ACCUSED (India 2026) ***
Directed by Anubhuti Kashyap
The last time someone made a lesbian movie set in India, there were riots and protests, including the burning of a cinema. That was the lesbian-themed movie FIRE, directed by Deepa Mehta, a 1996 Indo-Canadian romantic drama that portrays a developing love relationship between two women. It’s one of the first mainstream films in Indian cinema to depict a lesbian relationship explicitly and sparked significant discussion and controversy upon release. ACCUSED is a lesbian bas3d drama opening on Netflix. The Indians cannot burn down the cinema this time, unless they want to burn down their own home.
ACCUSED centres on Dr Geetika Sen, a highly respected and accomplished surgeon and gynaecologist working in London. She is not only celebrated in her field but also seen as a rising leader — poised for even greater responsibility at her hospital. Geetika and her partner, Dr Meera (her wife), are planning to adopt a child together. The announcement was made at a family gathering, in which the audience was introduced to everyone. Then comes trouble in paradise. An anonymous complaint of sexual misconduct lands in the hospital’s human resources department. This allegation brands Geetika as a “sexual predator,” sending shockwaves through her professional and personal world.
The fallout affects both Geetika’s work and relationship. While Meera initially stands by her, as the scandal grows and rumours intensify, doubt begins to creep into their relationship. Meera wrestles with loyalty, trust, and the disturbing possibility that the person she loves might have crossed boundaries she never expected.
The film plays as a psychological mystery thriller with two issues of whether Geetika is actually guilty of the sexual predator accusation, and also whether her relationship with Meera will survive. The film also explores how public judgment can form. and the emotional toll that serious allegations can take on someone’s life. ACCUSED is an entertaining enough thriller, directed efficiently and moving at a fast enough pace.
ACCUSED is available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, February 27th.
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IN COLD LIGHT (Canada 2025) ***
Directed by Maxime Giroux
At her mandatory social worker meeting, Maya (Maika Monroe) is asked, “What do you want from all of this? (i.e., how do you want to see your life go?). This is the hard part.
Ava, just released from prison after a drug bust, is considering either making a new, clean life for herself or continuing with her drug-dealing business, the one she was forced to leave behind since she has to serve time. To make matters worse, she is hunted down by a crime boss as well as the police. She was beside her twin brother in their car when he got shot, and she i prime suspect.
IN COLD LIGHT is a fast-moving crime thriller centring on Ava and her need to manoeuvre her life after prison. The film is at times difficult to figure out, as the story never makes that clear. When the price first chased her during a drug bust and arrested her, the segment looks as if he was entering a drug den to make a purchase. The reason the other drug lords want her out of the picture is also never made clear.
The film, a Canadian production shot in Alberta, features plenty of ranch and rodeo scenes.
The introduction of her deaf and mute father, Will, into the story adds a welcome difference to the story. Like many other points in the story, the deaf and mute man is only revealed to be her father after they have already appeared in a few scenes together. The man who picked Ava up after her prison release and hung out with her for a while is only revealed to be her twin after a cop stops them in their car and asks them for identification. The cause of the brother’s death is also only revealed much later in the story.
The relationship between Will and Ava is emotionally complicated and marked by old wounds.
This aspect adds depth to the thriller as Will slowly becomes both an emotional anchor and a liability. Given their complicated relationship, Ava must decide whether she can trust her family. The story explores cycles of damage and survival.
Most of the action takes place at night. With the neon-lit buildings and cool colours, the mood reflects the cold nature that Ava has to adapt to survive, in the cold light.
Maika Monroe is sufficiently apt inhere role of Ava. Monroe is an American known as a scream queen, being in films like LONGLEGS and IT FOLLOWS, two highly successful horror films. Maxime Giroux is a French Canadian director whose third feature, Félix & Meira (2014), a love story between a forty-year-old loner and a young Hasidic wife and mother, received international acclaim. This is his first English-language film.
The film also has a mystery element. The mystery element is how Ava will outmaneuver the forces closing in, though it is difficult to root for a druggie and former drug queen.
Still, the film could do more of the thriller element.
IN COLD BLOOD opens in theatres February 27th, 2026.
