The new project is titled The Face of Horror and, following production in Prague, is preparing for its international debut at the Toronto International Film Festival 2026.
The film marks Biller's third feature as writer and director, drawing inspiration from a surprising source: Yotsuya Kaidan, a celebrated 19th-century Japanese supernatural tale centered on the ghost of a woman betrayed by her husband. Biller relocates the story to 14th-century England, transforming it into a gothic narrative of marriage, greed, and revenge.
A Marriage Destined to Become a Nightmare
At the heart of the story are Eleanor, played by Kristine Froseth, and the knight Edward Carnifex, portrayed by Jonah Hauer-King. She is a peasant's daughter who believes she has found her future in the man she loves; he, however, sees marriage primarily as an opportunity to improve his social standing.
When Edward begins to desire a wealthier, aristocratic woman—Isabel, played by Bella Heathcote—the marriage spirals toward tragedy. But Eleanor's death will not be the end of the story: it will be the beginning of revenge.
Biller herself seems intent on building the film around this reversal of perspective: the man who believes he can control his wife's fate will discover that death can transform the victim into the most powerful figure in the story.
Biller's Ghost Looks to Japan, but Wears Technicolor
What makes The Face of Horror particularly distinctive, however, is the way Biller blends seemingly distant cinematic traditions. Vulture describes the film as a tribute to great Technicolor horror, a choice perfectly consistent with the director's trajectory—in Viva and especially The Love Witch, she transformed the imitation of cinema from the past into a genuine authorial language.
This is therefore not simply a matter of making a horror film set in the Middle Ages. Biller seems intent on constructing an artificial, theatrical, deliberately excessive world in which gothic violence can coexist with an almost painterly aesthetic pursuit.
The result, at least in early American descriptions, appears far removed from the contemporary idea of naturalistic horror. The Face of Horror seems rather to want to return horror to a spectacular and melodramatic dimension, where blood, desire, and revenge become elements of the same visual composition.
Jonah Hauer-King Enters His "Horror Era"
The casting of Jonah Hauer-King adds an interesting element. The actor, known to mainstream audiences also for The Little Mermaid, this time inhabits a decidedly darker character.
According to coverage of the project in the American press, Edward is a particularly contemptible knight: not the classic antagonist tormented by some moral conflict, but a man willing to sacrifice his wife and family for a better social position.
Alongside him, Froseth appears destined to occupy the true emotional center of the film. The actress recently spoke with Vogue about the project, expressing enthusiasm about finally seeing Biller's film reach audiences, having been shot in 2025.
From The Love Witch to a New Form of Horror
The most interesting aspect of The Face of Horror might be precisely its continuity with Biller's previous cinema.
In The Love Witch, the director used the aesthetics of melodramas and psychedelic horror from the 1960s to tell stories of desire, loneliness, and male fantasy. Here the device seems to become even more radical: the story of a betrayed woman is transformed into a macabre fairy tale in which return from the dead becomes a form of retribution.
And the reference to Yotsuya Kaidan allows Biller to move away from more conventional Western gothic, while keeping intact some of her favorite themes: marriage as a cage, the artificial construction of femininity, and male desire to possess and replace woman.
The Toronto Debut
The first major test will come at the Toronto International Film Festival 2026, where The Face of Horror is among the most anticipated titles of the festival. Vulture has already included it in its selection of must-see festival films, highlighting precisely the combination of Japanese folklore, medieval setting, and tribute to Technicolor horror cinema.
The film will also screen at the BFI London Film Festival, with a screening planned for the 2026 edition.
The festival run could prove decisive for Biller: The Face of Horror is one of those films that seem designed to divide, intrigue, and above all create an immediately recognizable vision.
Biller's real wager therefore doesn't seem to be reinventing horror, but reminding audiences how powerful it can be when horror becomes artifice, melodrama, color, and spectacle once again. And if The Love Witch transformed romantic fantasy into a trap, The Face of Horror could transform that same trap into a tomb from which, this time, it is the victim who returns.
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