Évangéline
2026 · 10m · United States
Directed by Cory St. Ewart
Genres: coming-of-age, fantasy, horror
In 1940s Louisiana, a young Cajun girl with a passion for the swamp and singing defies her father's prohibition on exploring the wild, and forges a sinister, mystical bond with a Rougarou.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Cajun-Rougarou coming-of-age that leans hard into regional Gothic—it's got teeth, but the premise plays it a little too straight, hitting familiar beats of 'girl rebels, girl gets cursed' that even the swamp mythology can't quite subvert.
St. Ewart grounds this in a lineage of folkloric horror and bildungsroman, with the Louisiana setting functioning as both character and formal architecture; the mythic tone suggests real consideration of how regional storytelling tradition shapes the grammar of the film itself.
The film's entire power hinges on how St. Ewart captures that moment of surrender in the girl's face when she chooses the Rougarou over obedience—a single micro-performance choice that reframes the whole thing from punishment to agency, lifting what could be a conventional dark-fairy-tale into something genuinely unsettling.