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Posted on May 23, 2026

“And the Wisdom to Know the Difference”: Intimacies in Obsession (2026)

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Jered Mabaquiao

Obsession (2026) directed by Curry Barker breaks new ground for horror cinema. In its own ways, it fondly reminds me of It’s What’s Inside (2024), Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), or even Y2K (2024) with its strong attention to dialogue, soundtracks, and an atmosphere that speaks directly to older Gen Z sensibilities. I think it’s clear that a new generation of directors and writers are here to reshape fear in refreshing ways. Barker is amongst a new line of YouTuber-to-filmmaker directors, along with Danny and Michael Philippiou (Talk to Me and Bring Her Back), Mark Fischbach, aka, Markiplier (Iron Lung), Chris Stuckmann (Shelby Oaks), and Kane Parsons (Backrooms). With an approximate budget of around $750k to $1 million, Obsession’s domestic opening weekend brought in $17.2 million with a total global opening of $27 million. (Obsession is, apparently, the cheapest film to top the box office in 17 years – a record held till now by Paranormal Activity.)

Posted on May 16, 2026

Reliquary (2026) by Hannah Whitten – a Review

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Jered Mabaquiao

I grew up in a fairly conservative evangelical denomination. It was common to hear things like, “your body is a temple” or “the Holy Spirit lives in you.” This language shaped a lot of my thinking—ideas about what sort of vessel I was (or becoming) sometimes flooded my mind. Surrounded by congregants, even family members, that deliberately or implicitly, reminded me of my shortcomings, I wondered how would my soul ever be saved? While a lot of time and space has appropriately put distance between myself and these thoughts, Hannah Whitten’s Reliquary (2026) resurrects an important question for me: “What would you do to save your soul?”

A reliquary is a special container meant to hold and display holy or divine relics, often from saints or other significant religious historical figures. Whitten’s Reliquary reframes this object by asking what it means for a body to be a vessel for something divine and what happens to our “original soul” when it is replaced by something else. Whitten transforms the idea of the reliquary into something intimate and unsettling: an exploration of a body asked to house a divine terror; a relinquishing of one’s agency to a higher power. The novel’s exploration reanimates my own long-standing question of how a person learns to distinguish salvation from surrender.

Posted on May 7, 2026

Reproductive Rights in Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s Swallow

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Brandon West

Reproductive rights are human rights, says Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s 2019 thriller film Swallow. This easily-overlooked English language film uses body horror to explore the myriad fetters with which modern American society aims to constrain the female body. The film follows a young woman, protagonist Hunter (Haley Bennett), who finds herself encircled on all sides. Since Hunter is the product of rape, her “right-wing, religious right” mother views her as a burden. Meanwhile, her wealthy husband views her as a baby incubator, a means to carry on his family name. Thus isolated, Hunter seeks bodily autonomy in one of the few avenues open to her: consumption. And so, she develops an acute case of pica, consuming such materials as a marble, a thumb tack, and a battery. Yet, even in this arena, Hunter’s control proves inadequate, subject to male supervision. When Hunter’s pica causes complications with her pregnancy, her husband scolds her and hires another man to supervise her at home.

Posted on March 24, 2026

Cultivate your own garden: Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice

Dawn Keetley

In Candide, ou l’Optimisme (1759), Voltaire concluded with one of the most important ideas in modern philosophy: “Il faut cultiver notre Jardin”: We must cultivate our garden. No Other Choice, the 2025 darkly comedic film co-written, produced, and directed by Park Chan-wook takes this adage quite literally, as protagonist Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) attempts to ‘cultivate’ his ‘garden’ after being let go from his managerial job at a paper company. Thirteen months later, Man-su is still without a position and is confronted with rapidly diminishing funds along with the prospective loss of his gorgeous house, embedded in lush countryside. So, he sets out on a campaign to win a position at a successful paper company, Moon Paper, by killing its current manager and two other likely contenders for the job.

Posted on March 5, 2026

Dead of Winter, the horrors of aging, and the winter of life

Dawn Keetley

Directed by Brian Kirk and starring Emma Thompson, Dead of Winter is an action/survival thriller released in 2025 to quite positive reviews. It’s set in northern Minnesota, although filmed in Finland and Germany, and the landscape is beautiful: Kirk and cinematographer Christopher Ross really capture the frozen and vast desolateness of the upper Midwest of the US.

The plot of Dead of Winter begins with Barb (Emma Thompson), who is driving up to Lake Hilda in northern Minnesota (in off-and-on blizzard conditions) to scatter the ashes of her dead husband, Karl. Barb runs into a couple (who remain unnamed), who have kidnapped a young woman, Leah (Laurel Marsden) and are holding her captive in the basement of their cabin. Once Barb discovers Leah, she promises to save her – and most of the film concerns her indefatigable efforts, even as she becomes more and more injured, to rescue Leah from the couple. As the plot unfolds, it turns out that the couple aren’t evil . . . exactly. The woman (Judy Greer) is terminally ill with some unspecified liver condition; she works as an emergency nurse and encountered Leah when the latter was admitted after a suicide attempt. Knowing she needs a liver transplant to survive, and having the skills and connections to arrange one off the grid, the woman kidnaps Leah to be her unwilling liver donor, convinced she’s doing no harm as Leah wants to die anyway. (Of course, not surprisingly, when faced with her own prospective murder, Leah decides she wants to live after all.) The woman’s husband (Marc Menchaca) seems deeply opposed to what they’re doing, but feels obliged to help his wife.