horror

The marketing was the bait: sold to teenage boys who turned up for Megan Fox and got a feminist horror about the intensity of teenage girl friendship and what men do when they need a sacrifice. In 2026 the reading is unmissable; in 2009, a year after “I Kissed a Girl” had pitched queerness as a party trick for boys, Fox’s casting read as more of the same. She is magnetic and clearly having a great time weaponising her own image, and the script gives her some of the best line readings of the decade. Diablo Cody, Karyn Kusama and the soundtrack each earn the reputation they’ve developed since release. Seyfried almost convinces you she’s the plain one.

I don’t entirely know what I just watched, and I think that’s the point. It opens like a coming-of-age film about two kids bonding over a Buffy-esque TV show, then quietly stops being that and becomes something stranger. The Lynch comparisons are well earned. Schoenbrun shoots suburbia soft and pink, and the Alex G score sits underneath everything like static you can’t quite tune out. The broader soundtrack, Caroline Polachek and yeule especially, is great. What stays with me is how patient the film is about not naming what it’s actually about. For anyone working through questions of identity and dysphoria, I suspect this will matter for a long time.

This will be a specific kind of young person’s favourite film for the rest of their life. 10/10 soundtrack