Godmother Review | Fantastic Fest 2026
Among the films arriving at Fantastic Fest 2026 with distribution already secured is Godmother, John Veron’s horror feature that is headed to Shudder.
It is also a movie Horror Movies Uncut has been following for several weeks, initially because the combination of Dee Wallace and Bruce Davison immediately made it worth watching. The concern was whether Godmother would simply become another entry in the recent wave of horror movies built around seemingly harmless older people hiding something sinister.
Thankfully, Veron has considerably more on his mind.
Godmother begins with a young couple whose future appears open but whose ideas about what that future should look like aren’t necessarily aligned. From there, the movie gradually builds its own mythology around destiny, relationships and the possibility that someone’s path might already be pointing somewhere they aren’t prepared to go.
That gives Godmother something more substantial underneath its genre mechanics.
Paige Evans and Cameron Cuffe are particularly important to making that work. Their relationship becomes the foundation through which the film examines competing ideas about ambition, independence, commitment and what people are willing to sacrifice while constructing the lives they think they want.
Evans, in particular, deserves attention.
She has the presence of a leading performer and handles the tonal shifts required as Godmother moves away from its relatively grounded opening and deeper into horror. Her previous work may include material outside the genre, but there is enough here to suggest horror would benefit from keeping her around.
Cuffe also gives the relationship enough dimension that the film’s larger questions aren’t simply theoretical. Whatever supernatural or sinister forces eventually surround these characters, their ordinary human decisions remain important.
That’s where Wallace becomes particularly effective.
There is something inherently useful about casting an actor with her history in genre cinema and then allowing that familiarity to work against the audience. Wallace can project warmth and reassurance almost immediately, which gives the film room to explore whether that comfort should actually be trusted.
Her character also becomes connected to one of Godmother’s more interesting themes: the increasingly complicated relationship modern society has with traditional ideas about love, marriage, motherhood, career and family.
The film doesn’t need to provide definitive answers to those questions to make them worth discussing.
Instead, Godmother places different versions of fulfillment alongside one another. Career success can provide security and purpose. Independence can be valuable. So can romantic love, family, partnership and allowing yourself to rely on another person.
The tension comes from what happens when those choices are treated as mutually exclusive, or when someone else decides what another person’s life is supposed to become.
That distinction keeps the movie from functioning simply as an argument for one prescribed version of adulthood.
There is also a recognizable critique of a certain kind of career-driven masculinity running through the story. Horror and contemporary cinema have spent plenty of time interrogating wealthy professionals, finance culture, tech-bro personalities and men whose pursuit of success overwhelms everything around them.
Godmother finds additional material there, but its more interesting ideas emerge when it broadens the conversation beyond one type of character.
Success doesn’t automatically transform people.
Sometimes it simply gives them more opportunity to become whatever they already were.
That idea applies across the film. Money, professional accomplishment, relationships and family can all be treated as supposed keys to happiness, but obtaining any of them doesn’t guarantee fulfillment. Godmother is most effective when it allows its characters to collide with those contradictions.
There is something refreshingly uncomfortable about a horror movie willing to ask whether contemporary attitudes toward love and family have become just as complicated as the institutions they were intended to challenge.
It also recognizes something considerably simpler beneath all that discussion.
People need people.
That doesn’t necessarily mean marriage. It doesn’t mean motherhood is mandatory, that professional ambition is misguided or that everyone should follow the same path. It means human connection still matters, even in a culture that can sometimes reward individual achievement above almost everything else.
Horror gives Veron an appropriately distorted environment in which to explore that.
The film isn’t equally successful throughout. Its opening stretches can feel stagnant, and some early material is repeated enough that the setup becomes slightly exhausting. There are moments when Godmother appears to be circling its themes instead of advancing them.
The second half improves considerably.
Once the mythology, relationships and underlying intentions begin converging, the earlier pieces make more sense. Veron finds a stronger rhythm, and the movie becomes increasingly confident about what it wants its horror to represent.
Most importantly, the ending works.
Without getting into spoilers, Godmother reaches a conclusion that justifies much of the conversation it has been constructing. Rather than allowing its ideas to disappear underneath a conventional final burst of horror, the ending reinforces them.
That left the movie in a considerably stronger position than its opening suggested.
Wallace and Davison provide the veteran genre presence that initially made Godmother intriguing, but Evans may be the discovery audiences leave talking about. She handles the responsibility of leading the story while sharing the screen with performers carrying decades of recognizable work behind them.
That isn’t an easy assignment.
She delivers.
Godmother isn’t simply another movie about creepy older people, and that’s ultimately its biggest victory. Veron uses that expectation as an entry point before building something more interested in relationships, ambition, family, identity and the choices people make when confronted with competing definitions of a successful life.
Some of those ideas will undoubtedly generate disagreement.
That’s part of the value.
Genre cinema doesn’t always need to resolve a cultural conversation. Sometimes putting uncomfortable questions onscreen and allowing an audience to argue about them afterward is enough.
Godmother does exactly that while still remembering it came to Fantastic Fest to be a horror movie.
3.5 out of 5
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