INCUBUS
2022 · 16m · United Kingdom
Directed by Tito Fernandes
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
A woman who flees her abuser becomes trapped on a boat, locked in a solitary battle with debilitating fear itself.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
INCUBUS trades the obvious revenge narrative for something weirder—trapping her antagonist *inside* her own mind, turning the boat into a psychological maze instead of a plot device. It's the kind of genre move that makes you recalibrate what a trauma thriller can actually do.
Fernandes positions this within the lineage of psychological horror and embodied cinema—the formal discipline of containment (one location, internal geography) recalls both Polanski and contemporary body-horror practitioners, all rigorously sustained across 16 minutes.
The decision to literalize fear as a presence rather than a metaphor—and then *film* that presence through negative space and sound design alone—is the hinge the entire film turns on, and it's executed with remarkable restraint on what's clearly a modest budget.