Drag Review (2026 Overlook Film Festival)
Drag fuses farcical slapstick humour with wince-inducing gore and palm-sweating tension to deliver a highly entertaining and often vicious housebreak horror.
Two sisters, played by Lucy DeVito and Lizzy Caplan, find themselves trapped in a spiralling clusterfuck when the main instigator injures their back during a home robbery. With one sister now helplessly incapacitated, they must endure a slow and painful struggle to escape the scene of the crime before the occupant returns.
High on concept and low on cast members, this pleasingly minimalist blast of misdirection and mayhem amuses and antagonises in equal measure.
The screenplay oozes comedic contempt, crushed under the bitter baggage of sibling blame games as events shift from ludicrous to life-threatening, with nearly all backstory relayed through barrages of bickering and recrimination. However, the writing remains sharp as the sisters verbally prod each other through each tortuous phase of the attempted escape.
Each of the performers inhabit the same tonally consistent space, teetering precariously between hysterical and plausible. John Stamos, of Full House fame, embellishes his role with a surreal madness, helped no doubt by his stint as tour drummer for The Beach Boys, and Lizzy Caplan channels lumber pain in a remarkable medley of facial contortions and expletive heavy outpourings.
The excellent gore focuses on personal injury with unwavering precision with one truly icky sequence a delicious mash up of Hitchcockian tautness and torture porn excess. The trauma build up effects are also superb leaving Lizzy Caplan looking like an extra from The Raid 2.
As horror black comedies go, Drag shuffles on the peripherals of Irréversible more than you might suspect, but that’s not to say its charmless or without heart. Nor is it without guile, as each narrative signpost is carefully erected with clear directions to satisfying call backs.
Sure there are plot holes, deep enough to bury Donald Trump’s Dunning-Kruger effect, but the film’s enthusiasm and garish tenacity are fascinators enough to provide a cleansing distraction. Drag knows you will most likely twig its main twists some moments before they are revealed and doesn’t overtry to obscure them. The real joy of this ride are the more subtle curveballs that drift in from the outfield on mischievous trajectories.
Brisk and ballsy Drag is a fine example of a self-contained genre picture, an elevated midnight movie crammed with carnage and acerbic humour that will make you cheer, chuckle and cringe all at the same time.
★★★★
Screened at Overlook Film Festival on April 10th/ Lizzy Caplan, Lucy DeVito, John Stamos, Christine Ko / Dir’s: Raviv Ullman, Greg Yagolnitzer / Jersey Films 2nd Avenue and Asbury Point Production / R
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