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Dead Northern Festival News and Reviews

BODY HORROR “KILL YOUR LOVER” NOW AVAILABLE ON VOD IN UK & IRELAND

KILL YOUR LOVER (Winner of Dead Northern’s Best Feature 2024), a razor-sharp and visceral exploration of toxic love with a punk edge, is releasing July 7th, 2025 on digital platforms across the UK and Ireland.

Directed by writer-director team A/K (Alix Austin & Keir Siewert), KILL YOUR LOVER was originally shot in the UK and had a successful international festival run, shocking audiences across Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, Overlook Film Festival, Hard:Line and FrightFest Glasgow. The film took home Best Effects at Brooklyn Horror, Best Feature at Dead Northern Film Festival, and Best British Feature Film at Romford Film Festival, earning acclaim for its genre-defying aesthetic and raw emotional core.

Described by Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s Matt Barone as “both an uncompromising breakup film and a wild new entry into the body horror canon, co-directors Alix Austin and Keir Siewert’s debut feature roars with a punk edge and killer practical effects and soars via dynamite performances from newcomers Paige Gilmour and Shane Quigley-Murphy.”

The film was produced by Switchblade Cinema and executive produced by Douglas Cox (Shadowhouse Films) and James Isilay (Screencrib).

Austin & Siewert are a part of this year’s BIFA Springboard Genre Cohort, mentored by Ed King (HIS HOUSE), and are developing their next feature with Douglas Cox (HOST), who is producing through his Shadowhouse Films banner

Synopsis: When Dakota tries to break off her toxic relationship with Axel, it starts transforming him into a monstrous creature with increased aggression, a touch that melts skin and worst of all, he’s contagious…

KILL YOUR LOVER adds a vital new voice in British horror cinema— a riotous, gutsy, and unforgettable vision of love gone rancid.

The film is being distributed in the UK & Ireland by Alarm Pictures, represented by Sales Agent MPI Media Group. Available to watch now on Amazon Prime & SkyStore!

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Reviews

Review – No Choice (Spoiler-free)

Amy (Hannah Deale) barely scrapes by; working two thankless jobs whilst simultaneously caring for her drug-addict mother, Debra (Jennifer Herzog). The hope of a brighter future for the hardworking young woman is on the horizon, with the prospects of exciting scholarships looming, however, her aspirations and entire selfhood are ripped to shreds when she unexpectedly falls pregnant.

No Choice is a startling feature from debut director Nate Hilgartner, that strips bare the horror of the modern world to the bone and reveals the insidious battle between the psyche and body when autonomy is stolen. The viewer is directly positioned alongside Amy throughout the horrid ordeal, taking each nerve-wrecking step with her and witnessing the excruciating consequences that materialise from her bodily constraints. Here is the crux of No Choice; Amy has no choice but to abide by and endure her pregnancy, as it is revealed that she lives in a pro-life state where abortion is illegal. The pressures of imminent childbirth, the ceasing of familiarity and the financial, emotional and societal implications of bearing children all seep into the narrative, yet what remains the pertinent theme is its bleak telling of Amy’s lack of free-will which is explored through a nightmarish smorgasbord of haunting hallucinations.

As Amy grapples with her reality, she begins to experience strange dreams that infuse surrealist thematics with unhinged, anxiety-inducing implications that bask in technicolour madness. The increasingly volatile spells that Amy visualises encompasses No Choice’s thesis of brooding atmospheres that show the turmoil in a distorting manner. Rather than overwhelm with copious exposition and explanations of Amy’s psychological state, No Choice screens insights into her subconscious, where the symbolism-heavy hazes deliberately disrupts the cognizant process, with Hilgartner alternatively optioning to provoke through allegorical power.

Further emphasising No Choice’s persistent surveying of reproductive chastising anchors on the film’s cast, mainly Deale, whose portrayal of Amy is not only cinematically impressive, but also incredibly diverse in a palpable, almost corporeal sense. Essentially, Deale grips the viewer through her genuine, believable rendering of such a situation, stirring a wealth of empathy that is a crucial component in No Choice’s affective nature. Joining Deale is Maria Prudente as the sympathetic Dr. McAnnis, Robert Denzel Edwards as Amy’s caring colleague and friend Lucas, Hayden Frank as the benevolent Seth, and Herzog whose evocation of an absentee yet overbearing and disdainful mother is brilliantly infuriating.

No Choice is not afraid to enact a gritty truth that torments and disturbs those affected, in turn fostering a filmic tone that is replicative of pure, unabashed, and most crucially lingering dread.

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