A New Wave of Films in April
Welcome to the ABC Arts April film wrap. This month, there’s a lot to look forward to in the world of cinema. After a long-running legal battle between Rebel Wilson and producers, the Australian actor’s directorial debut The Deb finally makes it to local cinemas this month. Alongside this, there’s a powerful look at Palestinian life through multiple generations, a buzzy Japanese video game adaptation makes its way to Aussie shores, and two of the most talked-about horror movies of 2026.
All That’s Left Of You
A stellar run of powerful films has allowed a glimpse at the reality on the ground for Palestinians recently, from the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land to the devastating The Voice of Hind Rajab. Palestinian American actor-turned-director Cherien Dabis’s emotionally epic All That’s Left Of You grounds the contemporary atrocities in historical injustice by following several generations of one family loosely based on her own.
It opens with the shooting of a teenage boy, Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) on the sun-baked streets of the occupied West Bank in 1988. His mother, Hanan, portrayed by the filmmaker, narrates how we got here. Shifting back to the Palestinian city of Jaffa in the terrifying days leading up to 1948’s Nakba, which means ‘catastrophe’, Omar and Slam star Adam Bakri grounds this distressing segment with an aching heart.
As Sharif, he attempts to defend their ancestral home from Zionist soldiers while evacuating the family, only to be assaulted in their burning orange grove. Jumping forward to 1978, Bakri’s brother, The Blue Caftan star Saleh, plays his son, Salim, with Sharif now portrayed by their real-life father, Mohammad, as the drama shifts to the occupied West Bank where old wounds fester.
In adopting the Bakris to help tell her story, and that of the Palestinian people more broadly, Dabis, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, layers unbearable authenticity into their trials. Even as we bear witness to the worst of humanity, All That’s Left Of You refuses to lose sight of the light that their familial bond shines in the darkest night.
Exit 8
Do you ever get the feeling, while non-consensually smooshed into a stranger’s sweaty armpits on public transport, that you’re stuck in some kind of purgatorial loop? Welcome to Japanese author-turned-filmmaker Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8. An eerie adaptation of Kotake Create’s existential video game of the same name, it’s a creepier spin on Groundhog Day that casts boy band star Kazunari ‘Nino’ Ninomiya as the ‘Lost Man’.
Commuting to work, he plugs in his earbuds and doom-scrolls on his phone while ignoring a fellow passenger screaming at a young mum cradling her squalling baby. He receives a call from his situationship (Nana Komatsu), who has just found out she’s pregnant and doesn’t know what to do. He’s non-committal. Failing to notice the hubbub of the metro fall away, he enters a stark, white-tiled stretch devoid of commuters, barring Yamato Kochi’s bizarre ‘Walking Man’, passing on never-ending repeat.
The Lost Man realises, in an inhaler-puffing panic, he must keep track of anomalies in this Escher-like limbo to reach the titular Exit 8, an extremely lucky number in Japanese culture. But his escape slips back to zero if he fails to notice alterations, from obvious terrors like scurrying mutant rats, to subtle shifts in architecture. Co-written with Kentaro Hirase, who also helped adapt Kawamura’s novel One Hundred Flowers, Exit 8 works both as anxiety-inducing horror and a philosophical musing on embracing life’s challenges. Closer to the unmooring ennui of Donnie Darko than the Bill Murray-led classic’s dark comedy, it’ll get stuck in your mind.
Hokum
Like the last two seasons of Severance, Hokum gets a lot of mileage out of Adam Scott being tortured by an elevator. It’s hard to feel too bad for him, though. Playing famed novelist Ohm Bauman, Scott is equal parts smug, misanthropic and self-satisfied, even while scattering his parents’ ashes in rural Ireland. The film’s nimble screenplay coyly hints at what kind of frights are in store for Bauman as he lodges at a creaky hotel nestled in the woods.
Locals whisper of a witch who haunts the grounds; superstitions aside, the acclaimed author has no shortage of personal demons to contend with even before he broaches the accommodation’s sealed-off honeymoon suite. Hokum is severely stressful and compulsively watchable, even when viewed between the slits of your fingers. Viewers sensitive to gore will likely warm to writer-director Damian McCarthy’s (Oddity) restrained style. It’s an exercise in technical precision over in-your-face schlock, but arguably to a fault — the film’s sheer intensity can only compensate so much for a lack of truly skin-crawling imagery.
Still, McCarthy proves himself to be one of horror’s most exciting new talents. Though his films have all taken place on his Irish homeland, don’t be surprised if Hollywood snaps him up to jolt an ailing horror franchise back to life.
The Deb
From Wicked to KPop Demon Hunters (and endless Disney remakes), the movie musical is in full renaissance mode. Powered by slick vocals and catchy compositions that serve timely narratives, it’s no wonder they capture worldwide attention. The Deb is, in its DNA, no different – and I hope it gets the audience it deserves, too.
Riffing on the trope of ‘city slicker versus country bumpkin’, The Deb follows two high school girls who have different ideas of what empowerment looks like. Maeve, the private school girl from Sydney (whose school yard hilariously overlooks the Opera House) is a capital-G Girlboss who wouldn’t set foot near a debutante ball, while her cousin Taylah is certain the country town deb will change her life.
With references to Grease, Annie, and Wicked, the film manages to combine the best of its influences with a unique local perspective (what other film opens with a bunch of teenagers calling their mum the c-bomb?). It’s a rare Aussie flick that can showcase the stereotypical sights of the country without tumbling into a cringe-fest. The only time it loses points are when the vocals are too pitch-corrected, or the camera work and editing noticeably cover up some lip syncing.
Written by Hannah Reilly and directed by Rebel Wilson, The Deb is a delight. Megan Washington’s songs are not only bangers, but are loaded with funny lines and plot-moving beats. Charlotte MacInnes and Natalie Abbott embody their city girl/country girl archetypes while showcasing a complexity underneath – and they also belt more than an outback stud rancher. The soundtrack is going straight to my morning playlist.
Undertone
“Great sound design” isn’t typically seen as a reason to go to the movies, but when it comes to Undertone — the latest low-budget chiller branded with an A24 logo — a state-of-the-art auditory experience might just be worth the price of admission. The narrative may as well be ripped directly from the internet’s creepypasta archives. An investigative podcaster, Evy (Nina Kiri), is taking care for her dying mother when she’s forwarded an email containing 10 unsettling recordings.
The recordings paint an increasingly worrying picture of a couple in distress. Initially, a pregnant woman is heard singing London Bridge in her sleep; later, Evy discovers a low, craggily voice embedded within background noise. For a writer-director who clearly thrives off minimalist style — tension is drawn out through carefully framed static shots and, again, that eerily immersive sound mix — Ian Tuason’s horror sensibility is unapologetically corny.
This is a movie about grief, religious guilt and motherhood that sincerely builds most of its scares on creepy nursery rhymes. And, like most horror auteurs, Tuason’s visual smarts far exceed his handle on dialogue and storytelling; by the end of the film, Undertone abandons narrative coherence in favour of hurling as much creepy imagery at the walls as possible.
As a feat of ultra low-budget directing, Undertone is undeniably impressive — but at a certain point, this could’ve just been an audio drama.
