FrightFest 26' ‘HY3NA’ Review: A Stylish Thriller That Struggles to Make Its Bite Last

Kristen Kaster and Storm Steenson navigate sexuality, manipulation and violence in Matthew Ninaber’s HY3NA.

The world of online sex work, manipulation and the constant search for the next hustle provides fertile ground for HY3NA, Matthew Ninaber’s stylish thriller that arrives with plenty of ferocity but doesn’t always find the bite necessary to make its ideas stick.

Screening as part of FrightFest 2026, HY3NA comes from director Matthew Ninaber and writer Jana Kitzman. Kristen Kaster stars as Nicole, a young woman living somewhere between drifting and surviving, continually searching for her next opportunity and trying to determine where she fits.

That search introduces her to Rachel, played by Storm Steenson, an engaging and sexually confident presence who pulls Nicole toward the increasingly lucrative world of online sex work. Platforms built around direct access to creators offer Nicole an opportunity to transform sexuality into income, and it doesn’t take long before she begins finding an audience.

Then the bodies start piling up.

A pair of detectives begin noticing recurring patterns surrounding a series of incidents, with Nicole repeatedly appearing somewhere within that orbit. Whether she’s involved, being manipulated or becoming a victim herself becomes part of the film’s central game.

From there, HY3NA operates through cat-and-mouse maneuvering, misdirection and shifting power dynamics. Ninaber and Kitzman use Nicole and Rachel’s relationship to explore ideas surrounding sexuality, exploitation, control and the ways young women can attempt to reclaim agency within systems that are simultaneously capable of profiting from them.

There is a distinctly feminist pulse running underneath the material, and the subject matter feels relevant to a generation where the separation between sexuality, personal identity, performance and online commerce has become increasingly complicated.

Kaster and Steenson provide solid performances at the center of it. Their dynamic gives HY3NA much of its energy, particularly when the movie allows uncertainty over motivations and allegiances to drive the story.

Visually, there are also moments when HY3NA looks ready to become a much sleeker and more distinctive thriller. Ninaber finds flashes of style that complement the film’s themes, and there are sequences where its combination of sexuality, danger and manipulation starts generating the intensity the premise promises.

The problem is maintaining it.

Whenever HY3NA appears ready to push itself into more provocative territory, the film has a tendency to retreat toward its limitations. The ideas are present, the performances are capable and the filmmaking occasionally finds the right visual language, but those pieces don’t consistently come together into something as impactful as the material could have been.

That’s particularly noticeable because the subjects HY3NA is engaging with are already part of a much larger contemporary conversation. Online sex work, parasocial relationships, exploitation and the commodification of identity provide plenty to examine. Simply entering that conversation isn’t enough. A film dealing with those subjects needs something more pointed to say if it wants to remain in the viewer’s head after the credits.

HY3NA never quite gets there.

There are attempts at fury and ferociousness throughout the film, and even when those moments don’t completely land, the ambition behind them is visible. There’s enough style, thematic relevance and chemistry between Kaster and Steenson to keep the movie moving.

But being watchable isn’t the same as being memorable.

For a film named after an animal associated with predatory instinct and survival, HY3NA spends plenty of time showing its teeth. It just doesn’t bite deeply enough to leave much of a mark.

2 out of 5