Something Borrowed (2026)
Directed & Written by Findlay Ironside
Starring Anna Villeneuve
Horror
★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Findlay Ironside’s Something Borrowed begins with a bride (Anna Villeneuve) rushing to get ready in the moments before her wedding, but this normal situation descends into pure body horror fast. When the bride feels like she isn’t fitting in her dress the way she expected, she relies on a quick-fix technique to slim herself down. To say anything else would be to spoil the grim, cruel delight of discovering the horror for yourself.
Ironside’s short is an utterly brutal, gut-churning horror perspective on the toll women’s bodies take in a patriarchal world; it could’ve been set on any day, yet setting this story on the bride’s wedding day hammers home not only the patriarchy at work but also how it’s upheld by other women. The final line the bride hears, uttered by her mother, is a vicious bit of work after the quiet violence she puts herself through in the previous minutes. Ironside deals so horrifically well with the way the quest for the perfect dress and the perfect wedding day is all too often wrapped up in an obsession over women’s bodies. Something Borrowed is a powerful indictment of the overall patriarchal culture that cruelly polices women’s bodies.
The Thing Inside Her (2026)
Directed by Jacki Gunn & Della Haddock
Screenplay by Jacki Gunn
Starring Jacki Gunn, Matthew Graham, & Arghavan Jenati.
Comedy / Horror
★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Jacki Gunn and Della Haddock’s The Thing Inside Her follows Harriet (Gunn) as she has her IUD removed due to feeling out of whack recently. After the IUD’s removed, she starts to see her boyfriend Matt (Matthew Graham) slightly differently. She notices he takes way too many showers and he’s always a bit… moist. But when her best friend Ava (Arghavan Jenati) starts pushing her to see the real Matt, her eyes open fully and she sees the slimy truth like a trail right in front of her.
The Thing Inside Her is brilliant because underneath the hilarious, gooey surface, it’s a film critiquing the changes often forced, even unconsciously, onto women in long term relationships. Despite hormonal and physical changes, women are expected by men to do something about potential pregnancy; vasectomy is rarely ever on the table, so it always lands on the woman to take pills, get injections, or have a piece of plastic lodged into their uterus. Once Harriet has the IUD spell reversed, she starts to finally see Matt realistically, and his exaggerated, grotesque form is a perfect metaphor for the way the rose-coloured glasses can come off once the patriarchal spell is lifted from women stuck in relationships with shitty men. Matt tells Harriet at one point that excluding the IUD, her “baby maker” makes her “just crazy” in general. Unfortunately, Harriet doesn’t escape her relationship. Even without the IUD she can’t bring herself to be rid of her disgusting boyfriend. The ending finishes on an unnerving image that speaks to the grip terrible men have on the women they’ve lured into their nauseating grip. Yuck (in the best way)!
