By George & Josh Bate
Rolling folk horror, mumblecore, British dry humor, The Fog, and Roger Corman all into one, The Peril at Pincer Point brings a visually striking and tonally unsettling viewing experience to SXSW 2026.
From writer/director team Noah Stratton-Twine and Jake Kuhn, The Peril at Pincer Point follows Jim Baitte (Jack Redmayne), a layabout sound designer desperate to make it big in the film industry. After facing accusations of lacking creative vision, Jim is sent by lauded b-movie director P.W. Griffin to a remote island in order to capture a sound never heard before in cinema history. Once there, locals tell Jim of a fable about a ghostly sea captain who steals the souls of the island’s youth. Jim’s ambition, however, lets him overlook increasingly concerning warnings from the locals as he attempts to impress P.W. Griffin and finally make a name for himself.
The HoloFiles recently had the opportunity to speak with Noah Stratton-Twine and Jake Kuhn about their new film, the juxtaposition of its creepy atmosphere with British dry humor, how it comments on the ludicrous lengths people will go to to achieve success, ideas for sequels, and more.
Visually, The Peril at Pincer Point immediately stands out with its distinct aspect ratio and black-and-white color grading. The eeriness fostered by a style not dissimilar from Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse works perfectly in tandem with a story involving unusual locals, strange legends, missing people, and rumors of a ghostly sea captain recruiting for his spectral crew. For the filmmakers, classic Roger Corman films were a key inspiration for the visual language of their movie. “For lack of the joke, it’s pretty black-and-white for us in that we had a very designated aesthetic of trying to imitate Roger Corman movies,” Stratton-Twine explained. “We went into it with all the practicals of what that involves. We researched how to light certain scenes a certain ways, and the soundtrack and the sort of 1940s/50s-inspired melodramatic qualities.”
Interestingly, the film does not use its creepy atmosphere to craft a full-blown horror movie. Rather, Stratton-Twine and Kuhn find a point of novelty in juxtaposing an eerie aesthetic with the humor that comes from a lead character so unbelievably blinded to the unusual occurrences around him due to his unwavering ambition. “Jack Redmayne is our lead,” Stratton-Twine said. “We find him such a great reactive personality. It’s almost less funny of what he says, but almost how he reacts to certain situations. And I think our film banks on the fact that he can be speaking to a ghost or he can be speaking to someone who’s like, ‘I’ve seen you before’ and he’s just, ‘We’ll get into that later.’ He’s almost anti-audience.”
Kuhn and Stratton-Twine were also interested in pushing the limits of mumblecore. For those unfamiliar, mumblecore is a term that describes typically low-budget movies involving naturalistic or improvised dialogue and more intimate plots (think Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha or Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha). “I think the other thing is we were just huge on working out ways that we could transpose the mumblecore way of working into a world that was completely other,” described Kuhn. “For us, this huge thing was using all these tropes that are very very well established from other movies and putting these very naturalistic performances in it. I think it generated that dry humor….You have these very classic every horror movie you’ve ever seen has someone go, ‘Oh, I want to go to that place.’ And they go, ‘What you be going there for?’ But when you put the very natural classic British humor in that space I think what it generates is something so incredibly fun.”
Stratton-Twine went on to affirm Kuhn’s characteriization of the movie, “In its bones, this is a mumblecore movie, but in itself it’s far beyond. We just wanted to push it as much as we can.”
The lead character Jim’s obliviousness to an increasingly startling situation involving ghosts, prophecies, and missing people is the focal point of the humor in The Peril at Pincer Point. But this idea of overlooking all manner of warning signs in order to pursue success is something that resonates strongly with Stratton-Twine and Kuhn. “The entire movie just came from us feeling the same way,” Kuhn stated. “Him “[Jim] at the beginning of the movie was what we were like maybe two years ago, which is the idea of really wanting to be filmmakers and saying that’s what we wanted to do, and yet we weren’t really putting ourselves out there and striving to make that happen. And so making this movie is, in its own sense, us following the same journey that Jack [Redmayne] does where suddenly we’ve sacrificed every good relationship we have in our life in the pursuit of making this ridiculously silly movie.”
Stratton-Twine elaborated on the commentary embedded in their film. “Our north star was just about being an artist and, in order to be an artist, you have to be able to self-sacrifice for your art,” the filmmaker explained. “And I think that’s a very pretentious thing to say for people outside of the industry, but then, from us in the industry, how can we push that idea to the most ludicrous perspective – in our case, someone serving 10,000 years on a ghostly vessel.”
Exploring what we are willing to sacrifice to achieve greatness is a theme that will likely resonate with audiences far beyond the film industry. “I think it’s not just us,” Kuhn remarked. “Most people have difficulty finding that work-life balance with things they love… I really hope that it reads being very applicable to everybody. That feeling when you get obsessed with this little thing and you’re like, ‘Why am I risking everything in my life to just make this tiny thing happen? What’s the point of that?’ But when you’re inside it, it feels so all-consuming.”
In mumblecore tradition, the vast majority of The Peril at Pincer Point is improvised, giving the film an authentic, raw quality. “The film was all improvised – mostly improvised,” Kuhn detailed. “We did write a hell of a lot and the majority of it was just us trying to make each other laugh more than anything…But ultimately, at the end of the day, it was almost what the actors remembered of the mythology.”
Kuhn and Stratton-Twine already have ideas for how they can make sequels to The Peril at Pincer Point and, in turn, “franchise something nobody really cares about.” Kuhn explained, “There’s something so intoxicating about that notion. So no one cares or wants or knows this. That’s why we have to double down and provide it 10 times over.”
Regarding ideas for sequels, Kuhn said, “This movie is the mumblecore. We said number two would be our Gone of the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia. And number three would be like Judgment at Nuremberg, a courtroom drama three and a half hours long.”
Premiering at SXSW 2026, The Peril at Pincer Point pays homage to movies like The Lighthouse and The Fog while delivering a viewing experience unlike anything you’ve seen before. Visually striking with an eerie atmosphere fostered by a black-and-white color palette and 4:3 aspect ratio juxtaposing the levity and ridiculousness of the story, filmmaking duo Noah Stratton-Twine and Jake Kuhn craft a movie that favors comedy and commentary over overt horror. The film entertains (and unsettles) in conveying the obliviousness of a man blinded by ambition, much to the detriment of his life (and afterlife). The ‘Visions’ section of SXSW is reserved for “audacious, risk-taking artists who demonstrate innovation and creativity.” This perfectly describes The Peril at Pincer Point.