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(Fantastic Fest 2026) SICK Is a Slippery, Sweaty, Skin-Crawling Family Affair

By. Katelyn Nelson

 

It’s been some time since I’ve encountered a movie that all but defies explanation. Not for being unenjoyable, but rather for being so remarkably visceral that trying to describe the experience to someone else is like scrounging around in a particularly sludgy haystack for an especially pointed needle. It clings to you unshakably, but with very little precision. When writer-director Agata Trzebuchowska’s feature debut, SICK, opened with a young man popping a zit on a bus mirror, I knew I was probably in for a bumpy ride. What I did not anticipate, however, is that acne would be the least of my worries.

Fresh off it’s world premiere at the 2026 Fantastic Fest, SICK follows two siblings, Maks (Konrad Kąkol) and his older sister Emmaare (Katarzyna Łubik) as they care for their ailing grandmother in the heat of summer at an isolated Polish countryside. There’s almost no one else around except one set of neighbors Maks and Emmaare knew as children and the snakes out by the lakeside. Their grandmother is more or less bedbound. It’s the perfect combination for some totally normal, not at all troubling sibling bonding time, right? Naturally, things begin to go bump in the night, and almost immediately Maks is unable to shake the feeling that something is going on in the house, though he can’t quite put his finger on what—or why his grandmother’s back is peeling so much at bathing time. Despite his obvious unease, for much of SICK’s runtime the tension is multifaceted and just under the surface.

Without a doubt, what makes this such an uncomfortable, squirming little trainwreck is the dynamic between Maks and Emmaare. Kąkol and Łubik excel at creating myriad kinds of tension with each other in ways that are as disturbing to watch as they are impossible to look away from. So much so, in fact, that I spent more than a little of this viewing experience talking myself into, out of, and then back into the idea of the two of them being siblings. SICK operates on a sort of Hansel & Gretel style isolation, if instead of (or in addition to?) wanting to consume the children, the old witch also wanted to compel them to give into their basest and most taboo desires. Think Nikki’s party monologue from OBSESSION and you’re almost all the way there.

In the midst of the most incestuous will-they-won’t-they since CRUEL INTENTIONS, there is something strange going on with grandma. Compounded with the almost otherworldly atmosphere that permeates the film, the prevalence of water and snake imagery throughout led me down the rabbit hole that there was likely something mythic afoot and, after much combing through the Internet, I was able to find a great deal of snake-woman-based Polish/Slavic folklore. Women of this particular folk strand are capable of everything from luring men to their watery graves to switching out children and causing mass flooding. Presumably through my own faulty research ability in the age of having to make an offering and answer riddles three in order for the Internet to be a useful research tool, I was not quite able to land on one specific character of Slavic folklore at play, but there were elements of enough to enrich several small details in the dynamic between Maks, Emmaare, and their grandmother and how they interacted with her at the pivotal moments of the film.

If Nikki's infamous party monologue in OBSESSION immediately came to mind here, you already know the particular flavor of psychosexual discomfort Katelyn is talking about. Revisit Professor Horror's review of the film that apparently set the benchmark for making everyone in the room deeply uncomfortable.

Even without such digging, though, SICK is an arresting mix of horror and a kind of coming of age that, while almost never easy to watch, certainly keeps you coming back. There is a sense of barely contained lust in almost every interaction being stifled and forbidden in an environment so keenly associated for these characters with a sense of childhood freedom in so palpable a way as to make you feel sort of unclean for watching—never mind the profuse presence of all kinds of bodily fluids.

Fortunately for the film freaks and sickos out there, SICK swept the Fantastic Fest awards, winning both Best Director and Best Performance in the “New Wave” Features category, and had its worldwide rights obtained ahead of its worldwide premiere; it won’t be long until you can all peek behind the cottage curtains and see just what these siblings and their skin-shedding, dream-haunting grandmother have gotten up to.

Fantastic Fest offered a considerably sweeter vision of human connection in THE SQUIRREL, where Katelyn found hope in a sterile future through intimacy, nature, and one very important little animal. After SICK, you may need the palate cleanser.