There are few things more suspicious in a horror film than the phrase “romantic getaway.” It is cinema’s way of placing a flashing neon sign above the protagonists and quietly informing the audience that somebody, somewhere, has made a terrible booking decision. In Godmother, that decision begins innocently enough: a couple head into the New Mexico desert hoping to escape the machinery of everyday life, only for their retreat to become considerably less intimate when Theo invites her heartbroken sister Katie along for the ride. Then the house itself starts introducing complications, and suddenly the idea of a relaxing weekend away begins to resemble the sort of holiday brochure that should come with a psychiatric warning.

Directed by John Vernon in his feature debut and co-written with Alanah Pearce, Godmother initially plays its cards with a certain restraint. There is an appealingly awkward quality to the interpersonal dynamics, with relationships already carrying enough baggage before the supernatural—or whatever lurks at the edges of the story—has had an opportunity to unpack its own. That gives the film an important foundation. The horror doesn’t simply arrive from somewhere outside the characters; it grows out of the increasingly uncomfortable social space they have entered.

And then the temperature begins to rise.

This is where Godmother becomes considerably more interesting. Rather than detonating its entire arsenal at once, the film gradually turns the screws, allowing the atmosphere to curdle. What initially resembles an offbeat desert drama starts acquiring the peculiar logic of a nightmare in which every attempt to maintain normality only makes the situation stranger. The New Mexico landscape becomes more than picturesque backdrop. It is a pressure cooker—wide open, sun-blasted and seemingly offering nowhere useful to hide.

That gradual escalation is one of the film’s strengths. Godmother understands that horror can benefit from letting the audience sit in the wrong room for a little too long. There is something distinctly off about the experience: the sense that we have taken a perfectly ordinary road trip, missed the appropriate exit somewhere outside civilisation and are now following a road sign pointing towards a destination nobody remembers agreeing to visit.

The film is also blessed with the presence of two actors who bring considerable genre history into this increasingly strange equation. Dee Wallace has spent decades inhabiting the emotional architecture of horror, from The Howling and Cujo through E.T. and beyond, and she possesses the rare ability to make warmth and unease coexist within the same performance. Bruce Davison, meanwhile, carries his own formidable genre pedigree, having moved through everything from Willard to X-Men and The Lords of Salem. Their presence gives Godmother an intriguing generational dimension: this is a film featuring performers who know precisely how much menace can hide behind a seemingly ordinary smile.

Their roles work particularly well because the film doesn’t treat veteran genre performers as museum pieces. They aren’t simply here to give horror fans a knowing wink. Instead, Wallace and Davison become part of the machinery that allows Godmother to transition from uncomfortable social encounter into something considerably more sinister.

And that transition is where Alanah Pearce and John Vernon’s collaboration becomes particularly noticeable. There is a creative curiosity running through the film—a willingness to let the premise become increasingly peculiar rather than constantly steering it back towards familiar genre territory. Pearce brings a background steeped in games, storytelling and popular culture, while Vernon approaches the material as a filmmaker making his feature debut. The result is a film that feels interested in the possibilities of its own premise rather than simply ticking boxes on a horror checklist.

It also helps that Godmother understands the value of not immediately explaining everything. Horror is often at its most effective when the audience has enough information to become suspicious but not enough to feel entirely comfortable. The film plays with that uncertainty, allowing its characters to keep making decisions that seem reasonable right up until the moment they very clearly aren’t.

The desert is particularly useful territory for this kind of horror. It is the landscape of American mythology stripped of its reassuring edges: enormous distances, isolated properties, strange encounters and the persistent possibility that civilisation is considerably further away than you initially thought. It is also a perfect setting because the environment itself seems to encourage bad decisions. You can almost imagine the road disappearing behind you while some unseen voice in the passenger seat whispers, Keep driving. It’ll be fine.

It won’t be fine.

But Godmother doesn’t need to pretend that it is reinventing horror to be worthwhile. Its pleasures are found in the way it builds, the peculiarities it introduces along the way and the performances that give its increasingly bizarre circumstances a human centre. The film has an infectious willingness to push its premise further, and when it finally begins letting the horror properly off the leash, the earlier restraint pays dividends.

There is also something pleasingly old-fashioned about its construction. The film is interested in characters first, atmosphere second and outright mayhem somewhere further down the road. That makes the eventual escalation feel earned rather than simply inserted because the runtime has reached the point where somebody needs to start screaming.

For Monster Fest audiences, Godmother offers precisely the kind of festival experience that works best when you know as little as possible beforehand. It is an Australian Premiere with a strong creative partnership at its centre, a couple of veteran genre performers lurking within the cast, and a premise that becomes increasingly difficult to classify the further it travels from the romantic getaway advertised on the itinerary.

So pack the sunscreen, fill the tank and leave your better judgement at home.

The Prognosis:

Godmother is a steadily escalating horror film that finds its personality in the collision between uncomfortable domestic dynamics, desert isolation and increasingly strange genre territory. John Vernon and Alanah Pearce have fashioned something that is happy to take the scenic route before driving directly into darker territory, while Dee Wallace and Bruce Davison provide welcome genre gravitas to a cast of characters whose weekend is about to become considerably less relaxing.

GODMOTHER screens as an Australian Premiere at Monster Fest 2026 on Saturday 3 October at Cinema Nova, Melbourne.

Monster Fest runs from 2–10 October, with the festival’s 2026 program presenting the film among its international and Australian genre premieres.

If you’re heading to Monster Fest, this is one desert getaway where I’d recommend checking the return journey before you leave.

• Saul Muerte