Queer.Horror.Movies

The curated portfolio of film journalist Joe Lipsett

‘Corpus’ Review – An Audacious and Erotic Look At A Toxic Gay Relationship [Fantasia 2026]

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A hazy golden/orange image of a handsome dark haired man in a leather jacket and white shirt standing in a nightclub

Some films have a temperature associated with their colour scheme. Cool blues, disaffected greys, and earthy greens.

Corpus, writer/director Corrin Evans‘ 90s-set hallucinatory erotic thriller (but not in that way) is full of golden ambers and harsh oranges. It’s a film that feels sweaty and hot; the characters flit between rooms and scenarios in a daze – be it from the booze, the drugs, or good old fashioned lust (or some combination of all of the above).

Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg) is a low-level coke dealer and aspiring photographer living in New York. It’s late June, 1997 and Sayo is aimlessly passing through life, shooting anything that captures his eye on the street or at the gay bar. It’s quickly made clear by his vaguely misogynist friend Ross (Michael Vlamis) that the photographer is on the outs with their mutual friend Vince (Brodie Townsend), an up and coming celebrity whose chiseled jaw and cheekbones are prominently displayed on the cover of a magazine.

The tortured relationship between Sayo and Vince is the core of the film, and will feel relatable to any queer person crushing on someone in the closet or, more broadly speaking, a hook up that refuses to acknowledge you in the cold light of day as anything other than “a friend.”

The reality is that there is something going between Sayo and Vince (the sexual chemistry leaps off the screen whenever they’re together) and it’s evident that Vince can’t handle it because of his burgeoning fame. But he also can’t let Sayo go or stop leading him on, crashing in his bed after a night out partying and demanding Sayo accompany him – for professional reasons, of course – to a party hosted by influential photographer Billie (Lily Cowles) that weekend.

Of course, by the time Vince extends the invite, Corpus has already thrown up a number of red flags. The film’s cold open introduces Billie shooting a demure young woman, Wren (Nuha Jes Izman), in a photo shoot that quickly escalates into an uncomfortable, sexual assault-coded experience. When Vince, Sayo, and Ross arrive for the party, they discover an isolated, derelict country mansion located hours outside of the city. And there’s something odd about Billie, her older “friend” Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran) and a now feral Wren. In fact, none of them seemed to know Sayo or Ross were even coming.

Corpus spends the rest of its runtime teasing a series of weird and wild interactions that would send any reasonable person running back to the city. It’s here that Sayo’s push/pull relationship with Vince comes into play: despite all of the odd behaviour, including Wren murdering a chicken in front of their eyes, which is then served raw for dinner, Sayo can’t bear to stray from Vince, who continually leads the photographer on with his toxic, gaslighting behaviour.

Sayo could be a frustrating character if his relationship with Vince weren’t so well established. Despite how obvious it is that Vince is bad for him, it’s hard not to root for the two men to get together. Evans, who co-wrote the script with Crowes, weaves elements of gaslighting, obsession, and toxicity into Sayo and Vince’s interactions, which are frequently presented in tight, intimate shots or framed fetishistically by emphasizing individual body parts such as lips and eyes, or fingers grazing over bare skin.

It’s undeniably hot, even if it feels as though Vince, the script and the camera are edging Sayo (and, by extension, the audience) with the promise of sex. To be clear: there is man-on-man contact in Corpus, but even when Vince acquiesces to kiss Sayo, or touch his crotch, or go even further, it is almost inevitably accompanied by feelings of guilt, resentment, or vague disgust. These intimate encounters come off as simultaneously wrong and incredibly right; they’re emblematic of the internal conflict between what Sayo wants and what he knows he should refuse for his own emotional well-being.

So, too, is the depiction of their physical connection, which walks a carefully negotiated line thanks to Evans’ history working as an intimacy coordinator. The rollercoaster of emotions that accompanies the hot and heavy (verging on non-consensual) scene between the boys in a blood-red dark room late in the film is a perfect encapsulation of the fine line Corpus is walking.

Of course, Sayo’s attraction to Vince is not the only danger lurking in the castle, something that the film never tries to hide. Still, it is surprisingly how much mileage the film gets from teasing out how uncomfortable and odd the social situations involving Billie, Cata, and Wren are. The threat of (often sexually coded) violence is constantly bubbling under the surface.

