The Sleight
2025 · 22m
Directed by Ben Kurstin
Genres: dark comedy, horror, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
A washed-up magician is lured to a fan's hotel room, drugged and handcuffed by a fanatical group of women who believe he is their long-lost cult leader.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A magician-as-messiah kidnapping that plays the premise completely straight — no winking, no safety rails — and somehow lands as both horror and comedy without asking permission from either genre. This is the kind of swing that makes other scouts nervous and proves why they should be.
The film walks a tonal tightrope that recalls the formal control of early Karyn Kusama or certain Safdie moments, using spatial constraint and dialogue rhythm to build dread that never collapses into parody, even when the premise invites it.
What makes this work is the decision to play the fan-cult's delusion with absolute conviction in the performances — no camp, no irony — which transforms what could've been a easy satire into something genuinely unsettling and singular.
Festivals
- Spooktacular Film Fest for Horror & Sci-Fi 2025, Official Selection