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
