The Ones Who Grieve (2026)
Poster Image courtesy WTFilms
At the end of the 19th century, on an isolated farm, Zélie is trapped under the authority of her father, Jacob, a deeply religious man. As a mysterious disease known as the “Black Veil” ravages the surrounding countryside and faith begins to blur with madness, she must fight to preserve her humanity and claim her freedom.
Movie still courtesy WTFilms
THE ONES WHO GRIEVE, directed by Quarxx, is a French folk horror film set in the late 19th century, but not only does the religion-fueled paranoia and fear of the plague feel familiar, but Jacob telling Emilie to shut her mouth while she eats sounds just like me talking to my sister today.
Joking aside, Jacob is a bad guy, and the way he treats everyone- from his wife and daughter to the plague-afflicted - is reprehensible- all the more so for the religious trappings he wraps his actions in.
An illness they call the “Black Veil” turns people into mindless cannibals, and as a “masker”, Jacob sews the victims’ eyes and mouth shut, locks them inside a wooden mask, then abandons them in the wild. They refer to them as “souls in pain”, and this is his way of saving them, which is accepted by local society, even as they revile him and his methods.
Movie still courtesy WTFilms
Check out the teaser below!
Meanwhile, his daughter Zélie longs for freedom from his rule, but even with outside encouragement, has no realistic means of escape, so it’s just one bad trip after another for her.
Letterboxd and IMDb - my two sources of truth for film genre - both bill this as drama primarily, but, make no mistake, this is horror like only the French can do it (à la the New French Extremity): bleak, violent, and unrelenting.
For all the blood and viscera and violence, it is a beautifully shot film which may make it worth a watch if you can stomach it and don’t mind that it is just nihilism incarnate.
THE ONES WHO GRIEVE was screened at Fantastic Fest.
Fantastic Fest Poster
