The Coast
At low tide, the beach becomes a mass grave. What washes up outside the house begins to change the air inside it.
Coastal Folk Horror
Fishbrain
Desperate to leave the rotting coast and the grandfather who depends on her, Ori finds that the sea has started giving something back.
The World
The horror in Fishbrain is not separate from the family. It grows from it.
The House
Jeb’s home is shelter, sickroom and trap. Every act of care keeps Ori there a little longer.
The
Body
What cannot be said begins to surface elsewhere: in appetite, skin, smell, touch and contamination.
The Family
Fishbrain is a horror story about love curdling into duty, and duty becoming something monstrous.
Synopsis
When Ori returns to care for her grandfather Jeb in his isolated coastal home, the routines keeping them together begin to rot. Outside, dead fish blanket the shore. Inside, old resentments gather in the kitchen, the sickroom and the silences between them. As warnings go ignored and the sea’s contamination enters the house, Ori is forced to confront the terrible shape of escape.
Film Details
Completion 2026
Runtime 21 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Sound 5.1 / Stereo
Genre Coastal folk horror
Status World premiere pending
World premiere pending. Private screeners and press materials are available by request.
Max Vanderspuy
Writer / DirectorDirector’s Note
“The horror comes from care becoming captivity.”
Fishbrain began with an image: a coastline full of dead fish, and a young woman carrying a responsibility she should have been allowed to escape. My mother grew up by the British coast, and I wanted the film to hold the feeling of those places in bad weather: beautiful, withheld, salt-stained and unforgiving.
I was interested in the point where care stops feeling like love and starts to feel like captivity. Ori loves Jeb, but love does not make the room breathable. Body horror gave us a way to make that pressure physical through food, skin, smell, water and the rituals of keeping someone alive. The sea is not just outside the house. It gets in.
The film draws from British folklore and from the body-horror lineage of The Thing, Under the Skin and Eraserhead, but the heart of it is smaller and more domestic: a granddaughter, a grandfather, a kitchen and a choice that should never have become available.
Stills
Dead fish. Closed rooms. Things left unsaid.
What washes ashore finds its way in.
Cast
John Henshaw
Chloe Lea
Karren Winchester
Key Crew
Written and directed byMax Vanderspuy
Produced byDaniel Panyko
Director of PhotographyNicolas Booth
Production DesignerOlavo Abrantes
EditorFlaura Atkinson
Sound DesignerAntek Rutczynski
Music byKjartan Holm and Sindri Már Sigfússon
Casting byYvonne Lawlor
VFX Producer & SupervisorÁgoston Princz
Private Access
Request access to Fishbrain.
Private screeners are available for festivals, press, distributors, collaborators and industry enquiries. For access, please include your organisation, viewing purpose and any relevant deadline.
Press materials are available on request ahead of public release.
Contains body horror and themes of grief and bereavement.