The Remedy Review (2026 SXSW London)
A supernatural trip to the dark side of palliative care...
Alex Kahuam’s caregiver creep fest, The Remedy, taps the veins of fractured family loyalty and mental disorders to create a suffocating Gothic psychodrama.
Troubled Jason (Timothy Granaderos) and his bipolar sister Rachel (London Thor) are nursing their mother, Maria (Jenny O’Hara). Weeks away from death, Jason and Rachel resist advice to hospitalise Maria, determined to implement her explicit wishes of homoeopathic treatments.
The siblings are set against each other, Jason administering a bizarre concoction his mother purchased, while Rachel channels voodoo spirit warding through collages made from her dead pet’s bones. When The Remedy she is guzzling down gives their mother a ravenous appetite for live flesh, her offspring begin to crumble under the pressures of division. End-of-life care is a bleak reality often brushed under the carpet; whether we plan to fly to Switzerland or duke it out with the grim reaper to the bitter end, it’s a looming spectre all the same. The horror genre has embraced this dark inevitability with a surge of deathbed demons, last-gasp ghoulishness, and mortal-coil-shuffling scares.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? somewhat paved the way for films such as The Dark and The Wicked and Relic to add supernatural terrors to the misery of familial caregiving. More recently, the superb Undertone injected the troubling subject matter into a modernist context. The Remedy is the latest film to burrow into this morbid premise and does so with Gothic-tinged glee and refreshing economy.
Menacing and Machiavellian, this pacy potboiler has a schlocky appeal that doesn’t overshadow the cloying fog of sadness that swamps the brain during terminal illness care. Kahuam curates a tangible sense of disorientation and desperation familiar to anyone who has experienced the soul-sapping burnout of supporting a loved one during a protracted demise.
As the gruesomeness escalates, The Remedy keeps a steely grip on the relationship essential to its claustrophobic core and allows fluidity during interactions within its parameters. With canny relish, it discombobulates the viewer into an emotional motion sickness by way of constant disturbing imagery and woozy camera angles. There’s a smattering of well-placed jump scares and splatters of eye-watering gore, but it’s this abiding aura of dread and psychological disconnection that gives the film its identity.
The screenplay is occasionally clunky, but the fine performances plaster over the cracks before they can damage the film’s foundations. The overall paucity of backstory is necessary to the film’s structural integrity; however, it compromises character development at times. Particularly the film’s youngest sibling, Rachel. London Thor has an entrancing screen presence, and she is clearly talented enough to operate on the outer limits of her range, so it’s a shame her role’s obsession with syncretic religion is underwritten.
The boldly orchestrated twist ending is not groundbreaking, indeed it borrows from a quintessential horror classic. However, it concludes this well-rounded fright flick perfectly, showcasing some brutal violence as well as posing thorny questions about the effectiveness of community support for mental health and society’s avoidance of awkward truths.
★★★★
Screened at London SXSW Screen Festival on the 3rd of June 2026 / Timothy Granaderos, London Thor, Doug Jones, Jenny O’Hara / Dir: Alex Kahuam / Strike Media / 18
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