ScreenAnarchy

J Hurtado, April 12, 2026

Overlook 2026 Review: TRAUMA, OR MONSTERS ALL Brings A Thirty Year Project Full Circle

It’s been a little over thirty years since indie horror godfather Larry Fessenden burst into the consciousness of the underground with his sideways vampire epic, Habit. In the decades since then, he and his Glass Eye Pix production house have shepherded some of American horror’s most unique storytellers to the big and small screen as a producer while still managing to take time to direct his own idiosyncratic features challenge the present notions of what horror can be in these tumultuous times.

It took almost twenty years for Fessenden to return to his monstrous reimaginings with 2019’s Frankenstein riff, Depraved and 2022’s wolf man story, Blackout. With this Mad Monster Party trio of existential horrors now out in the world, he is here to cap it all off with his own Avengers assemble moment in Trauma, Or Monsters All, premiering at this year’s Overlook Film Festival.

Trauma puts us in the shoes of author Cassandra (Laëtitia Hollard, The Pitt), who has rented a cheap farmhouse in Talbot Falls in upstate New York to focus on her upcoming book about famed scientist, George Washington Carver. One night while milling about in her house, she notices a strange man doing strange things outside of the strange house next door, which sends her down a research rabbit hole.

In an effort to exorcise her frantic curiosity, Cassie writes a piece for the local paper questioning whether there may be real life monsters in the woods that surround Talbot Falls. Her neighbors’ unusual behavior has her under the impression that not only is the town’s werewolf legend more than just a scary story, but perhaps a Frankenstein’s monster might be his keeper. The town doesn’t take kindly to an outsider digging through their dirty laundry, and before long out come the pitch forks, putting Cassie and her obsessions in new and unexpected danger.

Fessenden’s horror stories have always taken an askew glance at the genre, reading into the subtext of the classics to hew closer to the spirit of the stories and the way they’ve always commented on the human condition. Trauma, Or Monsters All is no different, only this time it’s not only the things that go bump in the night that get put under the microscope, it’s also those who would hunt them down.

The collective trauma in Talbot Falls erupts after Cassandra’s article riles up the town and, as the title says, makes monsters of everyone. While the town around her disintegrates into a swirling mass of paranoia and persecution, our old friends Adam (Alex Breaux’s creature from Depraved), Charley (Alex Hurt’s werewolf from Blackout), and Sam (Fessenden’s forlorn vamp from Habit), are monsters left seeking the most human thing of all, connection.

In order to complete his story, Fessenden not only brings back his classic monsters, but also populates Trauma, Or Monsters All with fellow indie horror icons, including returning Talbot Falls attorney Kate (Barbara Crampton), as well as a couple of other blink and you’ll miss them cameos from some of the genre’s most exciting up-and-comers. But Trauma is less indulgent than you might think (though not entirely free of that quirk), for the first time centering the story around a human protagonist who unwittingly stirs up a hornet’s nest in a place she doesn’t really feel welcome.

If you’re a fan of the filmmaker, Trauma, Or Monsters All will be like sweet mana from horror heaven. It’s every inch a Fessen-film, with frequent digressions and monologues that may or may not move the story forward, but also no shortage of blood and gore, with much of it inflicted mercilessly upon fan favorite characters. Three decades after he started this story, Larry Fessenden remains indie horror’s most singular visionary. He may not have imagined his saga ending this way – and it does seem to be a pretty definitive ending, but it’s hard to imagine any other conclusion for this story that marries so many of his consistent obsessions.

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Eye For Film

Jennie Kermode, April 12. 2026

Three years ago, Larry Fessenden told me that he wanted to make a film which brought together all the monsters – the troubled creatures who inhabited his previous films Habit, Blackout and Depraved. But how does one tell a story like that in an age of monsters? None of these individuals seems like a serious threat in comparison to what we see on the news every day. On the flip side of that, many of us have experienced being called monsters ourselves, or even being ‘monstered’, as it is now called, by (traditional or social) media. The subtitle of this film, ‘Monsters All’, implies that it’s difficult, today, to make clear distinctions. With that in mind, how should we treat one another?

“My parents say they named me Cassandra because it’s not what you know but how you communicate it,” says the film’s young heroine (Laetitia Holland). But she makes a mistake. She’s trying to write a history book about the botanist George Washington Carver, but struggling to apply herself, and when she learns something of the history of Talbot Falls, the small town in which she has secreted herself, she’s drawn to its most sensational elements. Why do these seem to have been forgotten. What do people mean when they refer to the ‘werewolf incident’ just a couple of years ago? Possessed of good research and writing skills but with none of the caution young journalists are taught, she rushes to put facts together and publish an attention-getting story in the local paper. She’s not an unkind person, but it doesn’t occur to her to wonder what the consequences might be.

