A haunting new blend of romance and body horror arrives this summer with Else, a French-Belgian genre-bending movie set to premiere on Fandor and VOD on July 8.
Marking the feature debut of director Thibault Emin, the film is adapted from his 2007 short of the same name and co-written with Alice Butaud and Emma Sandona. Described as a romantic psychological thriller wrapped in a scary movie package, Else tells the unsettling story of an introverted man and a confident woman who fall in love — only to be trapped in a horrific new world as a bizarre epidemic causes people to physically merge with their surroundings.
Matthieu Sampeur, Edith Proust, and Lika Minamoto star in the film, which uses surreal horror to explore emotional intimacy in times of crisis.
Writing in his horror movie review out of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), critic Joe Lipsett praised Else for its duality: “The body horror is often horrifying, but when filtered through the romanticism of Else’s central love story, the visuals lend the film a grandeur that is intimate, poetic, and tragic.”
The release of Else kicks off Fandor’s eclectic July slate, which includes cult classics, obscure gems, and international oddities:
