so many of us are often swamped by online purchases – even if that frenetic opening scene is the most high-impact moment.
We next pick up with a new character: Julia (Severance‘s Britt Lower) is an alcoholic in recovery (with frequent relapses) who has recently quit her job (been fired) and hopes to make a fresh start, taking some tentative steps towards enrolling at art school, with her new home bearing the brunt of her early artistic impulses. She attends a support group, but again, her commitment to the programme isn’t exemplary, and she mainly learns how to make a nuisance of herself in front of fellow attendee Whitney (Rhea Seehorn), who absolutely refuses to be Julia’s sponsor, perhaps sensing trouble. Back at the house, setting up home requires lots of deliveries, so Julia is soon getting plenty of boxes coming through the door. These largely come via a delivery company called Smirk, and given the amount of business she seems to be sending Smirk’s way, she gets to know the driver a little, a guy called Charlie (David Dastmalchian).
However, there soon seems to be something amiss with this new start. Julia starts to receive items she doesn’t remember ordering. Not only that, but these items seem to display some kind of insight into her character, as if they are coming from a place of prior knowledge. Given her relapses, it’s not beyond belief that she is ordering all of these things for herself, but it doesn’t seem to be that. What makes it weirder is that she – or someone using her name – has been leaving glowing online reviews for all of these deliveries, too. What’s going on?
As the items themselves grow more ominous, the already rather febrile atmosphere of the house increases. Sender could go in a number of different directions here – supernatural, psychological or a kind of whodunnit; without spoilering, it elects to focus all its attentions on an already rather nervy, vulnerable woman, following her down a rabbit hole as she struggles with a tide of new stuff, stuff which seems to anticipate her needs, wants – and fears. This is all punctuated with flashbacks to the throes of alcoholic episodes and relapses – Julia is clearly presented as someone not in a good place to investigate Smirk, or anything else – but the film soon comes to over-rely on these frequent, fast edits, revisiting earlier flashbacks and offering up lots of scenes where Julia is elegantly wasted, whilst zipping between set-ups and ideas at a frantic pace.
On one hand, this feels a lot like being online; it’s overwhelming, this barrage of items, these algorithms which seem to ‘know’ you. Whether this is the intended effect or not, though, the film’s structural choices can feel irritating, and it’s distracting when it recurs like this. Then, surprisingly, the pace begins to dip, even whilst the zip-quick edits persist; at around the midway point, Sender pauses to examine the relationship between Julia and her long-suffering sister, Tat (Anna Baryshnikov), who co-signed for the new house to help Julia out (and is suitably horrified at the sea of boxes now littering the place). This, plus Julia’s more in-earnest attempts to track down her mysterious sender, dissipates some of the initial mystique – though some audiences may enjoy the debates offered up by the film as it progresses, many of which touch on notions of control and self-control – big ideas, now as ever.
This film has a huge cast, with both Britt Lower and Rhea Seehorn having recently taken leading roles in vastly popular Apple TV series, like Severance and Pluribus. Their appearances here would draw comment enough, but to get David Dastmalchian on board too is a real coup: it feels hard to imagine that this film won’t get picked up by an eager distributor in the not-too-distant future. All of the lead actors perform their roles admirably here, though Dastmalchian seems to steal every scene he’s in, and we could always stand to see more of Rhea Seehorn. Overall, Sender has good ideas, and at its best it can be deadpan, paranoid and pithy. It does tend to get lost in those ideas and how to present them to us, however, particularly floundering right at the end – which is unfortunate, but this film’s very existence shows us what sorts of things scare and alienate us now. Perhaps the ultimate Amazon-themed horror (oh come on, it’s so clearly Amazon) is still ahead of us, but Sender‘s initial shock factor, plus its great cast and wry observational touches, does provide us with points of interest and engagement.
Whoa – don’t be fooled by that title. Peppermint Pixie Dream Girl (2026) may start out kitsch, with all the aesthetic trappings of vintage Americana – but it swiftly takes us somewhere far darker, and it’s all the more intriguing for it.
We start in a kind of Happy Days diner, where a couple kills time before even placing their orders by making out. The beau (Alec Barnett) is a needless dick who only leaves off sticking his tongue down his girlfriend’s throat in a particularly gruelling manner to insult the waitress, Shirley May (Zoey Luna). She barely has the time to respond to his transphobic comments, when she’s happily distracted by a new customer, Dorothy (Abby Langh) and they begin to flirt over the perfect peppermint milkshake. After Shirley-May’s shift, they head off for a date at the local drive-in: everything seems good.