At the outset, Fessenden said that he intended to make this film less melancholy. He hasn’t entirely succeeded, though it would be hard to create anything quite as heartbreaking as Depraved. Here, as in that film, the soul of the story belongs to Alex Breaux as Adam, one of the silver screen’s most compelling versions of Frankenstein’s monster. He’s living next door to Cassandra in a run down part of time where rent is cheap and landlords pay little attention to the state of their properties. That’s ideal when your roommate is a werewolf – Blackout’s tormented artist Charley (Alex Hurt) – and he’s chained up and screaming in the basement for three days each full moon. Their system has been working – enabling both of them to remain safe and (mostly) avoid violence – but Cassandra’s article changes everything.

It attracts more than just local attention. An old acquaintance of Adam’s comes looking for him, whilst a certain vampire from the big city (played by Fessenden himself) decides to take a trip in the hopes of meeting people as unusual as himself. Of course, he can’t resist having a snack along the way, and the complexity of the situation rapidly gets out of control. There’s enough going on here for a whole soap opera, but Fessenden knows what he’s doing and avoids getting distracted, creating clear emotional through lines which keep viewers focused on what matters.

We spend most of the film with Cassandra and Agnes (Aitana Doyle), a young woman she meets through her part time job in the local library and quickly forms a bond with. There’s something about Doyle that is reminiscent of the young Laura Dern circa Blue Velvet, and her boyfriend and his pals remind one rather of Sandy’s equivalent in that film, presenting a different sort of threat, full of the potential for mundane, ill-considered violence, yet utterly out of their depth within the larger narrative.

There is a similar tone to Trauma, which reflects its title’s etymological roots in dream. Characters who belong to a fairy tale or folkloric world struggle to contain themselves in flesh, edged out by the existence of mere mortals who, despite their vulnerability, forever push them to the edges of the narrative. We may all be monsters in somebody’s eyes, but not all of us know what it is to exist perpetually on the outside. What does such a person owe to the rest of the world? Is it better to embrace that status, to live out one’s full monstrous potential? Is it the effort to cling on to humanity that hurts? Fessenden’s character suggests that empathy needs to be actively practiced if we are to hold onto it.

As in Lynch’s work, there is also comedy here. A monster mash-up is, after all, quite a silly idea. Situated alongside the pathos of characters like Adam, it has a wonderful deadpan quality. The small absurdities of everyday life are heightened by the supernatural context. One cannot help but feel for local lawyer Kate (Barbara Crampton), who, after three years, still hasn’t succeeded in getting the home improvements finished which were underway in the last film. The local pastor gently expresses concern at the drinking habits of his memory-haunted parishioners, but knocks back a fair bit of liquor himself. At the climax, of course, there are more monster-specific forms of silliness. Bring a werewolf, a Frankenstieinian monster and vampires together and there will inevitably be a raising of the stakes.

In all their preposterousness and poignancy, Fessenden’s monster movie – which premiered a Overlook 2026 – does not seem inappropriate in today’s world. In fact, it seems like an unusually sane response. Fiction is one of many ways through which we might explore better ways of communicating with one another, lest we unleash too easily the monsters from the id. Faced with all this fury, and knowing that some at least are condemned to keep on living through it, one might remember the words of Kurt Vonnegut: God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

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In Session Film

Nadine Whitney, April 13, 2026

MOVIE REVIEW (OVERLOOK FESTIVAL 2026): ‘TRAUMA, OR MONSTERS ALL’ IS SMART AND SCATHING

In 1995 Larry Fessenden wrote, directed, and starred in one of the least romanticized vampire films made – Habit. A grimy urban gothic which dealt with isolation and numbing the pain of living. Fessenden’s Sam was an alcoholic who had just lost his distant academic father and had given up doing much more than dragging his hungover heels through another day. Sam was easy prey for Anna, a carnal and jealous vampire who drove him to insanity. Fessenden worked making films about “mythic” monsters such as his chilly Wendigo (2001) and in 2019 took on Frankenstein in the form of the deeply melancholic Depraved. Having vampires and Frankenstein in his retinue, when he made the wolfman story Blackout in 2023 Fessenden had enough “Universal Monsters” to have his own shared universe which he teased at the end of Blackout. Trauma or, Monsters All is his monster mash bringing together a much older Sam, Adam (Alex Breaux) the creature from Depraved, and werewolf Charley Barrett (Alex Hurt) together in the wounded town of Talbot Falls in upstate New York.

Cassandra (Laeticia Hollard) is a young historian who has chosen Talbot Falls as the place where she will write her book on the genius botanist George Washington Carver. The rent is cheap in the neglected houses of Cedar Grove and it’s mostly quiet; except when it isn’t and there is the sound of howling coming from her neighbors. Agnes (Aitana Doyle), her only friend and co-worker at the local library. tells her part of the story of the murders that happened a few years back in Talbot Falls. Cassandra’s imagination is captured and she researches the recent past and makes the mistake of writing an article about the monsters surrounding the town which opens up her reclusive neighbors Charley and Adam to new scrutiny and further traumatizes those who lost people in an incident that almost caused the town to collapse into a racially motivated ‘war.’