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THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE (Iraq 2025) ***½
Directed by Hasan Hadi
In the tradition of Jafar Panahi’s 1995 Iranian film THE WHITE BALLOON, THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE has a young protagonist spending the entire film trying to find ingredients to make a cake in celebration of President Sudan Hussein’s birthday. It is 1990s Iraq, and Young Lamia (Baneen Ahmed Nayyef) lives with her ailing grandmother, Bibi (Waheeda Thabet Khreiba), eking out an existence in a remote village where the best means of travel is by meshouf, a kind of canoe. Disaster strikes when Lamia is “honoured” with bringing the cake for her school class’s mandatory celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday. In other circumstances, this might be an innocuous responsibility, but Bibi and Lamia can’t afford the ingredients — and the last family that didn’t comply was dragged through the streets. Director Hadi takes his audience around the poorer streets of Iraq, showing how people eke out a living, and it is not a pretty sight. People are poor and often dishonest. Hadi paints the wonderful innocence of children, especially of Lamia, not even knowing at the film’s start that her grandmother was selling her off for good. The film has premiered and been lauded at Cannes.
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SCREAM7 (USA 2026) ***½
Directed by Kevin Williamson
Many SCREAM aficionados are unaware of the origin of the SCREAM killer with his iconic mask. The Scream is an art composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is Skrik ('Scream'), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur ('The Scream of Nature').
A bit to know about the SCREAM franchise in order to appreciate SCREAM 7. Scream is an American slasher franchise that includes seven films, a television series, merchandise, and games. The first four films were directed by Wes Craven. SCREAM 7 is directed by Kevin Williamson. The series was created by Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two films and the fourth. Dimension Films produced the first four films. Spyglass Media Group took over the rights from the fifth film on, with Paramount Pictures distributing. The film series has grossed over US$910 million at the global box office. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, and Roger L. Jackson (who voices the various Ghostface killers) starred in the first five films and will return for the seventh. Cox and Jackson reprised their roles for the sixth film and are the only cast members to feature in all films to date, with Cox also being the only actress to appear in seven consecutive films of a horror franchise. Cox and Campbell both executive-produced SCREAM 7.
The film starts with a slashing in Woodsboro, California, Scott. A fan of the Stab series takes his girlfriend, Madison, to the Macher house, where murders happened in both 1996 and 2021, noting there are rumours that one of the original Ghostfaces, Stu Macher, might have survived having a television thrown in his head. Ghostface shows up, kills Scott and stabs Madison before dousing her with gasoline and setting her and the house on fire. This is a lively introduction that takes the audience close to 30minutes into the movie. The intro demonstrates director Williamson in top form, with shocks and surprises, with enough humour to keep the audience attentive and entertained.
The film can be considered to be a series of horror set pieces allied together with the common tread SidneyPrescott’s killer stalking her and her daughter. There are plenty of innovative scares, including one that is guaranteed to make one jump out of one's seat. This is the one most likely inspired by the scene in WAIT UNTIL DARK in which Alan Arkin suddenly jumps on an unsuspecting blind Audrey Hepburn. Here, the masked killer suddenly appears, jumping on his victimless, out of nowhere,
SCREAM 7 respects the franchise. Director Williamson understands slasher movies, and it shows in his direction of SCREAM 7. There is sufficient explanation of the story details with reprisals of roles by Cox and Campbell. The scares and shocks are both entertaining and unexpected. SCREAM 7 is a worthwhile sequel, fun, entertaining and what every SCREAM fan expects.
SCREAM 7 opens February 27th, in theatres everywhere, including on iAMX screens.
SMOTHER (Austria 2023) ***½
Directed by Achmed Abdel-Salam
The story follows Michaela (“Michi”), a recovering alcoholic who has built a fragile new life with her young daughter Hanna. After the sudden death of her estranged father, Michi reluctantly returns to her childhood home to settle the inheritance.
From the moment she arrives, the house feels oppressive and emotionally charged. The visit is meant to be brief, but Michi secretly hopes the trip might help repair the strained trust between her and Hanna.
Michi spends time with her daughter alone in the house while her husband tends to a failing antique store back in town.