That threat is most clearly embodied in a singular, evocative instrument: a distinctive mask/headpiece designed by Miodrag Guberinic of Mio Design NYC that is worn over a character’s head and prominently features a vertical shaft that ends in a multi-pronged fist of spikes. Introduced in the cold open, the mask is prominently displayed like a piece of art in Billie’s home before it is brought to the forefront for an unexpected purpose in the last act, accompanied by some truly incredible looking practical effects.

To say more would be to give away Corpus‘ secrets and this is a film that deserves to be feasted upon. Boasting a dirty, sweaty fashion shoot visual aesthetic and a central queer relationship that is undeniably erotic yet toxic, Corpus is surprising, audacious, and just the right amount of perverted. 4.5/5

Corpus made its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival

‘Godhead’ Review – Religious Home Invasion Film Is Equal Parts Frustrating and Enthralling [Fantasia 2026]

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A high angle shot in black and white of a woman with her face turned up to the camera in religious ecstasy

The premise of Godhead, the latest from writer/director Mark H. Rapaport (Hippo), is fascinating: a pair of fraternal twins arrive at an empty church and demand that the Father (Al Warren) identify, then kill whichever one of them is the Holy Spirit.

As a concept, this is filled with potential. Not only for the religious dilemma of a man of the cloth being made to murder someone, but as a twist on the traditional home invasion subgenre, wherein unhinged individuals whose actions can’t be predicted force themselves into a sanctified environment. Add to this the fact that Father isn’t everything he appears to be, and there’s plenty of simmering tension and conflict to go around.

The problem is that Rapaport’s script never fully capitalizes on its potential, instead settling into countless heady conversations that feel more indebted to his prose than contributing meaningfully to the narrative.

A black and white image of a dark haired woman (left) and a man with bleached blond hair (right) in identical white track suits standing in a church

It’s a shame because there’s plenty to recommend about the film: first and foremost the performances by the actors playing the twins. The pair are never named (as they explain, they don’t believe in Christian traditions), so they’re only known as Firstborn (Sarah Coffey) and Secondborn (Kimball Farley, reuniting with his Hippo collaborator).

Coffey is the clear standout of the two, principally because she has vastly more dialogue than her nearly mute brother. She handles Rapaport’s dialogue best, infusing the character’s religious-tinged sentiments with a combination of disdain, simmering aggression, and piety. It’s a captivating performance, especially the charged encounter she shares with Father in his car as Firstborn reveals what she knows of his past and how events have been engineered to guarantee their encounter.

Farley is, by necessity, quieter and more introspective (the character’s backstory suggests that he is minorly developmentally delayed because Firstborn temporarily asphyxiated him in the womb), but the kinder, gentler of the twins swings like a pendulum between naïve innocent and violent enforcer. Farley and Coffey play off each other well and the sibling connection, as well as their religious mania, is exceedingly believable.

Warren has the most difficult role because Farley is partially the audience’s proxy so the character spends a lot of his time poking holes in the twins’ story (the vast majority of the film is posed as a theological debate about whether the twins are telling the truth). Intriguingly, Father himself is no saint: he is introduced from the outset as a liar who has been raising a pre-teen son (an under utilized Luke Speakman) in secret after discovering the baby on the church’s doorstep. As a result, the boy, Michael, has never been allowed outside, lied to by Father that the outside world is unsafe and plagued by end of days-style catastrophes.

A black and white image of a bald man in glasses making the "shhh" motion by pressing his finger to his lips

This complicated backstory alone should make Father extremely compelling, but by hinging the narrative on his disbelief, Godhead tends to run in circles or avoid its most intriguing aspects. Rather than get to the bottom of Firstborn and Secondborn’s claims, Father tends to spend his time attempting to debunk them as liars or simply escape. One crucial early scene all but confirms the reality of what is happening, but Father handwaves it away.

The result is a number of lengthy back and forth conversations between him and Firstborn (and, to a lesser extent, Secondborn) that revisit variations of the same content again and again. The performances carry these scenes, but it sometimes seems as if Rapaport is needlessly delaying the film’s reveal rather than allowing the film to unfold organically.

Caveat: it’s entirely possible that these sequences will play better for individuals with a stronger religious background or faith.

Despite this, the film is eminently watchable. While the action is mostly restricted to a single location – the church – Rapaport ensures that the film is never stagnant. He and cinematographer William Babcock regularly vary the shot composition and keep the camera moving and the inky black and white color palette plays into the film’s moral dilemma (admittedly, Godhead’s visual aesthetic and thematic interests made it was difficult not to compare the film with Mark O’Brien’s similar, but more narratively satisfying The Righteous).