Agnes is shocked that Cassandra would “kick the hornet’s nest” by taking a story that doesn’t belong to her and relitigate it, no matter how well-intentioned her motivations. The sting of the recent past still lingers with Sharon (Addison Timlin), who lost her father and fiancé, as well as the love of her life, Charley, in the affray. The police chief Tom (James Le Gros), as well as former officer Luis (Joseph Castillo-Midyett), drink heavily, numbing themselves with what they did and had to do when the homo lupus was active. Father Francis (John Speredakos), who tried to keep the town from splintering at the time, gently rebukes Cassandra who tries to explain that she was hoping people would come together in empathy and healing through her story as it has more power than history does to conquer division. Cassandra’s naivete comes from her own notion of identity filtered through being an interracial woman. The biggest mistake she made is assuming people wanted to come together at all when convenient scapegoats exist.

Dark intent comes from both inside Talbot Falls and without. Cassandra’s piece brings people from the gentle but tortured Adam’s past to town. Sam comes from New York seeking monsters he can play with. Populist idiots Bert (Cody Kostro) and Ernie (Marc Senter) want to take Cassandra down for daring to write at all. Charley, with his continued existence uncovered, realizes that his isolation has made him forget the reasons not to fall under the thrall of his “monstrous” side. Sharon’s guilt makes her an easy target for the “asshole” vampire who wants to mess with her life. Cassandra has put everyone including herself in danger because she didn’t think of the consequences and perhaps she didn’t know how real the “monsters” were.

Fessenden’s script leans further into comedy than his previous three monster films. Most of the comedic lines and actions come from his outsized version of Sam, who after thirty years has lost the knack of “empathy” and other human traits which he says atrophy if they aren’t used. Sam was left as a vampire without a guidebook, and it seems he hasn’t really bothered to investigate his own situation (something that was true of Sam in the 1990s). Because Fessenden camps up the monsters more (with the exception of Adam), Trauma or, Monsters All doesn’t feel as sincere as the works preceding it. Fessenden is still engaging with ideas of identity and acceptance, but they don’t have the same weight. Cassandra is bright enough to understand that “It’s the stories we tell ourselves that become our truth,” but not experienced enough to know that not everyone is sharing the same reading of a story and like her mythological namesake stories aren’t always believed.

Trauma or, Monsters All doesn’t have the melancholy elegance of Fessenden’s Habit, Depraved, or Blackout but it does have the bones of a great horror movie on a practical and visual scale. It’s fitting that Adam, the new man, is ultimately the best person in the film and the most sympathetic. A friend that Cassandra called ‘monster’ who has been quietly protecting Talbot Falls through his loyalty.

Larry Fessenden’s final outing for his “monsters” is smart, sometimes scathing and is best when exploring how scary selfhood and otherness is. The world is complicated and that’s how people end up putting others in boxes. Everyone has the ability to produce fang and claw to harm and not changing the relationship people have to the past means trauma doesn’t heal. Trauma or, Monsters Allrecognizes living as the most gruesome prospect of all.

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Daily Dead

Matt Donato, April 15, 2026

While Universal has failed to relaunch its shared horror universe for decades, Larry Fessenden’s beloved bloodsucker Habit was released in 1995 and laid the groundwork for his own successful Monsterverse. Quietly, out of the mainstream’s eye, Fessenden assembled his take on the Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein for a graveyard smash of a crossover that premiered at this year’s Overlook Film Festival: Trauma or, Monsters All. It’s Fessenden’s signatures in totalum: an emotionally torn, low-budget take on the horrors of humanity as guided by cursed creatures. Don’t expect Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing; more the mumblecore-value, Glass Eye Pix version of a Universal multi-monster classic.

At the center of Trauma Or, Monsters All is Cassandra (The Pitt’s Laetitia Hollard), a writer who seeks isolation in Upper New York State’s Talbot Falls (where Fessenden’s werewolf picture Blackout is set). Alone, in an off-the-beaten-path rental, she chips away at a historical recounting about the life of George Washington Carver. But, outside her window, she spies something odd. A chained basement door and a strange man, who Depraved fans know as Adam (Alex Breaux), Henry’s creation. Cassandra, aka “Cassie,” decides to pen a news piece about strange supernatural cases around Talbot Falls and the possible lycan being held next door. All of a sudden, she’s the center of attention—unwanted attention—from humans and new-to-town drifters like Sam, Fessenden’s New York City vampire from Habit.

It’s a natural culmination of story arcs, hardly a shoehorned kitchen-sink gimmick. At the core of Fessenden’s shared universe is this tragic fatalism: all the monsters are victims of circumstances beyond their control. They crave normalcy and civility, yet must hide because of their “monstrous” behaviors. Adam swipes days-old leftovers from restaurant trash bins while Wolf Man Charley (Alex Hurt) stays locked away, painting murals under Adam’s care, when the full moon howls brightest. Sam’s the wild card of the group, beckoned to Talbot Falls by the prospect of forming his own Monster Squad, but even at that, Addison Timlin’s Sharon Hammond nudges empathy out of the slick-with-it vamp. They’re all monsters (er, monsters all), and yet, there’s hardly anything terrifying about their lives—they want to be left alone by a world that views them as freakshows and nightmares.