The psychological horror film succeeds for several reasons, primarily because director Achmed Abdel-Salam moves his film at a rapid enough pace, throwing in more surprising bits of detail into the plot as his film progresses. The line between real and imaginary is always in question as one wonders whether Michi is suffering from a psychological horror or if the monster in the house is real. Family drama is added with Mishsi’s daughter, Hannah, shown as a precocious child with an inquiring mind. “Why do you never show photographs or talk about your mother?” asks Hannah to her mother. Yet Hannah is a playful child, as children often are, as she hides in a field where her mother tries desperately to find her.
There is much sympathy that the audience can feel for the protagonist, Michi. Michi is a recovering alcoholic, and she is trying very hard to bring her life back to a whole.
There are a few flaws in the film. There is a funeral at the start of the film, and one wonders who the person is who has just passed. There is a photo of the deceased at the casket, but it is never mentioned till way into the film that the deceased was the father. (Unless I missed it, which means that others could have easily missed it too.)
The trouble starts once a disturbing discovery is made in the house by Michi. While going through old belongings, Michi finds a childhood drawing that triggers fragments of buried memories. Strange things begin to happen in the house,e such as unexplained noises and unsettling visions, while Hanna behaves oddly, such as sleepwalking and possibly imagining things.
As the film progresses, so do the troubles. The film gradually reveals that Michi’s childhood was marked by severe trauma, including the suicide of her mother. These memories had been repressed for years. As the haunting intensifies, Michi’s sobriety becomes shaky as she grows paranoid and unstable, and her bond with Hanna deteriorates. All of director Achmed Abdel-Salam's work is well-paced in a well-paced psychological mystery thriller leading to a satisfactory, compelling climax, aided by Cornelia Ivancan’s apt performance as the troubled mother. The most disturbing segment comes in the film’s final act.
The film is called SMOTHER, as Michi smothers Hannah with her motherly love, and Michi is also emotionally smothered by her past.
SMOTHER makes its exclusive North American Premiere on INDIEPIX UNLIMITED on February 27th, 2026.
THIS IS NOT A TEST (Canada /USA 2026) **½
Directed by Adam MacDonald
This is not a test, a post-apocalyptic film with teenagers holed up in a school, is based on the young adult novel of the same name by Courtney Summers. It is not great literature, and the source material’s shortcomings can be observed in the adaptation to the film.
The film is called This Is Not a Test to heighten urgency, evoke emergency-alert dread, and emphasise the story’s message that the characters are facing a real, irreversible crisis—not a drill. The phrase is hear twice during the movie, first when announcements are made to the public about staying indoors and securing the safety zone that what is going on and that the announcement is to be taken in all seriousness and secondly when one of the characters say the phrase referring to g to a test that teachers give to their students, in this case Mr. Baxter.
Zombie movies are now a dime a dozen. A zombie movie must be able to stand out above the rest. Zombies can move about in slow motion, as in the George Romero zombie movies, or at lightning-fast speeds, as in the Brad Pitt zombie movie WORLD WAR Z. In THIS IS NOT A TEST, the zombies move quicker than the average human being.
It all ends up with a bunch of school teens holding up in a school while the zombies are outside creating havoc and infecting everyone else.
So what happens when a group of teens is isolated together? They argue and fight. The two alpha males get into a fist flight with who is the one, who would take control and give the orders. They debate on whether to stay in the school or make it out to a safe shelter that is announced on the radio. And there is the obligatory romance that results. All the subplots are nothing out of the ordinary and could be written by anyone who has seen a zombie movie at some time or another.
There are a few variations when Mr. Baxter shows up, who claims that he is not infected by the bite he got. Of course, there is an argument among the students on whether this is true. A bit of anxiety is created when Mr. Baxter proves to be a big asshole. Another asshole in the movie is the protagonist, Sloan Price’s (Olivia Holt) stepfather. Though he gets what he deserved, he is an abusive male who has hurt Sloan’s mother, sister, and also herself. This is shown at the start of the movie.
The story takes a turn when the teens make it out of the school safe house and try to make it to a shelter. But still, nothing really out of the ordinary in terms of plotting or story.
The necessary zombie violence occurs with the bashing of the zombies, particularly their heads, often shown to be a bloody mess. There is no mention in the original of the virus causing humans to transform into zombies. The script never even tries, and what is going on with the rest of the world?
THIS IS NOT A TEST opens in theatres February 27th.
