Ten horror films. One panel that is basically our entire thesis said out loud. Two Australian filmmakers doing the best work of their careers. And a Jane Schoenbrun that sold out before most people had finished reading the description. SFF runs June 3 to 14. Some of this is already gone. The rest is selling fast.
Strange Country / Editorial
Here is a thing that's been true for a while and that SFF has finally decided to say out loud: Australian horror is having a moment. Not a trend. Not an algorithm bump. An actual creative moment, the kind that only makes sense in retrospect and that people will write about in ten years as if it were obvious.
Two Australian films in this year's program are genuinely excellent. There's a panel event called "Australiaarrghh!" featuring the filmmakers who made them, moderated by the Freak Me Out curator, asking exactly the question this podcast exists to answer. And around all of that: a Kiwi alien pregnancy film, a Japanese ghost story that won the SXSW audience award, Joko Anwar doing demons in a prison, the director of Train to Busan back in zombie territory, and a Jane Schoenbrun that sold out immediately because of course it did.
This is our guide to all of it. The trailers, the takes, the links straight to tickets. SFF is June 3 to 14. A lot of these are already going.
SFF's dedicated horror sidebar. Six films, curated by Richard Kuipers. It's the best the strand has been. That's not a low bar.
Two teenage boys. Small Victorian town. Conservative Christian community. Conversion therapy. The demon that shows up takes the form of the thing they want most, which is each other. Adrian Chiarella's debut. Neon bought it at Sundance for seven figures. Mia Wasikowska plays the mother. It opens in Australian cinemas June 18, which means SFF is your preview.
Leviticus — Dir. Adrian Chiarella — NEON
Natalie Erika James made Relic. If you know, you know. This is her follow-up. A medical student joins an obscure weight loss craze that involves eating human ashes. Something wrong follows her home. Body horror about diet culture, what women are told to do to themselves, and what comes back when you ignore all of that long enough. Already in US cinemas. Shudder gets it next.
Saccharine — Dir. Natalie Erika James — IFC / Shudder
The director of Satan's Slaves puts a demon in a prison. It goes for the inmates with the darkest aura first, which in a high security facility is not a short list. Horror comedy, Berlinale Forum, sold out at SFF already. If that combination of facts doesn't sell you, nothing will.
A spirit medium who helps lost ghosts move on gets sent to a remote hotel in rural Japan. The job does not go the way her jobs usually go. Atmosphere, silence, slow dread and practical effects by some of Japan's top genre craftspeople. The AV Club called it the best film at SXSW 2026. Won the Midnighter Audience Award. Also won the grand jury prize at the Overlook Film Festival. Critics are serious about this one.
A couple's baby disappears. The mother finds a way to get him back. The husband is not sure the child who comes home is their son. Jessica Rothe and Charlie Barnett lead. SXSW Midnighter. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from 11 reviews. The kind of horror that earns its scares because you actually care what happens to these people first.
A sound designer gets sent to a remote island to capture a sound that's never been heard in cinema before. The locals tell him about the sea captain who steals the souls of the island's youth. He keeps ignoring them. Black and white. 4:3 ratio. Dry British comedy horror that is completely, gloriously strange. Won the Neon Auteur Award at SXSW.
New Zealand. Kiwi duo Thunderlips. A messy millennial underachiever still living at home with her mum has an encounter with an alien named Boo and ends up pregnant. Boo is also still living with his mum. The gross-out dial goes somewhere past 11. It's also genuinely about bodily autonomy, medical dismissal and intersex experience, done with more depth than the premise suggests. Sundance Midnight. The title tells you everything and also nothing.
Not everything horror at SFF sits inside Freak Me Out. These two would have made the strand better if they had.
Jane Schoenbrun made I Saw the TV Glow. This is the follow-up. Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, a filmmaker hired to reboot a beloved slasher franchise called Camp Miasma. Kris becomes fixated on casting Billy, the reclusive actress from the original, played by Gillian Anderson. The two descend into psychosexual mania. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Metacritic score of 91. Won the Queer Palm at Cannes. Opened Un Certain Regard. Sold out at SFF before most people finished reading the blurb, which was entirely predictable.
Yeon Sang-ho directed Train to Busan. That film rewrote what zombie movies were allowed to do. This is his return to outbreak horror. Jun Ji-hyun plays a biotechnology professor who gets trapped in a building when a rapidly mutating virus tears through a conference. It's her first film in eleven years. Cannes Midnight. Selling fast and it should be.
Panel Event · Freak Me Out
This is the one to actually be at. The filmmakers behind Leviticus and Saccharine in a room, moderated by Richard Kuipers, the Freak Me Out curator and Variety contributor, talking about why Australian horror is doing what it's doing right now. The Babadook. Relic. Talk to Me. A genre that keeps producing work that punches above every expectation. The panel asks why.
That question is also more or less the entire premise of this podcast. Horror is the most honest thing a country ever makes. It's where a culture puts the stuff it can't say at the dinner table. This panel is our thesis said out loud, in a theatre, by the people doing it. We'd rather be there than anywhere else on that day.