Fessenden shines a light on the warts marking Talbot Falls, visible in broad daylight. The booze-soaked sheriffs, or aggressive yokel thugs who become violent and territorial about the “evils” they perceive. Trauma or, Monsters All has a broken Americana vibe to its contemporary commentary, especially in how Cassie’s inquiries dredge up controversy rather than curiosity. In the vein of Frankenstein’s monster being chased by pitchforks and torches, Fessenden tests Talbot Falls’ moral compass against those characters who’ve failed such genre experiments. There’s anger in Charlie’s voice as he confronts Cassie, pre-transformation, and prods about whether she’s proud of her work in print, knowing he’ll have to ditch Adam and start over. There’s a melancholy to Trauma or, Monsters All that nails the title “trauma,” drawing a thin line that separates townsfolk and beasts.

So the catastrophe plays out, in true Fessenden fashion. There’s violence on a budget, as blade-sharp claws swipe over faces, leaving bloody wounds. Digital effects are unpolished, as animated flies buzz unconvincingly and characters dart away as strangely pixelated blurs to suggest superspeed. There’s no doubt a lack of polish to what Fessenden’s grotesque visuals can accomplish, but that’s partly the charm. This ain’t An American Werewolf In London; Charley’s cosmetic makeup and fur stuffed under flannel shirts.

Unfortunately, Blackout is my least favorite of this specific quadrilogy, because I’d argue it plays the largest part. Still, Fessenden’s indie experience helps him navigate budgetary restrictions and keep Trauma or, Monsters All on track. There’s power behind monologues as everyone tries to make sense of unbelievable circumstances, keying into the depth of sorrow and solemnity behind stinging lines of dialogue. I’d argue Fessenden’s screenplay packs more bite than his fanged foes, which might be difficult for some to stomach, but ultimately is the unique hook that overrides rough-around-the-edges executions.

The question is simple: did you like any combination of Habit, Depraved, or Blackout? Splendid, Trauma Or, Monsters All is for you! Fessenden’s iconic independent horror voice is on display, as his under-the-radar monster series reaches its crescendo. He creates a world any audience can slide into: a rural creature feature built on humble intentions and honest depictions. Fessenden’s read on Universal’s legendary monsters is his own, drawing on themes of vulnerability and ostracization into our modern hellscape. Luckily, despite its blemishes, Trauma Or, Monsters All is a minimalist take on fabled figures with plenty to say, and another notch in Fessenden’s ever-mounting legacy.

3/5 Stars

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Film Freak Central

Walter Chaw, April 21, 2026

***½/****
starring Laëtitia Hollard, Aitana Doyle, Addison Timlin, James Le Gros
written and directed by Larry Fessenden

There’s an immediacy to Larry Fessenden’s films, a lack of any intermediary between his characters and the viewer that can be exquisitely uncomfortable. Stories told through peepholes, they can feel like plays performed in a small venue, an intimate encounter ever threatening to spill over into the crowd. Credit his immersive, often suffocating sound design, an expertise demonstrated lately in his radio side project, “Tales from Beyond the Pale.” (I first saw Fessenden’s Habit on VHS, and the audio on its recent 4K upgrade is a revelation.) Credit also, of course, his sober, mature scripts, which deal with childhood, memory, and fear through the prism of fully formed, imperfect characters trapped in the amber of trauma that can’t be exorcised. For Fessenden, horror exists at the place where the visceral intersects with the philosophical–where the meat meets the mind. What happens to one when the other begins to develop fissures? When hairline cracks develop and let the sadness in? Consider the little boy (Erik Per Sullivan) in Fessenden’s masterful Wendigo, who learns one terrible winter that the shadow at the bottom of the stairs sometimes sees you even if you leap quietly, so quietly, across the top, where the light from the entryway paints a white square like a lepidopterist’s frame. Fessenden’s films are all variations on that species of terror, that variety of loneliness: its beginnings and endings and the long half-life in between, where fear metastasizes in unpredictable ways. He is a poet of the hard truth that being by yourself is the essential human condition.

Comprising a loose trilogy of riffs on Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, respectively, Fessenden’s Habit, Depraved, and Blackout understand the Universal Monsters pantheon as metaphors renewed for the generation that resurrects them and as modern archetypes that seem always to speak more eloquently in shorthand than in complete sentences. The vampire movie as a parable for addiction? Sure–but in Fessenden’s hands, the addiction is to destructive behaviours in toxic interpersonal relationships that erode self-esteem and social guardrails. I kept thinking of the character of Jack Torrance in The Shining when considering Habit‘s vampire, Sam (played by Fessenden himself). Both are alcoholics whose helplessness to their thirst results in the disintegration of their lives. When compared against the fevered, hunted eroticism in Fessenden’s work, what emerges is a sense that hunger (consummation) is the engine driving it. Fessenden’s carnality reminds of Abel Ferrara’s: smothering as much as smouldering; inescapably, scatalogically biological. I think there’s a relationship here, too, to David Cronenberg’s insectile communions; both Cronenberg and Fessenden approach fucking by documenting the human body functioning as a machine. The flesh is only wet meat, an insensate circuit of impulses and responses that carries within it a grey palimpsest pretending at art and philosophy. Cronenberg’s mad scientist Seth Brundle must “teach” his computer about the flesh to stop it from turning apes inside out. Fessenden’s films are the lessons learned. Literally so, in the case of one of his Frankenstein riffs, Depraved, which, like his werewolf film Blackout, begins with a couple enthusiastically in flagrante delicto, grounding this trilogy, Ken Russell-like, in the pros and cons of priapism.

