The Face of Horror: Anna Biller bewitches with a tragic medieval horrorshow

• Reviewed from the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival

Ten years after the luscious comedy-horror The Love Witch (2016) propelled Anna Biller to fame, the American writer-director has presented her new Technicolor-esque vision of patriarchal dread. Unlike its predecessor, The Face of Horror is steeped in tragedy and locates its dramatic core in a dream marriage turned into a nightmare, set against the backdrop of a feudal 14th-century England. Land ownership and misogyny go hand-in-hand in a male-dominated world where even the most resplendent of gowns (designed by the director herself) weighs you down as if it were made of steel.  

The film centres on the daughter of a well-off merchant named Eleanor (Kristine Froseth, star of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell), who is courted by a knight of dubious virtue. As much as Edward Carnifex (Jonah Hauer-King) is bewitched by Eleanor’s ethereal beauty, his desire to wed her is anything but pure. He pursues a violent plot to land the role of husband (and land-owner), by first killing his father-in-law and then swearing to avenge his death. Hauer-King fits perfectly as a man both loathsome and handsome, his bouncy curls and disarming smile playing very differently here than in the shipwreck that was The Little Mermaid (2023), in which Hauer-King stared as Prince Eric. Biller draws the sinister out of him. 

With time, the main relationship erodes in the most predictable ways, as motherhood, domestic work, and signs of aging repel Edward, slowly eroding the naive promise of courtly love. Eleanor becomes increasingly pale and fragile, but hopes to be seen as beautiful again, batting her fake eyelashes at him as soon as their baby is asleep. Meanwhile her husband is planning to conquer a noblewoman (Bella Heathcote). This is where Biller turns her protagonist from powerless victim into a vengeful force. Bolstered by her sister Beatrice (Ellie Bamber), who would rather wield a sword than rely on a man, Eleanor allows anger in, inviting a physical change that is, according to the patriarchal beauty norms, repulsive. Unsurprisingly, The Face of Horror (like its title) places a narrative emphasis on transformations which disfigure and empower the character at the same time. 

Biller’s film draws inspiration from Yotsuya Kaidan, a 1825 kabuki play which has also had multiple screen adaptations, including films by directors like Nakagawa Nobuo in 1959 and Toyoda Shirō in 1965. But instead of relying on this historical context, her gothic horror-tragedy – shot on 35mm and lit to sculpt the actors’ faces as separate from their opulent backgrounds – is drowning in despair and the fear that men will simply never learn. 

► The Face of Horror is screening at the 2026 BFI London Film Festival on 15 and 17 October.