Anna Biller Returns With The Face of Horror, a Medieval Ghost Story

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Face of Horror 2026

Some betrayals survive the grave.

Anna Biller Is Bringing a Very Different Kind of Ghost Story to TIFF

The Face of Horror is set in medieval England and follows Eleanor, a woman whose husband betrays her before her death, only for her to return from the grave as a vengeful ghost, and it is also loosely inspired by Yotsuya Kaidan, the famous Japanese ghost story about a wronged woman returning from the dead to punish the man who betrayed her. 

Kristine Froseth stars as Eleanor, with Jonah Hauer-King playing her husband Edward, and the supporting cast includes Ellie Bamber, Leo Suter, Bella Heathcote and Ben Radcliffe - Edward is a knight who marries Eleanor after killing her father, but eventually turns against his wife when he becomes interested in another woman.

That betrayal is what sets the supernatural revenge in motion. and the official description calls it a gory tribute to classic Technicolor horror films, which gives a much better indication of Biller's intentions.

This Is Anna Biller's First Feature Since The Love Witch

The biggest reason The Face of Horror has attracted so much attention is Biller herself, because her last feature, 2016's The Love Witch, became one of the most distinctive horror films of the decade, largely because Biller constructed the movie around the visual language of vintage Technicolor melodramas and 1960s exploitation cinema, and now, a decade later, she's finally returning with another feature.

Biller has also reunited with M. David Mullen, the cinematographer who shot The Love Witch, and that's a particularly interesting detail because cinematography was such a massive part of The Love Witch, because Biller wasn't merely telling a story set in the past; she was deliberately recreating the look and feel of older filmmaking, so having Mullen back suggests that the visual approach to The Face of Horror is going to be just as carefully constructed - the production was also shot in Prague, with principal photography beginning in July 2025, where the Czech capital was used to recreate medieval England for the production.

The Japanese influence is also one of the more intriguing aspects of the movie though, as Yotsuya Kaidan dates back to 1825 and tells the story of Oiwa, a woman betrayed by her husband who returns as a vengeful ghost, and Biller is taking that basic emotional machinery and moving it into medieval England.

The Film Is Heading Straight Into Midnight Madness

The Face of Horror will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10–20, 2026, where it is part of the prestigious Midnight Madness lineup, and the TIFF's Midnight Madness section is probably about as appropriate a home as this movie could have found.

The section has built its reputation around unusual, crowd-friendly genre films shown to audiences at late-night screenings, and Biller's return has already been singled out as one of the more intriguing titles in this year's lineup, and it is also one of six world premieres among the ten films selected for this year's Midnight Madness.

The film is produced by Mike Goodridge and James Bowsher through Good Chaos, alongside Biller, with Sirena Films also involved in production, while Embankment Films is handling worldwide sales and co-repping domestic sales with WME - Good Chaos has been involved with a range of international and independent productions, making the company's involvement another indication that The Face of Horror is being treated as a filmmaker-driven genre movie rather than disposable horror product, and if Biller can bring even some of the visual insanity of The Love Witch into a medieval revenge story, this could be one of the genuinely distinctive horror films of 2026.

At the very least, it should be considerably more interesting than another anonymous haunted-house movie where somebody hears a noise upstairs and decides, for reasons nobody can explain, to investigate it alone.

More news will be added as it arrives.