Binding Eva’s Saturday evening slot at this year’s FrightFest is a vote of confidence in writer-director Conscian Morgan’s impressive debut, and it’s easy to see why it’s earned it. His psychological horror superbly balances landmark horror influences with the genre’s most recent successes, delivering perfectly on the promise of the festival’s Fresh Blood strand.
Binding Eva weaves a crime thriller and folk-horror delirium with urgency. The opening scenes quickly draw us into the film’s tense central dynamic as Felix, a desperate man on the run, breaks into a car where Eva, a mute seven-year-old, has been temporarily left by her mum. When the mother returns, Felix forces them to flee the scene. Only Katarina (Catherine Deevy) won’t drive him all the way to Chepstow, the Welsh town where Felix is desperate to deliver a bag, and the resulting crash leaves them stranded deep in the Forest of Dean. The unlikely trio struggle to get their bearings as time passes, haunted by voices at night and unable to get anywhere without ending up back at the same strange wooden structure.
Several famous horror films kick off with a crime—it’s not just a speedy route into the plot, but a neat way to establish baseline emotions and sympathies for the characters involved. Here, Felix’s misdemeanours remain mysterious, as do the occasional cutaways to him talking in a kitchen to his son Isaac. But we instantly know he’s haunted and desperate, and that plays a key part in making his and his captive’s journey into rural and psychological hell so engrossing. Through the growing, cyclical mystery, Felix’s journey takes him from generic carjacker to conflicted father.
Ryan Ralph Gerrard is endlessly watchable as that livewire desperate to get to Chepstow. It’s as a father that he bonds with the mother and daughter who’ve ended up his accidental hostages, and Morgan sews those threads in the film’s first scene. No matter how Felix snaps and swears through his plight, it can’t stop the impact of the tender moments he shares with Katarina and Eva. Between Morgan and his well-cast central trio, Binding Eva’s shifting tones are superbly blended. They sell the situation with earnestness, and just the right creeping suggestion that the things around them aren’t quite as they appear.
It’s just as well a real sense of humanity emerges between the two parents and their children—the adorable Eva, central to the woodland plight, and Felix’s son Oscar, always seen away from the action—amid the creepy horror of twigs cracking around them.
It’s hard to ignore the similarities with folk horrors like 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. The paganistic creep arrives when a character disappears only to return with a woven wooden cross. At that point, the opening that’s tinged with social realism unexpectedly crashes full pelt into folksy terror. It’s enough to make you inadvertently scream, “Hell no, don’t camp for the night in that wooden frame in the forest” when someone suggests it.
On the other side, the looping claustrophobia of Binding Eva taps into modern liminal horrors, like a sylvan Exit 8 or a rustic Backrooms. The legacy of the Blair Witch is especially acute when the action moves to an underground bunker complete with empty chairs, but with that lingering urgency it still feels fresh and modern. But while the Witchy vibes persist, Morgan’s lively, jump-cutty style effortlessly bats back the hanging memories of grain and motion of found videotapes.
That’s not to say there aren’t merciful moments of calm in this lean film (running just under 80 minutes). The brilliantly pitched score helps to set the pace, including a sequence where Felix heads out on his own into the vast forest, backed by a little brass and a piano-led medley. Later, as minds fracture, the score falls and soars with distorted strings.
Come the end, and a conclusion that doesn’t take its audience for granted, even as it makes a huge leap from the gritty start, Morgan leaves us with two things: a horrifying slice of reality and a sense of peaceful redemption. Both sit together brilliantly in this beautifully, organically and cleverly assembled first feature.
Binding Eva had its world premiere as part of the First Blood strand at FrightFest 2026 on Saturday, August 29