It’s not a straightforward date, though; any time this film seems to be presenting us with something easeful and straightforward, it changes tack. There’s a lot going on in the background in this particular incarnation of mid-20th Century America: we’ve already heard talk of nuclear tests on the diner radio, Dorothy starts talking about aliens – here, as genuinely during these decades, the cheesecake visuals only mask a lot of the cultural anxieties bubbling away beneath the surface. If the date begins to go a little awry when Dorothy reveals she does, in fact, have a boyfriend, then things get considerably more terrifying when a gang of local greasers arrive, determined to split these two up and to unleash their fury on such an unconventional pairing.
So this could have been a meet cute and nothing much else, but Peppermint Pixie Dream Girl has far bigger ideas about how to balance its different elements, giving rise to something quite unique. If it resembles anything visually, then it’s the Fallout game franchise with its own not-quite-real-but-recognisable take on a nuclear-era America, but PPDG manages something quite uncanny and distinctive. It’s all weirdly on point, with a strong visual style aided by careful control of the colour grading, audio and dialogue. Then, having established a world of milkshakes, ribbon accessories and candy stripes, the film steadily wheels in the direction of …almost something grindhouse, with (almost) nudity, violence – and blood. All of this, in less than eighteen minutes.
To put it simply, the promise of deadly nuclear tests feels like the obvious connection between the film’s different modes, and so it turns out to be. It takes a keen eye to hold all of this together, but it works: PPDG a wonderfully strange short film which weaves just a fragment of something post-apocalyptic, but makes it feel meaningful and heartfelt, too.
Matador Bolero starts very calmly: there’s a young woman communing with nature against the backdrop of a rather beautiful, Super 8, retro-styled idyll. There’s no dialogue as of yet, and no music. She then finds a large, pastel-coloured egg, placing her hand on it – all the while being observed by a masked figure, hiding nearby. Nope, the figure doesn’t produce a knife; they don’t approach the girl in any way at this point, either. Instead we get a brief diversion into on-screen text, which appears like subtitles: “just as one’s image is erased, a mirror emerges from the sea.” If by this point you’re thinking the spirit of Jean Rollin is alive and well and has resumed his career from beyond the grave, then this impression is about to shift, too: we’re swiftly transported to a grindhouse-type cityscape, a world of nightclubs and strip shows, or – in the case of a club called The Matador – a little of both.
As the screen teems with very beautifully composed images – many over-layering one another to the point of sensory overload – we can only be certain of a few things. We meet the club’s owner, Charlie, who is called to the telephone one night, thereby missing a shooting in the club which claims the life of a popular actress called Beverley Green. There’s clearly some kind of criminal underworld at play here, and the police are convinced that Charlie himself is in on it, subjecting him to a highly unorthodox police interview. Charlie gets released without charge, but here the film chooses to add in a set of, shall we say, different considerations. A character referring to himself as ‘Adam’ may be part of this clubland world, but he’s a much bigger prospect than that (clue’s in the name). He has tasked himself with reversing a series of events which have fractured the known universe, leading to a state known as ‘The Bend’. This all happened after the sacrifice of a unique child, now resurrected as a kind of super computer and known by the name of ‘Bolero’. Adam is looking for Bolero, and his followers, in order to bring the world back to a utopian state – which it definitely isn’t, not currently.
So there’s our justification for the film’s the title, but are we still feeling confused? Almost certainly; Matador Bolero is confusing by design – if we accept that the film is much more about blending moods, impressions and visual styles than telling a story. This is a world which encompasses the frenetic sexual anxieties of giallo with far loftier shapes, ideals and potential symbols. In fact, the film and its approach reminds this reviewer very strongly of the work of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Now, it could be that the work of Matador Bolero director Jonathan Rosado shares a common ancestor, rather than directly being based on Cattet/Forzani, but surely anyone familiar with the likes of Amer will see a low-budget, if earnest love letter to both its visual style and, some might say, its cavalier approach to narrative. If so, your feelings about one will colour your feelings about the other. Personally, having some sort of narrative thread to follow feels important – films feel very long without it – and there’s something to track here, though the dreamlike, oblique nature of Adam and Bolero’s story winds up feeling oh-so whimsical. And, again like all of Cattet/Forzani’s work to date, it tests one’s patience, even whilst inspiring admiration for such a spirited, committed aesthetic approach. I do have to wonder how films like these – these sequences of largely disparate ideas in eye-catching apparel – really find their people. There are lots of interesting things going on, but presumably there are limits to who will find and thrive on them. Oh, and there’s a bit of Jess Franco in here too, for anyone who likes their strange, existential genre film to factor in some soft furnishings. If you know, you know…
Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, Matador Bolero has lots of links to music video: Adam is played by experimental musician Yves Tumor, and the film also stars Kansas Bowling, who got her first feature-length released by Troma when she was just seventeen and has carved out an interesting career as both an actor and a music video director since that time. That feeling of distinct, music video-style vignettes and an emphasis on style is written all over Matador Bolero. It’s a bold project but a strange prospect, pushing the boundaries in what feels like both experimental, but recognisable ways, and coming up with something off-kilter, but visually strong.
