Spoiler-Free Reviews: Grind and Friday the 69th (Portland Horror Film Festival)

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June 8, 2026

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Film Festivals | Horror Comedy | Movies | Reviews

Written by Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is the Film Festival Editor for Horror Fuel; all film festival related queries and announcements should be sent to him at [email protected] is a contributing writer for the "Phantom of the Movies VideoScope" and “Drive-In Asylum” print magazines and the websites Gruesome Magazine, Diabolique Magazine, The Scariest Things, B&S About Movies, and When It Was Cool. He is a co-host of the "Uphill Both Ways" pop culture nostalgia podcast and also writes for its website. Joseph occasionally proudly co-writes articles with his son Cohen Perry, who is a film critic in his own right.A former northern Californian and Oregonian, Joseph has been teaching, writing, and living in South Korea since 2008.

Grind

Official synopsis

This horror anthology tackles the modern work landscape through four timely perspectives – a woman caught in a pyramid scheme, a delivery driver, a content moderator and a crew trying to unionize at a very familiar coffee shop.

Review

Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, and Chelsea Stardust team up to codirect the workplace horror comedy anthology Grind (U.S., 2026). A mysterious packing warehouse, an online sales plan for leggings that comes with deadly consequences for not meeting sales quotas, a time loop that finds a food delivery gig worker in a huge mess, a content moderation job that features twisted images, and a corporate plot to overthrow unionizing baristas all feature in this scathing satire on the modern American economy and its effects on lower-level employees. Genre-film legend Barbara Crampton and comic actor Rob Huebel provide quality veteran performances as the head honchos behind evil empire DRGN. Many people will find the work situations uncomfortably highly relatable and should find the darkly humorous skewering of corporate entities and their bigwig bosses quite cathartic.

Friday the 69th

Official synopsis

Porn filmmakers in 1981 seek to cash in on the slasher craze by making their own independent ripoff that follows a group of spring breaking college coeds as they are stalked by a mysterious killer beekeeper at a camp with a tragic past.

Review

In the “never pass on a film because of its title” department we have horror comedy Friday the 69th (U.S., 2026). Writer/director/cinematographer/editor Alex Montilla crafts a hilarious homage to both vintage adult entertainment and slasher fare. Set in 1981, the film finds a group of porno filmmakers — with one “serious” thespian on board — and actors looking to make money by producing a slasher film rip-off. The humor works in that it hits so close to home on slasher movie cliches, and that despite this supposedly being a “legitimate” non-porn outing, some of the folks in front of and behind the camera just can’t help themselves from sticking to the adult material they know so well. The ensemble cast is marvelously spot on with their portrayals, and obviously having a blast. The film segues back and forth between a table read and the imagined look of the proposed horror movie, allowing for meta commentary. Friday the 69th was shot primarily on Apple iPhones and using a DOF adapter with DSLR lenses, and the film-within-a-film slasher scenes have a nice, authentic aged look to them.