Woman with knife standing behind other woman in Bare Skin (2026) film review

Content warning: sexual assault, mentions of disordered eating.

“Your secret is safe with me.”

Five strangers arrive for a group therapy session, each of them victims of extreme trauma. They have been brought together in the hope that sharing their experiences in the confines of a safe space will foster healing, or at least the beginning of it. But as the strangers tell their stories, an unsettling truth becomes clear: they may have more connecting them than they realise…

In Mico Montes’s feature debut Bare Skin, an ambitious and raw psychological horror film, the director weaves together six vignettes, telling the stories of each of the patients present as well as the story of their night spent in this group session with the mysterious Dr. Hedonia (Rachel Alig). It’s a tricky feat to take on this many strands of story, but Montes mostly succeeds in painting vivid pictures of his cast of characters.

There’s October (Gabrielle Salinger), an agoraphobic who in the wake of a gruesome sexual assault became drawn to the macabre to process her trauma. Dev (Ryan Wayne), a deeply anxious man who is wrestling with a horrible, dark guilt after an incident on a hike with friends. Oday (Alberto Henriquez) meanwhile was kidnapped on the way home from work and left to starve at the bottom of a pit, with his hunger forever warping him into someone unrecognisable.

The distant and suspicious Claire (Ariana Livingston), witnessed the love of her life be tortured to death while enduring unspeakable violence on her body, including the removal of part of her tongue. And Lenny (Torrey B. Lawrence), a brash, abrasive man who lost himself in the wake of a devastating house fire but gained a strange compulsion. Salinger and Livingston emerge as standouts, both unafraid to dig deep into themselves, however painful it may be, to bring their characters to life. Listening to Livingston as Claire, speaking carefully and slowly to make herself understood, you feel her agony hit deep in your soul.

Of the five vignettes covering the backstories of the patients, only Lenny’s story seems curiously underdeveloped, having been brushed aside after a few cursory scenes at the start. The other four, however, get time to breathe, allowing Montes to slowly but surely work the horror into you as it unspools. There are signs of a very promising new name in horror here; a scene involving a killer violin player (instant new favourite weapon in a horror film) is a particular highlight, and the use of binaural sound throughout the film is highly effective, especially in October’s vignette, helping to draw you into her state of psychosis.

With a running time of 143 minutes, Bare Skin can at points feel almost too much to take, especially in its most brutal scenes. But the running time allows for deeper character development (well, unless you’re Lenny) which, given the story the film is trying to tell, is essential.

It also permits the dread to truly build as the realisation that something bigger is going on in the walls of Dr. Hedonia’s office creeps in like a slow poison. And while the film doesn’t entirely pull it all together in the end, it’s still worth sitting down and giving it your full attention because quite frankly, it’s an extraordinary vision.

Bare Skin is on UK digital 23 February from Miracle Media.