Posthumous Review | Fantastic Fest 2026
FANTASTIC FEST 2026 REVIEW
‘Posthumous’ Review: Josh Tanner Finds Supernatural Dread in Grief, Memory and Analog Technology
Fantastic Fest 2026 begins for Horror Movies Uncut with Posthumous, Australian filmmaker Josh Tanner’s supernatural horror film that turns old photographs, videotapes and unanswered questions about a dead parent into a quietly unsettling exploration of grief and identity.
Sophie Lowe stars as Zoe, a young woman whose mother died giving birth to her. Her relationship with her estranged father has also deteriorated, and his declining health adds another layer of urgency to questions Zoe has carried for most of her life. When she uncovers old photographs involving her parents and their eclectic neighbors, she begins searching for connections between the images, her family’s past and a collection of videotapes that have become part of an annual birthday ritual.
Tanner builds much of Posthumous around that investigation, allowing Zoe’s search for her mother to gradually become something stranger. The videotapes are more than a convenient piece of analog horror iconography. They represent one of the few remaining ways Zoe can interact with a past she never personally experienced.
That gives the film an emotional foundation underneath its supernatural mechanics. Zoe is not simply investigating something mysterious. She is attempting to understand why she exists and who her mother was, knowing that one of the only people capable of answering those questions has been gone since the moment Zoe entered the world.
Lowe carries that weight well. Her performance gives Tanner room to keep the movie relatively restrained because Zoe’s loneliness and need for answers remain present even when very little is happening externally. For viewers who grew up knowing both parents, there is an experience here that can easily be taken for granted. Zoe has spent her entire life with questions most people can simply ask.
Visually and thematically, Posthumous frequently recalls the Japanese technology horror that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Films from that period were particularly effective at examining the increasingly intimate relationship between people and technology, turning televisions, videotapes, computers and other everyday objects into extensions of isolation, memory and supernatural dread.
Tanner taps into a similar anxiety.
There is something inherently eerie about watching the dead continue to exist through recorded images. Technology preserves people long after physical relationships disappear, creating the illusion that they remain accessible while simultaneously reminding us that they are not. Posthumous finds some of its strongest moments inside that contradiction.
The movie is not exclusively interested in technological horror, however. Tanner introduces folk and witchcraft elements that push Zoe’s investigation into a different supernatural space. At their best, those ideas complement the analog dread and make it feel as though Zoe is opening a portal into something that has been waiting inside her family history.
At other points, the two approaches compete for attention.
The analog technology, familial mystery and supernatural folklore do not always merge as seamlessly as they could. There are moments where Posthumous feels caught between different ideas about what kind of horror movie it wants to become, particularly as Tanner begins revealing more about what Zoe has discovered.
The film’s deliberate pacing may also determine how strongly audiences connect with it. This is not a supernatural horror movie driven by constant escalation or large scares. Much of its effectiveness depends upon whether the viewer becomes invested in Zoe, Lowe’s performance and the emotional significance of what she is trying to uncover.
For those who make that connection, Tanner has assembled an atmospheric and carefully curated piece of supernatural horror. There are clever visual tricks and small filmmaking intricacies throughout that should appeal to viewers who appreciate patient genre storytelling and analog aesthetics.
What keeps Posthumous from pushing further is momentum and imagination. The pieces are there, and almost everything is executed competently, but the film occasionally feels as though it could reach deeper into the strange dimension Tanner has created. A few bigger creative swings might have transformed its intriguing ideas into something considerably harder to shake.
Still, Posthumous understands that its most frightening idea is also its simplest.
Zoe wants to know her mother.
Technology can preserve a face, a voice and a moment in time, but it cannot necessarily provide the answers left behind when someone is gone. Tanner takes that absence and builds a supernatural mystery around it, resulting in a thoughtful, quietly effective start to HMU’s Fantastic Fest 2026.
3 out of 5
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