Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror

The Rocky Horror Picture Show remains the longest running theatrically released film in history. Seriously, if your hometown has any sort of cool cred, it’s playing this Saturday at midnight somewhere. Yet, curiously, there has never been a major, comprehensive documentary about the phenomenon lest you count a ‘90s Behind the Music episode on VH1. Director Linus O’Brien, son of Richard O’Brien, and writer/producer Avner Shiloah correct that oversight with Strange Journey, aka the Rocky Horror Documentary.

Filled with most of the surviving stars and contributors to both the 1975 film and the original 1973 stage musical who shaped the lore, Strange Journey doesn’t necessarily teach diehards anything new, but it immortalizes for posterity the memories of all involved in a concise and elegantly told format. O’Brien and Shiloah also make the astute choice to intertwine the building of Rocky Horror with the legacy of its myth—eschewing a linear format in favor of using the feature-length to expand on why this show became such a conduit for counterculture, freedom, and escape. May it continue to provide that time warp release for another 50 years. – DC

The Surrender

Take a touch of Ari Aster’s Hereditary, add a heaping dose of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, and blend them together with a host of chopped up limbs and you’ve got the formula for Julia Max’s macabre horror flick, The Surrender. 

The Boys’ Colby Minifie stars as Megan, a woman who returns home to take care of her terminally ill father. After Megan’s dad succumbs to the inevitable, her mother Barbara (Kate Burton) turns to some alternative methods to bring him back. The Surrender leaves too much potential woo-woo wellness culture satire on the table but ultimately succeeds as a horror movie sizzle reel for all involved. – AB

The Threesome

If the star-crossed entanglements of characters played by Zoey Deutch and Jonah Hauer-King aren’t enough to sell you on this rom-com, then a first-act twist anchored by Bottoms breakout Ruby Cruz pushes The Threesome out of familiar territory and into something much closer to comedic bliss. 

Director Chad Hartigan masterfully balances the film’s big hearted moments of Ethan Ogilby’s script with key supporting roles from comedy TV mainstays like Jaboukie Young-White and Josh Segarra, and standout quips and one-liners from Deutch. 

“Whenever I read a script and find myself reading the lines out loud, I know I really want to do [the film],” Deutch tells us. “It’s almost like my body has a physical reaction to wanting to jump in and figure out how I would gel with [the role]. I loved the script.” – CL

The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick

Director Pete Ohs had a SXSW breakout in 2022 with Jethica and returned in 2025 with The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick, a creeping rural psychological thriller. Like his past films, Ohs’ creative process is unique in that he shares writing credits with his actors, and they’re constantly evolving the narrative or solving problems on set together in real time. 

“Filmmaking is a collaborative medium, but that approach is extra collaborative,” Ohs says.  

He calls the process his “table of bubbles.” A shoot begins with an outline of the story and, with a “minimal crew anchored by a key location,” they shoot chronologically while writing scenes together. Zoë Chao, Callie Hernandez, and James Cusati-Moyer, and Jeremy O. Harris, the top four on a sparse call sheet, are all credited as writers on the film in which Chao’s Yvonne develops troubling symptoms after a tick bite during a weekend away at a secluded house amongst friends new and old.

Harris, who executive produced and previously collaborated with Ohs on the editing of Harris’ Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play., credited the director for building a creatively freeing atmosphere on set.

“The genre isn’t horror. It’s much like [David] Lynch. It’s Ohs-ian. Part of being in an Ohs-ian universe is saying ‘yes’ to his table of bubbles. It’s a very fragile process to say ‘yes’ to what’s on the table to keep the table alive. It’s like being in film school with the best, most active professor.” – CL

We Bury the Dead

It seems increasingly tough these days to produce a zombie movie that feels fresh or innovative. So the fact that Zak Hilditch’s We Bury the Dead finds a new way into the genre via We Bury the Dead makes the horror-drama hybrid one of the nicer genre surprises out of Austin this year. Technically a post-apocalyptic movie set down under where Ava (Daisy Ridley) is a woman looking for her missing husband after the world stopped, the truth is We Bury the Dead is the first undead parable in-tune with a post-COVID and post-Trump world.

In the film, life on the Australian island of Tasmania ended long before the story properly begins, with most of the inhabitants dropping dead after the U.S. government accidentally detonated an EMP off the coast of a sovereign ally. Oopsie. Curiouser still, a few of the dead won’t stay down. The hapless local authorities euphemistically refer to these folks as coming “back online.” Still, everyone is promised that the dead, and not-so-dead, will be treated with the “dignity” they deserve.

It’s in this context that Ridley’s Ava enters the island as a member of the Bodies Retrieval Unit. Like everyone else in the gig, she’s looking for a closure that will not come, and a loved one who at best will be a snarling corpse. The irony, and day-to-day indignity, of such a prospect grounds the horror in an eerie verisimilitude. Ridley does raw work, too, when encountering others haunted by those, uh, terminally online. – DC

Best Music Sets & Showcases

Initial reports that SXSW’s music festival is in a state of flux for 2026 have since been clarified by the event organizers. The show will go on, albeit reduced by two days. There has been a dramatic decrease in artist participation over the decade or so, and a shortening of the SXSW 2026’s overall schedule due to construction on Austin’s new convention center will inevitably lead to changes for the music festival that has been a staple of the event for nearly 40 years. 

The artists that did travel to SXSW 2025 still packed a punch, though. Of the artists we selected for our SXSW 2025 music preview, we caught sets by Aussie six-piece Coldwave (photo above), who captivated a packed inside stage audience at Mohawk during a late-night set, and Brazilian outfit Terraplana closed out Valhalla with a mesmerizing shoegaze set that evokes emo and grunge inspiration. 

From artists who also made our SXSW Music Mixtape playlist, we saw Sierra Spirit, a Native American indie artist from Oklahoma, shine during an intimate set with standout tracks “bleed you” and “better wild,” and Norway’s indie pop math rockers Mall Girl impressed with tantalizing vocals and thumping guitars inspired by midwest emo (see “Midwest”). 

The British Music Embassy, one of our favorite mainstays at SXSW, once again filled out one of the festival’s strongest lineups with strong sets from some of the buzzy bands showcasing last week, including Freak Slug, Gurriers, and Delivery. 

Finally, we stopped by the Sounds Australia House on Thursday for a second Coldwave set and photoshoot to make sure our eyes and ears didn’t deceive us. They delivered yet again. And they were followed by Brisbane three-piece Dune Rats (pictured above), who lit up Creek and Cave with their energetic mix of rowdy throwback pop punk. – CL