Teething Problems
2025 · 28m · UK
Directed by Felix Bamborough
Genres: dark comedy, drama, horror
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, melancholic
Grieving widower Jude is haunted by the absence of his wife Ellie when a late-night advert for New Life Services offers to bring her back. The enigmatic Frank explains the catch: the procedure requires every one of Ellie's teeth, sending Jude and his teenage neighbor on an increasingly absurd quest that includes asking Ellie's mother for her baby teeth — and forces him to weigh how far grief should drag him into the macabre.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally—a film that takes grief seriously by making it completely ridiculous, turning resurrection into a dental bureaucracy that somehow feels more honest than any sincere eulogy. The fact that it asks Ellie's mother for her baby teeth and makes you *feel* something in that absurdist moment? That's the opposite of what consensus taste would greenlight, and it's exactly right.
Bamborough situates this squarely in the lineage of contemporary British dark comedy—a measured escalation from pathos to the grotesque that recalls a more caustic *Four Lions*, with editing that knows when to let the grotesquerie breathe and when to cut away. The formal restraint is what sells the premise; a lesser director would wink at the audience.
The decision to play Frank's deadpan explanations of dental resurrection requirements without irony—treating the absurd with bureaucratic seriousness—is the hinge the whole film turns on, and it transforms what could've been a one-joke premise into something that actually excavates how grief makes us believe impossible things.
Festivals
- 666 Horror Film Challenge 2025, Best Film
- Orlando Premiere 2025