Another SXSW Film Festival has drawn to a close, and with it comes our final dispatch from this year’s insanely packed fest for genre premieres and anticipated titles. Among the fest’s highlights this year were Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road, an inventive genre-bender that begins as a road thriller before slyly morphing into something else entirely. […]
Another SXSW Film Festival has drawn to a close, and with it comes our final dispatch from this year’s insanely packed fest for genre premieres and anticipated titles.
Among the fest’s highlights this year were Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road, an inventive genre-bender that begins as a road thriller before slyly morphing into something else entirely. The high concept haunted house movie Good Boy will make you fall hard for one of the best dog actors to come along in a while, while The Surrender presents grief through a visceral, violent lens.
As for headliners, directors Christopher Landon and Eli Craig delivered festival crowd pleasers with Dropand Clown in a Cornfieldrespectively, while Death of a Unicorn‘s sense of humor proved more divisive.
Our final dispatch from SXSW 2025 offers a review roundup that highlights some of the fest’s more unconventional horror comedies: Dead Lover, teen satire Slanted, and The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick.
Filmmaker Grace Glowicki, who starred in last year’s Booger, not only writes, directs, and produces the horror comedyDead Lover but also stars as the stinky gravedigger desperate for love. When she finally meets her dream man (Ben Petrie), their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love.
Dead Lover centers around a mad “scientist” of sorts with a plot that is very loosely based on Mary Shelley’s classic text, but Glowicki draws far more from comedy toupes, Mel Books, and cartoons than horror. In other words, it’s a feature that feels tailor-made for theater kids, filled with boundless creativity and an emphasis on the type of humor that lets you know whether Dead Lover is for you within the first ten minutes.
Or maybe even sooner than that; Glowicki purposefully gives her character a bad accent that could grate if you’re not on this quirky movie’s wavelength. While her Gravedigger is the center of this bizarre little universe, the filmmaker stacks her ensemble with scene-stealing cast members tackling a variety of esoteric characters, from lesbian nuns to eccentric lovelorn poets. Glowicki does embrace body horror, especially as her character’s pursuit of love wears on, but the humor never wavers in its steadfast, laser-focused pacing. That means that this horror-comedy does veer toward repetition.
What sets it apart isn’t just the humor, but the ingenuity on display in terms of visual storytelling. Dead Lover is pure DIY, playing like low-budget experimental theater with striking gel lighting and sharp contrasts, and minimal set design that lets its wacky characters shine. It’s a film that proudly marches to the beat of its own unconventional drum, all but ensuring it’s destined for cult film status. Dead Lover was acquired out of SXSW, so expect to hear news of a release date soon.
Slanted
Body horror continues its hot streak with writer/director Amy Wang’s teen comedy turned body horror satire Slanted. It follows Joan Huang (Shirley Chen), a Chinese-American teen who’s dreamt of becoming prom queen since early childhood. Determined despite her school’s penchant for favoring a specific demographic for the crown, Joan undergoes an experimental procedure that transforms her into prom queen hopeful Jo Hunt (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’sMckenna Grace). While that leaves her closer than ever to achieving her dreams, the transformation creates an emotional and physical nightmare.
Slanted is a teen comedy, first and foremost, only flirting with body horror in the third act. It wears its satire on its sleeves, with the opening introducing a surrealist vision of American patriotism. Wang’s debut is at its strongest when exploring the relationship between Joan and her proud Chinese parents and the generational divide that’s widened by Joan’s American upbringing. The cultural divide is also reflected in Joan’s relationship with best friend Brindha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), though to a lesser degree; Ramakrishnan is woefully underutilized here.
Wang helms with confidence, introducing numerous memorable set pieces and a poignant exploration of cultural identity. Grace and Chen infuse their character with aching adolescent awkwardness and vulnerability that earns easy rooting interest, even when making devastatingly yet authentically flawed choices. Yet, as personal as Slanted feels, the superficial nature of its satire winds up softening a lot of its sharper edges. That likely suits its teen demographic well but won’t be as winsome for seasoned horror fans.
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick
This film, with one mouthful of a title, has been described as a “millennial terror of modern adulthood,” and hails from director Pete Ohs, who helmed supernatural stalker comedy Jethica. Like Jethica, Tick operates on the same idiosyncratic, deadpan tone and defies easy categorization. Zoë Chao stars as Yvonne, a woman coping with grief who attempts to work through it by vacationing at her friend’s idyllic countryside home. The details of the inciting tragedy inspiring Yvonne’s retreat come piecemeal, letting the deadpan, off-kilter character dynamics between Yvonne and her temporary roommates take center stage. Things go from awkward to weird when Yvonne is bitten by a tick and exhibits bizarre symptoms.
Worse, Yvonne can’t tell if the vibes are off with friend Camille (Callie Hernandez, Alien: Covenant), house chef AJ (James Cusati-Moyer), and his real estate agent boyfriend, Isaac (Jeremy O. Harris), or if it’s grief-stricken paranoia. While their eerie interactions present cult-like vibes, it’s here where Ohs’ metaphors for social peer pressures and the way that holistic wellness is really just snake oil. Tick is more horror adjacent than outright horror, but Ohs mines much of the uneasy atmosphere from the insane sound foley that accompanies the peculiar and often unappetizing dining scenes. Ohs, who co-wrote the film with his four leads, also dabbles in body horror moments surrounding Yvonne’s bite, though with much restraint.
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick deftly blends a pastoral fairy tale with muted millennial horror to opaque results. It’s the type of film that favors mood over narrative and quirks over coherency. Tick puts its metaphors first as it explores Yvonne’s anxiety and unease, but the millennial apathy of its characters dulls its sharper edges. Like Glowicki’s Dead Lover, it’s the type of genre-bender that signals almost straightaway whether it’ll be for you or not.