Fessenden’s trilogy is coloured by melancholy and nostalgia. What I’m saying is that revisiting it upon the premiere of Fessenden’s latest at the Overlook Film Festival, Trauma or, Monsters All, proved a remarkable experience here in my dotage. Trauma or, Monsters All is, Douglas Adams-like, the fourth film in his monsters trilogy–a mash-up in the tradition of Ghost of Frankenstein or House of Dracula in which the aforementioned Sam, the Frankenstein’s monster of Depraved, Adam (Alex Breaux), and Blackout‘s werewolf, Charley (Alex Hurt), converge in the fictional Talbot Falls (christened in tribute to Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, Larry Talbot). They’re drawn there by an article the conspicuously named Cassandra (Laëtitia Hollard) wrote for her college newspaper about the possibility that Talbot Falls’ recent run of bad luck is due to an infestation of cryptids. Adam and Charley already live there out of loneliness, while Sam is drawn there because if there are more outcast creatures like him lurking about somewhere, then that’s where he wants to be. It’s a film about middle-aged men in crisis, marooned from loved ones and isolated in oubliettes constructed of their terrible deeds and unresolvable regret. It’s heartbreaking by itself, but taken with the three earlier films, it looks very much like a masterpiece.

Trauma opens on a black screen, over which we hear a man talking about starting over after a string of disappointments. His friends are kind. They say supportive things about brand-new days and the promise of uncharted territory. When we finally see this man leaving the bar, he looks apprehensive but resolved. He walks to the parking lot. Lights a cigarette. And a monster kills him. This is Fessenden’s way with horror, real horror: the horror of hope; the horror of a life that will likely end in pain, and bring pain to those who will miss you. Horror is the root of religion, which offers a placebo for chaos that can feel capricious. Horror is realizing that you’re not beginning the rest of your life today. And what if you’re alone? What if, through no real fault of yours, you’re by yourself as the sand pools in the bottom of the glass? What if it was your fault, in a way, because you couldn’t control your rage of difference and dislocation?

Cassandra is working on a book about George Washington Carver, who you probably know, if you know of him at all, as the Black scientist who used peanuts in various applications. She wants to change how Carver is remembered. The task is frustrating: she feels like she keeps having the same conversations, fixing misconceptions, trainspotting microaggressions. You know, no one is accomplished enough to be remembered. No level of fame makes you immortal. In your lifetime, if you are unfortunate enough to live a long time, you will see the culture you have known your entire life become alien and strange. It is horror. Charley confronts Cassandra. He has to move on because of Cassandra’s article, and he’s furious, and wounded. He’s found a friend and a protector in Adam, who accepts him for who he is. Charley spends his time painting. He’s happy. He wants to be left alone. He tells Adam that he’s moving out, and Adam is destroyed. Charley visits the woman, Kate (Barbara Crampton), with whom he’s had an affair, but not as a lover: as a wolf. Charley’s storyline is like an episode of the extraordinary television series “The Incredible Hulk”, where a man loses control and must flee to a new place to begin again. And again. And again. This is Fessenden’s lycanthropy–a stand-in for masculinity and how we do a terrible job of teaching our young men to handle frustration. We do a terrible job of preparing anyone for grief. Charley only has violence to communicate, and Fessenden makes sure we see the atrocity of murder and then the ugly indignity of death. Crampton is one of the most beautiful people in horror, inside and out. It’s Fessenden’s emotional intelligence that causes him to identify her as someone it’s painful to see betrayed. As the song warns, you always hurt the one you love. If you’re a man, alas, sometimes you love them so much you kill them.

All of this leaves Cassandra targeted by the good people of Talbot Falls for digging up stories they’d rather stay buried. They’re an unpleasant bunch of drunkards and hypocrites involved in their own sagas of denial and self-medication; Talbot Falls is Small Town America circa 2026. There’s nothing special about it. It’s dying. We’re all dying. Cassandra’s best friend is pretty Sharon (Addison Timlin). One night, while trying to get a good look at Cassandra’s weird next-door neighbours, they share a sweet kiss. They don’t want to put a label on it. Cassandra has arrived at a delicate crossroads in her life. She’s finding her voice and discovering that the power that comes with it is double-edged. She’s exploring her sexuality and realizing she needs to take it slow. This is where regrets are formed. Left to fester, regret turns into trauma. It’s a terminal cancer or a fungal bloom. There’s a point at which you can no longer treat it. Trauma or, Monsters All is wisdom in all its multifoliate uselessness and horror. Fessenden is at the stage of his career now where he’s the elder statesman: the dispenser of advice, the creator of a body of work he’s stitched together here into a sad monster, shambling, sentient, alive…and beautiful. So beautiful. And brutal. Life is like that. I’m glad to be alive. I’m glad this film is, too.

