AFFECTION (U.S., 2025)
Official synopsis
Ellie is stuck in a cyclical nightmare grappling with a medical condition that erratically resets her memory. Left unable to remember her loving husband or young daughter, each reset leaves her disoriented and haunted with vivid memories and scattered recollections of an unfamiliar life she’s never lived. What is the cause of her rare illness, can her husband really help cope with her affliction? The nightmare answers are a complete shock to the nervous system.
Review
In writer/director BT Meza’s fantastic feature film debut Affection, Ellie (Jessica Rothe), after being involved in a car accident, wakes up in bed next to Bruce (Joseph Cross), who tries to reassure her that she has suffered memory loss from the accident and that she is his wife, and mother to their young daughter Alice (Julianne Layne). Despite Alice’s insistence about that being the truth and photographic evidence around the house, Ellie has memories of being someone named Sarah Thompson, and that she is married to someone else and has a young son.
The colder you go into Affection, the better, as Meza serves up a dizzying array of suspense, escalating tension, and jaw-dropping surprises. Rothe gives a bravura emotional and physical performance as a confused and frightened woman trying to piece back her life despite conflicting internal and external messages. Cross is also solid as a man desperately trying to bring a sense of stability to his family life. Though the family drama is impressive, the genre elements that Meza has in store for viewers are among the most intriguing ones in any science fiction/horror outing so far this year. Affection comes highly recommended.
POSTHOUSE (Philippines, 2025)
Official synopsis
A troubled film editor and his distant daughter release an ancient monster while working to restore an incomplete silent horror movie from the forgotten Filipino horror past. [Director Nikolas] Red’s exploration into the grief over a vanished cultural era is a love letter to the lost ghosts of every cinematic heritage and a potent supernatural chiller in its own right.
Review
A silent horror film thought previously lost brings a generational curse to family members involved in the filmmaking industry in director Nikolas Red’s supernatural horror feature Posthouse. Sid Lucero and Bea Binene give gripping performances as film editor Cyril and his film student daughter Rea. The pair get wrapped up in the restoration of silent shocker The Manananggal — in real life, the first horror film from The Philippines; the characters are of course working on a fictitious version — and the titular evil creature seems to be haunting their workplace.
Red, working from a screenplay he cowrote with Jericho Aguado and Kenneth Dagatan, crafts an engrossing slice of fear-fare cinema that pays respectful homage to Filipino silent movies and that features the mythical creature the manananggal — a usually female creature that flies with its entrails exposed after separating its torso from its lower body — which has been featured in several horror films from that country. Aficionados of foreign horror will want to put Posthouse on their need-to-see lists.
Affection and Posthouse screened as part of FrightFest Halloween 2025, which took place at the ODEON Luxe West End in London, U.K. on October 31st and November 1st.
