I watched Posthumous as part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, where it had its East Coast premiere on October 21, 2026.
Posthumous is Australian writer-director Josh Tanner’s debut feature (co-written with Jade van der Lei). It starts out really strong and offers a lot to like.
The film centers on Zoe (Sophie Lowe), who has just turned thirty and who has returned to her childhood home where her estranged father, Neil (David Roberts) still lives. Zoe’s birthday is anything but happy for both herself and her father, as it’s the day Zoe’s mother died (of cancer) right after giving birth to Zoe. Seemingly at something of a crossroads in her life, a listless and grief-stricken Zoe discovers a VHS cassette on which her mother recorded birthday messages every year until she (Zoe) turned twenty-one. The viewer only gradually realizes that Zoe’s mother is not aging in these messages – and that her pregnancy is slowly growing larger. These messages aren’t recorded over a long period of time; they were recorded over nine months. Zoe aged but her mother remains frozen on tape, getting only sicker, not older.
