Movies
Deadgirl (V)
“DEADGIRL is something that has never been done before and it will leave you shocked (or jealous – if you’re a freak). A twisted turn of events make DEADGIRL an immediate indie classic and one of the best teen horror thrillers in years. This will be one to talk about over a long cup of coffee…”
*Spoiler Warning
Probably one of the most challenging films at this year’s Midnight Madness (TIFF) is Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel ‘s DEADGIRL, which takes a dark and dreary trip into the underworld of teen adolescence. This indie coming-of-age horror film is guaranteed to divide audiences with its intense subject matter, and what will make-or-break the film for most audience members is whether or not they find the film believable.
In DEADGIRL, which was scripted veteran actor/writer Trent Haaga, Ricky (Shiloh Fernandez) and JT (Noah Segan), two 17-year-old high school students, discover a girl (Jenny Spain) chained to a table behind closed doors at the bottom of an old abandoned hospital. The characters are immediately established as JT immediately has dark intentions, while Ricky will have none of it. JT later catches up with Ricky, who is furious with his friend, until he is shown JT’s uncanny discovery… JT shoots the girl, showing Ricky that it wields no results – the girl should be dead, but she’s surely alive (not so) well.
Now this is where audiences will divide, since it’s obvious something is “off” with the girl. She just lies there with her teeth showing and no reaction. She’s either vacant or just waiting… for what, you should all know. JT decides that they should keep her as their own – a “sex slave” if you will. From here on out everything spirals out of control…
DEADGIRL takes great pride in attempting to remain in reality, even though naysayers will claim that no boy in their right mind will f*ck a “kinda corpse”, while others would say, “have you been on the internet lately?” Try searching for necrophilia and bondage, some results are guaranteed to pop up.
DEADGIRL, while taking cues from films like SAW and HOSTEL, more so resembles STAND BY ME and RIVER’S EDGE. The creepy and dark premise, molded around a group of “innocent” teens, has its main focus on the coming-of-age story than the brutal treatment of the “deadgirl”. While this girl is brutally raped on more than one occasion, most of the film is spent filling scenes with heavy exposition, projected mostly by the delightfully evil Noah Segan. His counterpart, Shiloh Fernandez, puts on one of the best Joaquin Phoenix impressions, while overusing the word “man”, adding to the teen-speak dialect implemented by Trent Haaga. While the film (thankfully) isn’t trying to be hip and cool, Haada still overwrites a bit as some of the exposition becomes a tad too heavy – why JT is f*cking a corpse doesn’t really need to be explained. Even so, Haaga impresses by keeping the metaphors subtle and flipping the cliché segments on their ass. In one scene, the teens decide to kidnap a random woman from a gas station, and after attempting to beat her into the trunk she turns on them and kicks their little asses. It is one of the most predominant and delightful moments of the film, so uncomforting that it gives you a second to breath.
One of the guiding lights in the film is the score, which was very reminiscent of DONNIE DARKO. It sets not on the tone of the film, but also the pace. The look of the film was stunning being that it was HD, shot on a Viper cam, the same used in David Fincher’s ZODIAC. While projecting sharp and crisp, it still gave off a low budget, green/blue creepy edge – it was quite simply stunning.
DEADGIRL is not a zombie movie per se, or maybe it is? Either way, the word should be banned from use when converging over the film, as it’s something quite different. DEADGIRL is something that has never been done before and it will leave you shocked (or jealous – if you’re a freak). A twisted turn of events make DEADGIRL an immediate indie classic and one of the best teen horror thrillers in years. This will be one to talk about over a long cup of coffee…
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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