Drag (Frightfest 2026)

Like all the best discoveries at a film festival, I went into Drag with no expectations whatsoever, and whether that helped or not, this ended up being the most fun I had at FrightFest. Directed by Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, with Danny DeVito as co‑producer, the film constantly shifts shape but does so with total confidence, resulting in a comedy‑horror caper that feels fresh, sharp and wildly entertaining. The premise is deceptively simple too, two sisters attempt a robbery, and one of them completely throws out her back causing the other to come to her rescue. That single detail gives this heist‑adjacent story an effortlessly relatable edge. We’ve all experienced a pain that throws us head‑first into immobility – for me it was a bad back that took months to recover from – so like Lizzy Caplan’s character, I know the indignity of being suddenly incapacitated, and Gout? Forget about it. Drag mines that simplicity for both comedy gold and genuine tension.

The first act belongs entirely to Lizzy Caplan and Lucy DeVito, who play sisters with such natural comic chemistry that the film could have coasted on their dynamic alone and still earned waves of riotous laughter. They genuinely look alike, but more importantly, they bounce off each other with a rhythm that feels lived‑in, as though they’ve known each other for years. Their back‑and‑forth essentially makes the movie; chemistry is everything in a two‑hander, and they pass that test with sarcastic glee. To put their tightness into context, the only other times you see actors work together this well is when you later learn they’re romantic partners – Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone in The Amazing Spider‑Man is the perfect modern example.

Drag is technically a one‑location piece, albeit one that begins in a car in the nearby woods before plodding clumsily into a nearby palatial manor, but it never feels confined and given that the leads spend most of the film either dragging or hiding, that’s hugely impressive. The house itself, a gorgeous modern American mansion full of space, light and atonal contemporary art, becomes a playground the film moves through constantly, albeit hilariously slowly. Caplan spends roughly 90% of the film lying on her back, delivering whip‑smart dialogue with a mix of venom, self‑loathing and genuine affection for her sister. It’s not a role many actors could pull off, speaking of, the moment she does attempt to stand up has an authenticity and physicality that only the most gifted of actor could pull off. DeVito, meanwhile, plays a super‑reluctant, lazy, deeply funny foil whose reluctance becomes the film’s strongest comedic engine, especially in the back half when the homeowner returns. The whole bit about making a glass of water is comedy gold.

John Stamos’s arrival triggers a complete tonal shift and at the perfect moment too because as funny as the dragging gag is, it would run thin over 90 minutes. This is FrightFest so it’s fairly inevitable where things head next. From comedy caper, Ullman and Yagolnitzer twist the film into a tense horror piece – an inverted home‑invasion movie at that where the invaders are trying to escape the homeowner. In this role,Stamos brings a brittle, unsettling energy that flips the film on its head without losing the humour. Where Caplan and DeVito rely on deadpan physicality and insults only siblings could get away with, Stamos represents a more satirical edge. His character’s behaviour seems harmless at first — the date he invites home is super flirty and young enough to be his daughter — but he twists and contorts into something darker until everything escalates into horror all while maintaining a veneer of “nice”.

Drag develops a vibe reminiscent of the murder sequences in American Psycho: goofy, awkward, bourgeois nonchalance in the face of violence. It’s a tonal tightrope, but the film walks it confidently. Furthermore, Stamos’s character is a well‑known artist, and that facet leads to one of the film’s stranger touches. The artwork itself is derivative at best (coming from these inexperienced eyes), but the way Christine Ko’s character speaks about it gloriously satirises the sycophantic way fans and critics discuss art, or even films in some quarters. It’s a sharp little jab woven into the chaos.

Drag’s genre evolutions are its biggest strengths. Act One is a comedy caper. Act Two is an inverted home invasion. Act Three is a slasher, and all of the above sits within the “one bad day” subgenre (a personal favourite), where everything that can go wrong does. Even the title Drag works on two levels: dragging someone across the ground, and the 1990s American slang term for an ordeal. Ultimately, I can easily see this becoming a cult favourite once it has a wider release, sitting in that perfect space of genuinely funny comedies that take risks whilst being shot with real visual personality — Game Night (2018) being the perfect bedfellow. It’s rare for a comedy to be shot and acted this well, and rarer still for one to be this fluid, the only real conclusion I can come to is one of absolute respect and giddy appreciation of Ullman and Yagolnitzer work, bring on whatever they have up their sleeves next, and Caplan and DeVito need to work together again as they have a genuine once‑in‑a‑generation comedic simpatico.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – DRAG