Matador Bolero (2026) opens in New York on May 22nd and Los Angeles on June 12th.
In the opening scene of documentary film Children of The Wicker Man, we see one of Robin Hardy’s sons taking receipt of some of his late father’s possessions – notably reels of film, papers and production notes related to the 1973 film. It’s this which prompts Justin to reach out to some of Hardy’s other children – namely his half-brother, Dominic, and provides the inspiration for a film of their own.
Even knowing nothing about the rather tortured background of The Wicker Man, the fact that Justin opens by describing an array of, if not quite alienated half-siblings, then certainly a number of children from broken Hardy-adjacent families suggests an unhappy dynamic; as the film unfolds, that turns out to be all too true. Where film fans may revel in Robin Hardy’s prowess as the director of what turned out to be a seminal British horror film (but could have sunk without trace – see below), for his sons, the film felt like an almighty obstacle in their relationship with their father. Making this documentary sees them trying – and, to an extent, justifiably failing – to approach the topic of The Wicker Man anew as disinterested adults, not children. The documentary is a balancing act, then: in some respects we have two filmmakers walking us through the Wicker Man project in as neutral a way as possible, yet in some ways, the same filmmakers here allow themselves to give in to the ire their father’s film caused them as they grew up. We have the usual run of interviews, production notes, photographs and anecdotes you might expect from a ‘Making of’ type project, but behind all of this is something else entirely – a kind of grieving.
Whilst the two men find some kind of peace with their subject matter as their study unfolds, it’s fair to say that this is no hagiography. Children of The Wicker Man is a rather unflinching look at Robin Hardy the man; here’s a man who let his wife sink all of her money into his first feature-film project (he had been in advertising), before walking away, leaving her to raise his children on her own, because her addiction struggles were unsafe for him. There’s a suggestion of similar things happening elsewhere in his life, though details are understandably less forthcoming where those children aren’t so directly involved in the documentary. Of course, there’s a school of thought which suggests that great art excuses poor personal behaviour; from the perspective of friends and family, that no doubt always feels like bollocks. Perhaps it should do; it certainly colours things here, and this film never feels like a happy passion project, more like a purging of what went on during the making of The Wicker Man once and for all. There’s a lot in here, too: it meanders as it goes, but you retain the sense that panic, uncertainty and conspiring events really hampered the making of the film, and made for an unhappy experience for pretty much everyone involved.
Seeing original scripts, lists of cuts, candid photos – all of this is very interesting, and it’s an opportunity to see aspects of the film which would otherwise go unseen. If it needs saying, it’s probably more the completists, than just passing fans, who would relish the level of detail on offer here, as we get right down to the minutiae, glimpsing all of the feuds, rumours and reasons this film very nearly never got finished at all. Children of The Wicker Man is thorough, if not lavish: its blended visual style goes from talking heads to on-screen text and sketches, some of which are, arguably, more irritating than enlightening (big crosses appearing through pictures of rejected actors’ faces, for example, is a bit unnecessary). There are a few boom mike issues, and as ever the division of the film into ‘Acts’ doesn’t really achieve much, but this is all just window dressing, really. The film is at its best when it gets to the heart of the matter: the unique perspective of the Hardy family.
Considered on the whole, Children of The Wicker Man provides a wealth of context (and, by the by, helps to excuse the underwhelming Wicker Tree, without simply excoriating it). It also manages to end on a fairly obliging note, mentioning Robin Hardy’s late-in-life reappearance and celebration, with Justin and Dominic now seeing The Wicker Man not just as “that fucking film”, but as a unique and brilliant narrative film – even if it’s still difficult. And as much as Children of The Wicker Man charts a deeply personal journey, the film’s title could be construed as a metaphor for the film’s ongoing legacy and its impact on a range of people, not just Robin Hardy’s sons. However, at the end of the documentary, we see it as a reclamation of their life extending beyond the grasp of The Wicker Man, as well as a guarded celebration of it.
Children of The Wicker Man (2024) will be released by Severin Films on 30th June 2026.
