Succubus {2024} – review

Director: R.J. Daniel Hanna

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Seen on the big screen at Grimmfest 2024, this is (by its very title) about a succubus but the succubus is using both flesh and spirit of victims to strengthen herself and become a corporeal reality. In such a way her actions are vampiric. The film also does a neat line in using virtual relationships along with a commentary on our interconnected and camera filled world (the film could have veered down a found footage route but, thankfully, avoided it and instead does have some footage moments but is a narrative film.

Ron Perlman as Zephyr

That said the opening footage is a recording and it features Dr. Orion Zephyr (Ron Perlman) talking to his wife and saying if the footage is found then it means that he is dead. He talks of his controversies, which will have hurt her, but says that she must publish his research – even if it is just given away free on the net. He leaves his car (cutting to a narrative camera), gets an axe and then heads on foot, limping, to a farm house.

Chris and Sharon

Chris (Brendan Bradley, Death Valley) is at home with the baby, but it is not currently an ideal family life. His son has been dropped off, whilst his estranged wife Sharon (Olivia Grace Applegate, Blood Fest) attends a hen night – they have been separated for two weeks. The cracks in their marriage seem mostly down to him. He started an app business but overstretched and is in debt. The stress of the business saw him neglect her.

meeting Adra online

Sharon is out with Charlisse (Emily Kincaid), who is divorced from Chris’ best friend Eddie (Derek Smith). Eddie has persuaded Chris to go on a dating app (even though he actually does still love Sharon) and he matches, at first, with a mutual friend and then gets a match from a mysterious girl called Adra (Rachel Cook). At first he suspects a scam. She initiates a video chat but types as he speaks (she has lost her voice, she says) and has a filter over her face. However, he becomes convinced she is real (and she attempts to have him visit her). Faux pas with Sharon, such as her seeing him masturbating on the nanny cam in the nursery (to a video Adra sends) and reactions when she looks noticeably aged on a video call – manipulated we assume by Adra.

bio-mass

How? Well Adra is the succubus and has selected Chris. She wants his cells (as she puts it) and there is a possession aspect to this, in order to infect and use sperm to help bring her corporeally into reality (or so it is implied). Yet she is corporeal… sort of… we see a video of a goat birthing a deformity (described by Zephyr as her first attempt to enter our world)… we also see her physically as a bio-mass (whether there is more to it, we don’t see) that devours a victim whilst copulating with it. We also see her in devil form.

demon form

However it is clear she can manipulate the virtual – with her female form that flirts with Chris. She can also manipulate when people are in an altered state – be that during sex, through substance, hypnosis or dreams. She is able to do this through a digital interface too and trap a victim in the altered state and unable to return to their conscious body. All this is really clever but there are bits that seem frustratingly unanswered.

Brendan Bradley as Chris

Zephyr is described as having hurt her and one assumes that is tied to the opening, but what he was doing there is never answered beyond what we saw in the prologue. If he did damage her corporeal form then how did she get to the house she is currently based in? How did Zephyr know that Chris was in touch with her and how he might get hold of him? These are frustrations but they are not insurmountable. In truth they were more apparent when I watched for review than they were on first watch in the festival.

coming between them

Well-acted by the leads, a moment of body horror, and a really neat use of the virtual world meeting the supernatural. This is a good film that perhaps needed a little bit more in the aspects mentioned but nevertheless I think is worth a watch. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US