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Father, Son, Holy Gore

C.H. NEWELL, April 14, 2026

TRAUMA OR, MONSTERS ALL: An Exploration of Human Monstrosity

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Trauma or, Monsters All, which premiered at the Overlook Film Festival this year, is another monstrous feature from director-writer Larry Fessenden, yet this film is even more unique than Fessenden’s previous work because it brings together monsters from three of his previous films—Habit (1995), Depraved (2019), and Blackout (2023)—to create a unified work about how monstrosity and humanity are tangled together. When a writer called Cassandra (Laetitia Hollard) has an article printed in the local newspaper in Talbot Falls about supposed monsters lurking around town, she unleashes buried traumas and fresh wounds which sets the town on edge and even against each other. As Cassandra attempts to find out the truth about the monsters, she only finds more pain, and it unfortunately puts her in danger, though it isn’t necessarily the danger posed by vampires, werewolves, and Frankensteins.

Not every horror filmmaker or writer understands the complexity of monstrosity, even if they make monster movies, but Fessenden—similar to someone like Guillermo del Toro—understands monsters; not only what makes them scary, but also what makes them deeply human. Trauma or, Monsters All deals with different ideas about monstrosity, particularly how what is monstrous can often, though not always, be in the eye of the beholder. Fessenden’s latest film is about resisting the monster within. It’s also just as much about not being trapped by the monstrosity of history. Like Cassandra, we must seek history’s complexities and truths, but we also must recognise that moving forward and healing is just as much, if not more, important, otherwise we’ll only ever be defined by monsters and the ghosts of our traumas.

Fessenden’s film, as evidenced by its title, tackles trauma on a community level while it also deals with personal traumas, too. Trauma often does one of two things: a) it makes someone stronger, or b) it makes someone even more susceptible to further traumas, which is where Talbot Falls finds itself as a community in the wake of the events in Blackout (2023), as well as the events in Depraved (2019) despite the latter not taking place directly in Talbot Falls. Fessenden has always had his finger on the pulse of America. Trauma or, Monsters All is a microcosm of a haunted America going through trauma after trauma without any time to heal. A wonderful piece throughout the film is Cassandra’s interest in George Washington Carver, whose name alone expresses the contradictions of American history. Cassandra mentions Carver’s interesting life, including his queer relationship with a younger white man, and recognises that even Carver, whose life was deeply affected by slavery, found ways to move beyond the defining racism of America. Fessenden’s film briefly touches on issues of race, ultimately taking the stance that race is one of the ways the powerful monsters in society keep us divided. In one scene, a character, perhaps unknowingly, even quotes the immortal words of Rodney King: “Can‘t we all just get along?”

Fessenden’s film deals with monsters and likewise with certain monstrous people in the small town of Talbot Falls. In one passing remark, we hear from the local librarian about the people trying to shut down or defund the library due to children’s books they don’t like. This itself is a direct reflection of the real America that Trump has ushered in, as MAGA roars about censorship while cheering on banning books that deal with queerness, trans identity, or Black history. There’s also Polidori who’s in from out of town, but still represents a very human monster; those who’ve seen Depravedalready know. But the most telling group of monsters are the angry white guys who all but hunt Cassandra because she wrote an article about the monstrous recent past of Talbot Falls; again, a real reflection of Trump’s America in which the enemies don’t seem to be the fascists or racists but the people trying to expose/deal with the nasty, violent truths of American history.

Trauma or, Monsters All also deals with the idea that human beings can, and so often do, become monsters, which speaks to a nature v. nurture concept of monstrosity; nobody’s born a monster, they’re shaped into one. The subplot involving Charley’s ex Sharon somewhat captures the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quote from Beyond Good and Evil (1886): “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” Sharon’s so lost due to Charley being cast out, because he’s seen as monstrous, that she winds up becoming a monster herself; her lingering trauma doesn’t allow her to see the monstrosity still around her, from the monstrous humans living in Talbot Falls to the literal vampire—Sam from Fessenden’s Habit, played by the director himself—who’s glided into town. Even if it’s not Sharon’s fault she becomes a monster, she still succumbs to genuine monstrosity, eventually committing a horrifying act of violence against a young queer woman.

Something important that Trauma or, Monsters All does is it brings to light that monstrosity is all about perception in the end. In one scene, Sam ruminates on monsters, “or just people who identify as monsters,” and then questions: “I mean, what is a monster?” Even if we go back to James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) with the scene featuring Frankenstein and the little girl, we can see that monstrosity isn’t necessarily a reflection of reality, it’s more a reflection of the person looking upon what’s deemed ‘monstrous.’ That scene illustrates how those who are different are rightly afraid of being labelled monsters. This is why, in Trauma or, Monsters All, Adam (from Depraved) and Charley (from Blackout) are trying their best to hide away from the world, in order to avoid all the terror and violence that comes along with the label of monster.

