The Peril at Pincer Point (II) (Frightfest 2026)

Anybody who has made a film in any capacity will know that the process of working with sound is a multi-layered hell. Surely, there is a reason why filmmakers tamed the image before they were able to accompany it with recorded sound; like the sea, it is a force to be reckoned with, sometimes tranquil and other times tempestuous enough to sink a production. All those who traverse the oceans of sound, from the recordist to the mixer, are afflicted by its curse – one which, in the case of Noah Stratton-Twine and Jake Kuhn’s The Peril at Pincer Point (2026), is made hilariously literal.

The first feature-length collaboration between the two filmmakers (with Stratton-Twin having previously helmed last year’s Sasquatch-comedy Two Big Feet) had its English Premiere at the 2026 edition of Tubi FrightFest, stashed away like a long-dead pirate’s treasure in Discovery Screen 2 at 4PM on the final day of the festival; I can’t help but feel a sense of wicked joy imagining fest attendees groggily stumbling into the screen, worn down by four days of non-stop horror films, with no clue as to what they were about to experience. I wish I could have been there in-person for said screening, because The Peril at Pincer Point is one of those true remarkable oddities of indie genre filmmaking, more remarkable still for having been made in the UK without the backing of any major institution.

The Peril at Pincer Point is an absurdist combination of film industry satire, improv-comedy, tongue-in-cheek old-school horror homage, and a chilly nautical ghost story, all of which somehow manage to naturally intersect with one another. Stratton-Twine and Kuhn’s picture tells the tale of Jim Baitte (Jack Redmayne), a sound recordist on a ‘50s-style giant crab monster movie who is sent to the remote coastal village of Pincer Point in search of fresh sounds to replace the stock Foley effects that its prestigious director, P.W. Griffin (Os Leanse), has deemed inadequate. As part of his assignment to Pincer Point, Jim has also been tasked with locating one of the film’s catering personnel, Marina Hurley (Alyth Ross), in order to record her ‘angelic’ voice for the film’s opening and closing scenes – but upon his arrival, he discovers that Marina has been missing for weeks, with the locals believing she was snatched by a phantom seafarer, the Dread-Captain Sye Telson (Mike Mackenzie), to be part of his ghostly crew. Spectral shenanigans ensue, and crustaceans of various sizes feature.

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The idea behind The Peril at Pincer Point is a rather inspired one, particularly in its decision to parallel the experience of being on an “auteur” director’s film crew with that of being on the crew of a mad pirate’s vessel. Stratton-Twine and Kuhn’s film may currently be the definitive work on the state of the UK film industry, where a lack of support structures and financial backing renders creatives as lost sailors who wander the shores in search of a lunatic captain who will take them on a treacherous journey across the high seas with no guarantee of seeing land again (the majority of us UK film folk have played the roles of both crewmate and captain, of course). Extensive metaphors aside, The Peril at Pincer Point is undoubtedly an achievement, not least in its visual presentation; cinematographer Murray Zev Cohen’s work here is nothing short of masterful, not only perfectly replicating the style of old English gothic horror, but also playful and stylish in its own new way. Whilst very much its own thing, I was pleasantly reminded throughout of Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ Lake Michigan Monster (2018) and its tongue-in-cheek audio-visual approach to the maritime macabre, and I expect many to also make worthy positive comparisons between Pincer Point and Tews’ more well-known production Hundreds of Beavers (2022).

Drawing from all sorts of areas of folklore and media, The Peril at Pincer Point is a film which wears its influences on its sleeve; there are direct visual nods to Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019) throughout, and there’s more than a little of Bill Nighy’s Davy Jones to Captain Telson and his Dutchman-esque phantom freighter. However, the thing which astonished me most about The Peril at Pincer Point is that, both stylistically and narratively, this small-scale indie production manages to feel like the central meeting point of a century’s worth of British horror, a seafood boil of genre missing links which make previously undiscovered connections across decades’ worth of UK genre fiction; in the village of Pincer Point, Guy N. Smith meets Mark Jenkin, The Giant Behemoth (1959) is neighbours with The Wicker Man (1973), Lawrence Gordon Clark’s spectres terrorise Matthew Holness, and the team at the Berberian Sound Studio (2012) have figured out how to use The Shout (1978).

It should be noted, though, that in spite of its wide-ranging horror influences, fear is not a major factor when it comes to the pace and tone of The Peril at Pincer Point, aside from a general vibe of slow creeping dread and some moments of silly spookiness – Stratton-Twine and Kuhn’s film is, first and foremost, a comedy, and one which moves at a rather leisurely pace, which is part and parcel of its semi-improvised nature. Some may consider the pace and structure of the film to be too loose and low-stakes for them, but I personally feel this approach fits the themes of the piece, appropriately matching Jim Baitte’s state of limbo as a sound man left without much direction or any guaranteed career prospects in an unfamiliar, remote location. As is bound to be the case with improv-comedy, some of the riffs are funnier than others, but I never found myself in a position where I wasn’t at least somewhat entertained throughout the course of Pincer Point.

The Peril at Pincer Point is one of those creative and charming indie genre pictures where I couldn’t help but smile whilst watching, and I’m smiling still with the knowledge that the filmmakers already have a sequel in the works. This is the kind of picture that the UK film scene needs right now, and in a perfect world, there’d be 50 similarly ambitious projects receiving a wide release in the near future.

Finally, someone has made a worthy successor to our country’s greatest cinematic achievement – Frogopolis (1998).

ROBYN’S ARCHIVE – THE PERIL AT PINCER POINT

READ ROB’S REVIEW FROM FANTASIA 2026