Let’s get this out of the way right at the top: A “noseeum” (or “no-see-um”) is a nickname for a type of fly, a biting midge common all over the world but especially ravenous in certain parts of the American Southeast. They got that nickname because they’re fast-moving and hard to see, so sometimes the bite is the only evidence they were ever there.
Noseeums, the new film from director and co-writer Raven DeShay Carter, uses these flies as a kind of folk horror vehicle, as well as a metaphorical overlay for the whole story. This is a film about the pain we can feel but can’t see, and what happens if that pain starts to take on a life of its own, and that’s a very promising place to start. Throw in a social horror approach compared to the work of Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta, and there’s a lot of potential here.
Sadly, that potential is never fully realized. Despite some strong visuals, a game cast, and a mythology that’s truly compelling, Noseeums never really gets beyond a certain amateurish roughness that sometimes borders on the cartoonish. It’s a confused film, visually and narratively, and the scares ultimately arrive too late to fully salvage it.
Ember (Aleigha Burt), a college student on the cusp of her 21st birthday, is trying to get over a toxic ex-boyfriend, and her friends are doing their best to keep her from giving in to temptation and calling him. Her close friend Jasmine (Chase Johnson) wants her to stay with her for the weekend, but instead, Ember opts for a trip paid for by her rich white friend Abigail (Tabby Getsy), with fellow friends Tessa (Jasmine Gia Nguyen) and Lexi (Jessie Roddy) tagging along.
The quartet sets out for a vacation at Abigail’s family lake house in northern Florida, while Ember dodges calls from her mother and tries to relax in her little getaway. But Ember’s not alone, or at least she doesn’t feel alone. The more time she spends at the lake house, the more she feels tormented by visions of a Black woman she doesn’t know, a woman who carries tremendous pain that’s now bleeding into Ember’s real life.
We’re starting strong here. The film lays in a creepy prologue to bait us with its overt horror elements, sets up four attractive young girls for a getaway soon to be filled with horrors, and even uses Ember’s college anthropological studies to layer in themes of ancestral healing and pain. It’s not subtle, but it works, and the film is clearly driving at something.
It’s the execution of that drive where Noseeums really starts to falter. We’re clued in very early to the film’s interest in systemic racism, and the often nearly invisible harm it inflicts, and the girls have barely had time to get drunk together before the arguments start. Abigail, as a privileged white girl, has no clue that her passive-aggressive requests that Ember carry her bags and fetch her drinks are tapping into some very old, shared pain, and when Ember tries to confront her about these issues, she shrugs it off. Tessa, who’s Asian, has some understanding of what Ember’s going through, but Lexi serves as Abigail’s eternal backup, setting up two camps in this particular and particularly awkward social battlefield.
The script, by Jason-Michael Anthony and Hendreck Joseph, with contributions from Carter, makes it clear right away who the villains are in this segment of the story, but when you play with this kind of thematic fire, you’re always tempting an audience to remember other films that have done it better. Noseeums always has its heart firmly in the right place, but its sometimes trite dialogue and awkward delivery of very basic concepts to any left-leaning individual makes it stumble. Unless you are just now learning about systemic racism for the very first time, you’ve heard all of these things before, phrased in a better way.
Where the film succeeds, at least mostly, is in its effort to attach those feelings of systemic, longstanding pain and cruelty to invisible supernatural forces lurking around the property. Carter’s composition and pacing choices are solid, tying this darkness to Ember in a way that she, as the only Black woman in the group, perceives while the others simply can’t or won’t. There are wonderful match cuts in the film meant to emphasize this, and Burt’s performance is the strongest of the bunch. She gives it everything she’s got in a film that sometimes offers her dialogue that’s hard to chew, and you want to keep watching her even as the film around her falters.
Up to this point, you’ve got a film that’s stumbled along the way, but seems to be driving at something bigger that the third act will hopefully resolve. Then it just…never happens. There is some creative violence in the film’s climax, and a few solid moments of blood and terror, but it all arrives too late, and it’s too driven by shaky CGI to really catch hold. Noseeums is just 75 minutes long, not including credits, and while I usually applaud that kind of brevity in a horror film, it feels like there’s something missing here that a few more minutes could have shaded in. It’s just starting its climb to something bigger when it suddenly falls flat.
Noseeums is ultimately a failure, but it’s not a complete one. There’s good stuff here, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever Raven DeShay Carter chooses to make next. This is a movie that strives for more substance than it ultimately contains, but the raw talent is there, and it deserves some room to grow.
Noseeums arrives on Digital on February 27, 2026.
