Ringworms
2022 · 13m · United States
Directed by Will Lee
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tense
After discovering her boyfriend's plan to propose on their weekend vacation, a young woman undergoes a crisis of commitment which attracts the attention of a sinister cult.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A commitment-anxiety thriller that *actually* commits to the absurd by letting a cult become the real relationship crisis—subversive enough to make you wonder if the proposal was ever the actual threat. Lee's doing something properly weird here, and it shouldn't work, but it does.
Ringworms sits at an uneasy intersection of psychological drama and genre horror, and while the tonal ambition is there, the execution feels more exploratory than formally resolved—a film still negotiating its own DNA rather than owning a clear lineage.
The pivot from romantic dread to occult entanglement hinges entirely on how the sound design isolates the moment she realizes she's being watched; that single layer of encroaching dread carries the entire premise from gimmick to genuine unsettlement.