The Death of Us (Frightfest 2026)

One of the films featured in this year’s Fresh Blood slate, The Death of Us marks festival regular Annabella Rich’s directorial debut. It opens in a heightened dramatic register that leans into melodrama, a deliberate pitch that has become increasingly common in modern horror, and Rich embraces a mode where emotions are intentionally oversized, with performances that follow along with raw confidence.

The premise centres on grief: Casey (Rich) and Danny (Chris Mills), a loving couple, survive a home invasion in which their child is killed. It’s a devastating setup, though the emotional impact is softened by the fact that the audience never meets the child, creating a distance the film never truly bridges. Casey’s visions — whether supernatural or psychological — are tied to that trauma, yet the film struggles to make that trauma feel lived‑in, and as her apparitions intensify, the story positions itself somewhere between her paranoia & guilt and the supernatural.

The film’s supernatural logic rests on Casey’s near‑death experience during the invasion, suggesting she briefly crossed a threshold that allowed something to follow her back. The dreamscape imagery is visually striking but more abstract than frightening, functioning as excursions into an “other” realm rather than moments of dread, and the sound design occasionally overwhelms scenes, pushing mood harder than necessary and diluting tension. Yet, it’s a strong concept with deep roots in ancient horror, and for much of the film, everything Casey fears stems from that moment of powerlessness. The creature design — when it finally appears — is genuinely impressive, with art direction that stands out among this year’s FrightFest titles. This all collides into a interesting wrinkle where the connective tissue doesn’t always flow cleanly, leaving emotional beats without the weight they need and preventing the psychological and supernatural threads from fully merging. Yet instead of it making the film feel benign it pushes the movie to a emotional mode that is rarely touched upon in modern horror, bridging melodrama to the world of hysteria. Colour me intrigued, and also, this is no insult either – Alucarda (1977) is prime Horror Hysteria, there’s an entire history in this style.

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Danny’s arc is clearer and provides the film with more of an emotional anchor. He confronts his trauma directly, and through him the film finds some of its stronger dramatic moments. A standout scene at a church grief‑counselling session moves from raw confession to awkward humour, underlining how differently people process loss. Danny’s career as an author, introduced early through a book‑signing scene, allows the script to touch on parasocial relationships between creators and their audiences, it’s a thread that is only briefly pulled on but it adds texture and gives Danny more dimension than the typical “supportive partner” role.

The integration of cult and paranormal elements is less assured; the cold open never quite situates itself convincingly within the timeline, and the cult’s arrival feels abrupt, appearing largely in service of the final act rather than being fully woven into the world of the Death of Us. The film hints at a broader mythology but doesn’t explore it in depth, leaving the cult feeling more like a narrative device than an organic part of the story. Despite these structural issues, there is much to appreciate in the direction and production craft. Rich commits to the melodramatic horror without leaning into too hard into over-sentimentality, and the script by Chris Mills and Rich often gestures toward the messier realities of psychological trauma. The film truly embraces its melodramatic edges, but it avoids the overly polished emotional beats that often accompany stories about trauma.

The creature work is strong, and Rich’s vision is clearly personal, even if the execution doesn’t always align with the ambition. However, where the film succeeds most is in its sincerity. The Death of Us genuinely wants to explore grief, trauma and the lingering effects of violence, and it has moments of striking design and atmosphere that speak to a filmmaker with a clear sense of what she wants to express. Its emotional distance, late‑arriving antagonists and fragmented narrative may leave it deeply uneven, but its ambition and flashes of creativity give it a distinct identity. And as a debut, it’s worth noting that Annabella Rich already demonstrates a clear and defined sensibility of who she is as a filmmaker – something that (speaking as someone making their own steps in filmmaking) is far more challenging than people realise.

ROB’S ARCHIVE – THE DEATH OF US