Editorials
The Progressive Sexual Norms of ‘Faithfully Yours’ [Sex Crimes]
Judge Bodil Backer (Bracha van Doesburgh) seemingly has it all: she’s a no-nonsense Judge and has a great home life with her doctor husband Milan (Nasrdin Dchar) and pre-teen son Ben (Damiano Incani).
At the start of director André van Duren’s Erotic Thriller, Bo is preparing for a girls weekend away with her best friend Isabel (Elise Schaap). They leave their husbands behind in Amsterdam, board a train for Bo’s family beach house in Belgium and outline plans for their weekend, which includes a burner phone, a large sum of money, and an expensive suite at a high-end hotel for Isabel.
Faithfully Yours has a fantastic central premise: a few times a year the two women use each other as cover while they cheat on their husbands. One woman will attend a lecture or visit a museum and snap photos to send to the husbands as an alibi. The other, meanwhile, is off engaging in sexy times. For this trip, Bo entertains novelist and university lecturer Michael Samuels (Matteo Simoni) at the beach house, while Isabel has her own dalliances at the hotel.
It’s a perfect infidelity cover-up…until Isabel goes missing, leaving behind only a huge pool of blood in Bo’s foyer.
Intrepid audiences won’t have much difficulty sussing out at least a few of the mystery’s details. Like any good thriller, writers Elisabeth Lodeizen, Paul Jan Nelissen, and André van Duren pack the story with suspicious characters, such as Isabel’s struggling writer husband Luuk (Gijs Naber) and Bo’s combative younger sister Yara (Hannah Hoekstra). There’s also Isabel’s stack of cash, the fact that Michael refuses to act as Bo’s alibi when murder enters the picture, and the alarming discovery that Milan knows about Bo’s affairs due to secret cameras planted all over the beach house.
While the logistics of the murder mystery don’t hold up under scrutiny (unless Detectives Ann and Sophie, played by Sofie Decleir and Anna De Ceulaer, are very dense), Faithfully Yours at least has a surprisingly progressive attitude about sex. Not only is there an old-fashioned queer love story subplot, the revelation that Milan not only knows, but *likes* watching Bo with other men is refreshing.
Too often Erotic Thrillers traffic in morally (and, yes, sexually) conservative territory: infidelity, open relationships, and queerness are all punishable offensives because they’re threats to the quote/unquote traditional marriage and relationships. By having Milan tape his wife screwing a litany of other men for his own sexual pleasure, Lodeizen, Nelissen, and van Duren acknowledge that sex, particularly in long-term relationships, is both fluid and complicated. Milan has a cuckold kink, but he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing his sexual turn-on until Bo finds his collection of video files and confronts him.
Spoilers from this point on…
Contrast this with the oppression and control that lies within Isabel and Luuk’s relationship. Early in the film, Isabel confesses that Luuk has become suspicious of her activities and put a tracker on her phone. At film’s end, it is revealed that Luuk knew Isabel was cheating and blamed Bo, fearing she was encouraging Isabel to leave him. In his misplaced anger and feelings of sexual inadequacy – Luuk proceeded to hire a hitman to kill Bo in the hopes that without her around, his marriage could be salvaged.
The take-away of Faithfully Yours is that attempts to control and contain a person’s sexuality, as well as a lack of communication within romantic relationships, have lethal consequences. Had Bo been straightforward with Milan about her need for sexual gratification outside of their marriage, they could have been engaging in consensual cuckolding this whole time. And had Isabel been less afraid of her controlling husband, she might have simply left him for a lesbian relationship with Yara rather than faking her own death.
Ironically, the film accomplishes this intriguing sexual exploration in a fairly tame package. While there are several sex scenes in Faithfully Yours, there is no nudity and the scenes of intercourse are relatively chaste (sex is often suggested or framed strategically, only relying on a fade to black or focusing on the upper body of the actors).
Finally, it is worth singling out van Doesburgh’s performance. Bo can be a frustrating and even unlikeable protagonist, but the character fits the film’s challenging moral and ethical point of view. Van Doesburgh ensures that even when Bo is behaving in a way that we know isn’t helping her or Isabel’s case, her actions make sense for the character and her goals. It’s a quietly assured performance that anchors the whole film.
Also: kudos also to costume designers Marion Boot and Evelien Klein Gebbink for outfitting Bo in a collection of knit sweaters, which look comfortable, sexy *and* whose colour scheme (mustards, oranges, tan) connotes a certain kind of “moral rot.”
Faithfully Yours isn’t revolutionizing the subgenre, but solid direction, a strong lead performance, and a refreshing representation of society’s changing sexual norms makes this an entertaining and worthwhile take on the traditional “woman in danger” film. Seek it out on Netflix.
Sex Crimes is a column that explores the legacy of erotic thrillers, from issues of marital infidelity to inappropriate underage affairs to sexualized crimes. In this subgenre, sex and violence are inexplicably intertwined as the dangers of intercourse take on a whole new meaning.
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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