Brooklyn Horror 2026 Review: PATHETIC FALLACY, True Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Every film festival program, no matter how expansive and diverse, usually has a bunch of movies that objectively aren’t bad, but aren’t particularly great either.

When thinking about such films and what might be weighing them down, the conclusion you come to most of the time is that, while often adequately executed, they are simply not original enough to evoke any true feeling. From scene to scene, or sometimes, from frame to frame, you more or less know what to expect next, which traditionally makes it harder to be really excited about anything that happens on screen.

Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Pathetic Fallacy, which premiered at Fantastic Fest and was recently shown at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival at one of their secret screenings, doesn’t have this problem. This is a film that isn’t likely to remind you of something else you’ve previously seen – because there are no other films like this. While Mortimer’s movie exists on roughly the same orbit as David Lynch's oneiric visions or Panos Cosmatos’s trippy extravaganzas, this is a work that is fully indigenous and distinctive.

Pathetic Fallacy opens with a recounting of a doomed love story that fits into a short prologue and potentially rivals the sob-fest that is the first minutes of Up. Asher (Kid Cudi in his first full-fledged leading role) meets, falls head over heels for, and subsequently loses to illness Ires (Jessica Rothe). Her death shatters him so completely that he cannot fathom simply moving on.

So, Asher heads for a place called Mount Samdi, a mysterious land where mysterious things are rumored to happen. When an eccentric stranger (Travis Fimmel) takes Asher into the woods – well, it’s actually better to stop right here, with only a brief mention that Natasha Lyonne will also sort of make an appearance at some point.

Mortimer’s film is one of those you’re better off going into without knowing much about it. The first 15 minutes, which include an eerily prolonged death scene, are the perfect clue that this is primarily a story about grief and all the different, often ugly, forms it might take. While Pathetic Fallacy doesn’t necessarily add anything groundbreakingly new to the theme on top of what about a thousand different elevated horrors did in the last decade, it sure has all kinds of artistic fun with it.

This is a film filled with confidence – not only the confidence its authors have in their own aptness, but also in the ability of the audience to let go of the common Hollywood-style logic and enjoy the weirdness of the ride. While not fully losing sight of the narrative and never losing track of the emotional core of the film, the authors (which include the amazing editor Vera Drew of The People’s Joker fame) mix styles, tones, and mediums: from surrealistic burlesque and deranged ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vibes to Disney-style musical numbers and some impressive gore.

What’s even more surprising about this already unusual film is that, unlike many other mindbenders, it doesn’t really require much effort from the viewers to “get” and enjoy it. Much like with Natasha Lyonne’s character, all you have to do is just let it in.

The film screened at the 2026 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.