In Fessenden’s film, even the most arguably ‘bad’ monster is aware of how humans are warped into monsters: “Y‘know, you‘ve gotta practice things like empathy and kindness, morality, all the virtues, and if you don‘t, they atrophy.” The real monsters in our societies today are those who turn their backs to empathy and kindness. We’re living in a time when some of the most powerful, wealthy people in the world say things like empathy is a “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Like Sam says, once your abilities to empathise and be kind atrophy, “then you become like the undead.” The genuine monsters living in our world circa 2026 are the rich and powerful, as well as those following them blindly, who’ve allowed their better hearts to die. By the end of Trauma or, Monsters All, new horrors and traumas have been visited upon Talbot Falls, and the monstrosity of everyday human beings is revealed. There’s at least a glimmer of hope that the truth will prevail and that good, honest people still remain, though Fessenden’s film makes clear that neither the truth nor goodness will survive if we don’t come together to save ourselves from the dangerous potentials of human monstrosity.

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My New Orleans

Jeremy Marshall, April 15, 2026

Larry Fessenden’s “Trauma or Monsters All” is a unique creation; a culmination of three decades of quietly constructing a private universe of monsters ripped from the pages of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” that have taken root within the unique sensibilities of a filmmaker whose style belies easy explanation. As part four of his self styled “Quadrilogy”, the previous entries being “Habit”, “Depraved”, “Black Out”, Fessenden continues his streak of incepting his monster-verse with the prejudices and joys of reality; painting a canvas where monsters are merely a reflection of the ills that cannibalize polite society and a symptom of a much larger, more corrosive evil.

Seen in a four-movie marathon on the final day of the festival, Fessenden’s films are idiosyncratic in the sense that they are crafted for the delights of one person, himself. His monster movies are political; delving into the malaise of 90’s pre-war sludge, the after effects of the War on Terror upon a good doctor gone mad, and the ills of a community that prefers to blame an immigrant scapegoat instead of an American werewolf. For “Trauma or Monsters All”, Fessenden brings each of these flavors in red, white, and blue and stirs them together into a pestilence of kaleidoscopic sludge, tying the strings of history with fingers that touch the life of George Washington Carver, the experience of being the one black person in a city of suspicious whites, and even the value of eternal life if it is meant to be spent killing. Fessenden is eager to upend the toybox and smash the typical archetypes to pieces, using their base natures as a jumping-off point for stories that feel less scary than painfully earnest, and perhaps all the more lingering for their eagerness to be so.

While I would not suggest leaping into “Trauma or Monsters All” without priming yourself with the three films previous, I highly recommend slipping headfirst into the soup that Fessenden has served up for horror audiences over the course of a storied career. Here there be monsters, but also so much more.

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Hollywood Reporter

Richard Newby, April 17, 2026

Horror Highlights from the 2026 Overlook Film Festival
The horror-centric fest featured a mix of big releases, streaming offerings and hidden gems looking for distribution.

Trauma, or Monsters All

Larry Fessenden, one of the premier voices in the indie horror scene, and a filmmaker who has inspired numerous others at this festival, closes out his monster quadrilogy with Trauma, or Monsters All. The film brings together the vampire Sam (Fessenden) from Habit (1995), Frankenstein of the Hudson, Adam (Alex Breaux) from Depraved(2019), and the wolf man of Talbot Falls, Charley (Alex Hurt) from Blackout (2023) for a monster mash nearly 30 years in the making. When a young biracial writer, Cassandra (Laetitia Hollard) moves to Talbot Falls to work on her book about revolutionary scientist and inventor George Washington Carver, she soon finds herself drawn towards the town’s local history and rumors of monsters after seeing a Frankenstein’s monster-like figure outside her bedroom window.

Compelled to dig deeper and report on her findings, Cassandra publishes an article about the town’s history, putting a target on her back for those who would rather ignore the past, and threatening the security of both Adam and Charley, who have found a mutual peace on the outskirts of town. Meanwhile, the vampire Sam comes into Talbot Falls after hearing of these other monsters and stirs up trouble by turning Charley’s beleaguered love-interest, Sharon (Addison Timlin), into a vampire. And the sinister Polidori (Joshua Leonard) returns to collect Adam, who he sees as his business asset. As Cassandra finds herself an outcast in her new home, and hunted by a racist group of ne’er-do-wells, and the monsters she exposed, she and her love interest, Agnes (Aitana Doyle) are forced to reexamine their responsibilities to history and themselves.

The film suggests we’ve become distracted by false enemies while the real monsters reside right in front of us, and in the highest seats of power in the country. While remembering our history is crucial, it’s the work of great individuals, like Carver, who we can turn to in an effort to better shape our future. There is revolution that can be found in science and art, and not simply the history of oppression in America. Trauma has shaped who we are as people and as a country, but in order to move forward, and truly change things, we’re going to have to let some of that go to heal and unite as a force that’s smarter and better equipped than the true monsters. Fessenden’s latest continues the threads begun with his first feature, and initial Frankenstein film, No Telling (1991), and offers, if not answers, then at least ideas on how to combat the modern horrors we’re all facing.

