By George & Josh Bate
Capitalism has never been scarier than it is in Grind, a new four-part workplace horror anthology making its world premiere at SXSW 2026.
From filmmaking team Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, and Chelsea Stardust, Grind uses four timely vignettes to scathingly critique the economic hamster wheel none of us can seem to leap off of. The first short, titled “MLM,” follows a young woman named Sarah (Jessika Van) whose failure to meet quotas in an MLM (multilevel marketing scheme) leads to mind-boggling consequences. The next is “Delivery,” which is about the monotony of a food delivery driver named Benny (Vinny Thomas) amplifying tenfold when a seemingly innocuous gig ends up trapping him in a time loop. “Content Moderation,” the third short, stars Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette as Joel, a lowly English major graduate whose work as a content moderator, sifting through millions of horrendously disturbing and violent videos, leads him to lose his grip on reality. And, finally, “Union Meeting” tracks the immediate aftermath of the unionization of an all too familiar coffee shop and the lengths corporate overloads will go to to prevent unionization.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to speak with the masterminds of Grind about their new horror anthology, its disturbing timeliness, blending horror and humor, ideas for sequels, and more.
For director, writer, executive producer, and editor Ed Dougherty, a horror anthology was the perfect medium to explore the impact of wealth inequality and capitalism. “I’ve wanted to make a horror anthology since I was five years old,” Dougherty said. “And then the other part of the answer would be to tell a story which is a scathing critique of capitalism….It felt like the right time to do it. The thing that horror does best is it talks about our fears. And it felt like the one thing that all of our friends were talking about and were all dealing with was money, the economy, gig culture, side hustle culture, and how we’re supposed to be working five jobs just to pay our rent and never be able to buy a house.”
Having collaborated before, Dougherty and Brea Grant, who directed Blumhouse’s Torn Hearts, found their interests most greatly overlapped with ideas that are “more fun, satirical, and had something to say.” Grant continued regarding the blending of genres, “We show the full range of fun to super dark, but overall I think something that we are really drawn to is a little bit of more popcorn horror – a little bit more fun, but [with] something to say.”
Dougherty elaborated by explaining how Grind’s embrace of both horror and comedy reflects real life. “To me, the horror and the humor – it’s what life is: horror and humor,” the filmmaker reflected.
For producer Chelsea Stardust, who also directs the wrap-around segment of Grind, offsetting such dark subject matter with humor was “cathartic.” She remarked, “That’s what makes it cathartic to me. It makes it a cathartic watch, because of this blending of tone. It’s one of the things I love about it.”
It’s an unfortunate reflection of our reality that the filmmaking team had so many jobs and aspects of modern capitalism to explore in their horror-comedy anthology. “Ed has a 100-page document of all the things that he wants to do and Grind to do,” Grant revealed. “We chose these ones. We kind of knew we wanted to do a delivery driver. That felt really right, but we knew there were other things we wanted to make sure we covered. And “MLM,” we already had written at that point, because the multi-level marketing world is so interesting and it’s something we both really really like. We played through and figured out what would be the best thing for this particular film, and especially one’s different kinds of jobs – one being a side hustle, one being a horrible job that takes place because of corporate greed and where the internet is, and then also being able to include unionizing, which was something we were talking a lot about at that time and still, obviously. It was just these were the ones that ended up feeling like they were the most fertile.”
Dougherty’s 100-page document of ideas may come in handy if the filmmaker and his collaborators achieve their dream of making Grind into a franchise. “The goal is not to make Grind – it’s to make Grind 4,” Dougherty said. Grant continued, “This is the only project he’s ever done where the crew comes up and pitches you ideas while you’re on set.” Stardust voiced that she’d like to see a sequel explore the hidden horrors of pet sitting and house sitting.
On the surface, the world in which Grind takes place is so exaggerated and ludicrous that it renders the film a more effective comedy than piece of horror cinema. However, real disconcertment begins to kick in as each of the four shorts resolve and leave the viewer reckoning with how all the wild events we’ve just seen are only moderately implausible. In that sense, Grind is scarier than most horror movies.
