BEAUTY QUEEN
2026 · 2m
Directed by Anaïs Le Guennec
Genres: dark comedy, drama, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tense
Three pretty bullies harass Peggy with incessant texts; when they invite themselves into her home, everything tips over.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A home-invasion revenge fantasy that flips the script on mean-girl narratives—except Le Guennec refuses to milk the catharsis, letting the tonal whiplash between comedy and dread linger uncomfortably instead of resolving it. That refusal to give us what we came for is exactly why it works.
Le Guennec's command of spatial tension and editing rhythm recalls the precision of Karyn Kusama's early work, situating this two-minute piece within a lineage of intimate thrillers that weaponize domestic space; the formal control never tips into pastiche.
The entire film hinges on a single choice—the decision to keep the camera static and let the violence happen off-frame or suggest itself through performance—and that constraint transforms what could've been exploitation into something genuinely unsettling and precise.