A LITTLE DEATH
2026 · 10m
Directed by Maria Pawlikowska
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
An undead woman who feeds on energy transferred during male orgasm is left alone to protect her species from extinction when her partner succumbs to ennui.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A succubus film that treats sexual parasitism as a genuine reproductive crisis—not titillation, not camp, but a real species' survival problem told with deadpan surrealism. This is the kind of premise that makes you uncomfortable *and* think, which is exactly where the best subversive work lives.
Pawlikowska positions herself in a lineage of body horror and sexual anxiety that runs from Cronenberg through contemporary feminist cinema, though the execution here—mixing myth with ennui as a narrative engine—feels more conceptually assured than formally resolved.
The singular choice here is treating ennui as a contagion that breaks a parasitic bond; that tonal pivot from horror to melancholy existentialism, and the willingness to let it land without irony, is what makes a 10-minute premise with a tiny budget feel like it's saying something true.
Reviews
A LITTLE DEATH is a bold, high-concept masterpiece that challenges everything you know about the undead. It is original, provocative, and absolutely not what you expect.