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FANGORIA

Angel Melanson, April 16

Here’s Why The Overlook Film Festival Restored My Faith In Humanity
Rick Baker, the Crypt Keeper, Larry Fessenden, and a whole lot of popcorn. Another Overlook in the books.

by Angel Melanson

​… Sunday was a full-on Larry Fessenden fest, celebrating the multi-hyphenate filmmaker’s World Premiere of his latest feature, Trauma, Or Monsters All. Overlook presented screenings of Fessenden’s Habit, Depraved, and Blackout (as seen on the cover of FANGORIA #22), culminating in Trauma, which serves as the ultimate Fessenden cinematic monster universe.

After each screening, Fessenden was present for a Q&A with Fango’s Phil Nobile Jr. and Kimberly Leszak. And not to get too dramatic here, but I feel comfortable sharing with you that I absolutely fell in love with Larry. His movies are full of monsters and messages that feel like a balm for the soul. Having the chance to hear him speak about them only solidified the weekend’s overall theme of restoring my faith in humanity.

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FANGORIA

Phil Nobile Jr, April 17

Let Them Cook

By Phil Nobile Jr.

I had two utterly singular experiences at this year’s Overlook Film Festival: I interviewed the great Rick Baker about An American Werewolf in London for a Future Fango Thing; and I moderated a Q&A for Larry Fessenden’s “Monster Quadrilogy,” which screened his films Habit, Depraved and Blackout before his new one, Trauma or, Monsters All, which ties the aforementioned three films together in an audacious and surprising way.

In my interview with Mr. Baker, he talked about a frustration with the industry that led to his retirement a decade ago. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something along the lines of how, when you’re at the point where you’re getting notes from meddling producers about the shape of a monster’s eyebrow, or the placement of its nose, you realize you’re in a system where art and passion and creativity cannot exist, much less thrive. Mr. Baker decided that’s not where he wanted to be, and promptly dipped. Now, he’s still happily creating and blowing fans’ minds on Instagram, but he’s following his bliss instead of dopey producer feedback, and the beautiful work on his account emanates pure joy. “I retired from the business, I didn’t retire from being me,” he told us. Thank goodness for that.

Two days later was the Larry Fessenden marathon. Four films in a row, dating from 1996 to now. It was truly a privilege to see Larry’s work this way, back-to-back, watching not just the evolution of his style, but the evolution of indie genre filmmaking. And in watching Larry enjoy the absolute freedom he does — with form, with his own continuity, with the established rules of both horror and cinema itself — Mr. Baker’s comment about the producers who made him want to flee the movie industry rang in my ears.

I’ve written in this space before about Larry’s choice to use photos of his leading man Alex Hurt’s real father in 2024’s Blackout; that those photos are very clearly the late actor William Hurt is something one of Mr. Baker’s eyebrow-note-giving producers would have put a hand up over. But watching Blackout in sequence after Habit, one notices that Larry also did this with photos of his own father in that film and, William Hurt or no, he’s gonna follow his own rules. The choice not only works but resonates; Alex Hurt carries the same wounded quality that second-generation horror actor Lon Chaney Jr. did in The Wolf Man, and avowed Monster Kid Larry Fessenden surely clocked this. Anyone walking into The Wolf Man in 1941 was at least partly there to see a baton pass between generations, as the son of the great Lon Chaney claimed his birthright. (Sorta.) By placing those pics of the elder Hurt in the opening moments of his film, Larry takes that meta aspect to the next level, and it adds something special to the proceedings. And I know many, many producers who wouldn’t have let him.

The absence of unimaginative producer notes extends to Larry’s entire “Monsterverse” endeavor. A 30-years-later sequel to an indie classic might be expected to feel like a cash-in, or a safe bet, or resting on one’s laurels. But Larry, whose whole career has been about subverting expectations, somehow manages to make his monster mash a riskier endeavor than the three standalone films it pulls together. One can picture a version of Trauma or, Monsters All commissioned by a studio and overseen by money goons, and imagine all the ways it would not be the film Larry made. And I’m so grateful to get the movie Larry made, a vampire/werewolf/Frankenstein monster mash that is somehow also about Trump’s America, the death of empathy, and what happens when people (and monsters, as if there’s a difference in Larry’s films) shrug and give up being human. If you’re the kind of person entertained by ghoulish AI-rendered simulacra showing your favorite movie characters doing exactly what you tell them to, it might not be your thing. But if you’re excited by the organic, often unwieldy concept of true creativity, it’s good news that no one else is making movies like Larry Fessenden. We’re lucky to have him.

I say “lucky” because who knows what great talents and voices we never even got to hear because they were chewed up or chased off by non-creative execs who stomped on their creativity? How many more Rick Bakers should we lose to risk-averse bagmen who wander out of their lanes and think that signing a check means they know better than the person they’re paying? Rick Baker is not a waiter taking your order; he’s a chef, and you go to his restaurant to let him cook for you. Larry Fessenden is not an Uber driver going where you tell him to go; he’s an explorer on safari, and if you join the expedition, you do so with the faith that he knows the way, or is at least excited to discover the destination together. You may not be on board with the result — that’s part of exploring the unknown — but no one likes a backseat driver.

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Variety

William Earl, August 5, 2026

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