[FrightFest 2026]: The Flesh Itself

Set against the latter years of the Paraguayan War, which ravaged through South America during the 19th Century, Ian SBF’s The Flesh Itself is a claustrophobic edge-of-your-seat psychological horror having its UK premiere at this year’s FrightFest. Following three deserters who seek haven at the home of an old man and a young woman, they soon find themselves in a hellish nightmare that threatens their lives and their souls.

Three deserter soldiers struggle to make their way across the war ravaged countryside after one of them is injured by a bullet. When they come across a small farmhouse inhabited by an elderly man and a quiet young woman, they think they’ve found a safe respite until they can gather their strength and continue on with their journey. As their stay is prolonged, the three soldiers begin to suspect the old man is harboring something far more nefarious in the locked rooms of the building, and they soon have to decide which is the better option – to face their crimes with the military who are in pursuit of them, or the evils hidden deep within the crumbling walls of their hideout. 

With the backdrop of The Flesh Itself being that of a devastating war that was the deadliest in Latin American history, audiences are already presented with a grim and nihilistic reality where the characters are given very little chance of survival as is, and so when the trio reach the farmhouse and find themselves trapped, although not so much physically as psychologically, the feeling of the walls closing in on the protagonists increases tenfold, adding a suffocating atmosphere to an already tense situation. The performances across the cast are as strong as each other, with each actor giving an agitated turn as people who are existing on the edge of an insidious evil gaining strength underneath a landscape already ravaged by war and death.

Reminiscent of films from the New French Extremity cinematic movement such as Calvaire (2004) and Frontier(s) (2007),  The Flesh Itself combines psychological nihilism with bleak and unrelenting violence, depicting the deep-rooted evils of war and its effects on ordinary citizens.

4.5 Screams out of 5