Ultimately Godhead is a challenging film to fully recommend. Its scripting issues are frustrating and make the film feel both longer and more drawn out than its 99 minute runtime. And yet, the undeniably well-made film features two compelling performances by the twins and the mise-en-scène is sumptuous. All in all, Godhead is a half-way there kind of production. 2.5/5

Godhead had its world premiere at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival

Intolerance is the True Horror in ‘The Last Thing Mary Saw’ [Fantasia Review]

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God is at the core of The Last Thing Mary Saw, a religious period drama that fuses mild religious hysteria with a quiet lesbian love story, then adds a splash of supernatural to the mix.

The film, written and directed by Edoardo Vitaletti, opens with a John Calvin quote about God governing events, then introduces audiences to a blindfolded woman (Stefanie Scott) being questioned by an interrogator (Daniel Pearce). The time is 1843 and while it’s uncertain what has happened, the woman – who we’ll eventually learn is the titular character – is blind and something terrible has occurred. 

The Last Thing Mary Saw unfolds in three chapters, each named after a Biblical morality story contained in a cursed text that Mary (Scott), the daughter of an affluent New York family, and Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), her educated maid and lesbian lover, read between romantic interludes throughout the film. The stories themselves are unsettling, much like the film, in that they correspond not only to religious allegory, but also to the film unfolding before us. The stories act as a kind of joint non-diegetic meta commentary, as well as a diegetic foreshadowing device for the characters (although they never seem to pick up on the parallels).

Mary and Eleanor’s romance is exposed early in the film, which is nice if only because it transforms their affair from a secret to an intolerant inciting incident. Given that it is the 19th century and the family is extremely religious, they are both punished with Correction, a medieval torture practice wherein the girls are made to kneel on rice and repeat lines of Scripture for hours on end. The torture, however, doesn’t alter their feelings for one another and the two continue seeing each other, paying off Theodore (PJ Sosko), the guardsman, with fresh baked bread in exchange for the anonymous use of the chicken coop, away from prying eyes.

Naturally it all falls apart, thanks in part to Mary’s voyeuristic younger brother Matthew (Eli Rayman), her grandma the Matriarch (Judith Roberts) and a general lack of understanding of queer psychology of the time period. The family believes that separating the girls by sending Eleanor away or punishing them will end the affair (It doesn’t) and as the torture continues, the girls begin their own counter plot.

A death and the appearance of Rory Culkin as a character named The Intruder in the second Chapter throws events into chaos as the film plays with some interesting storytelling techniques. It is religious custom to spend the day of the funeral in silence, which shifts the focus of the story into the visual realm and thrusts Culkin’s new character into the limelight. It’s a memorable, malicious performance that plays exceedingly well off Fuhrman’s mute maid, and sets the stage for a confronting, albeit anticipated, outcome filled with bloodshed.

Overall the narrative of The Last Thing Mary Saw is arguably its weakest component. There’s not much to this historical treatise on the dangers of oppression and intolerance. The film’s strength, then, lies in its sumptuous production design and moody period aesthetic. The lighting is almost naturalistic, casting vast inky pools of black where the lamps don’t reach and stretching out the shadows across the corners of the room. The violence and supernatural elements, in particular, are highly memorable, as is the escalating dread that accompanies the inevitable climax; it’s evident where all of this drama is headed, not only because of the framing device, but also the tension between Mary, Eleanor and the rest of the family (minus naive Matthew) is combustible.

Ultimately The Last Thing Mary Saw is a beautiful, contemplative period piece with a few stand-out performances and gorgeous mise-en-scene. One only wishes that the storytelling was on the same level as the production design. 3/5

The Last Thing Mary Saw played at the 2021 Fantasia International Film Festival.

[Fantasia Review] Paradise Hills Offers Beauty, But Misunderstands Its Own Appeal

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A beautifully maintained island full of young women that need to be “fixed.” A rebellious princess with a tragic past. A fantasy world with a mildly dystopian undercurrent, complete with a financial caste system. This is the world of Paradise Hills, the feature film debut of Alice Waddington. [Read more…]

[Fantasia 2019] Five Films To Get Excited For At This Year’s Festival

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You know that it’s summer when you start getting emails about Fantasia Film Festival. The largest genre film festival in North America is celebrating its 23rd year in Montreal, QB this summer. 130 features from the globe will be playing the fest, which runs from July 11 – Aug 1, 2019. [Read more…]