Writer-director Justin Floyd makes his feature directorial debut with Jollyface, a horror-thriller with social commentary, racial injustice, and a brutal serial killer. After its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest, the film was deservedly named an Honorable Mention for Next Wave feature.
In Jollyface, Blair (Emily Kimball) and Nick (Kofi Siriboe) are madly in love and living their best lives in Los Angeles. Everything is perfect for the young interracial couple until one fateful day when Nick is shot to death in front of their apartment. While the police chalk it up to “Black-on-Black crime,” it’s clearly a cover-up. Devastated, Blair will not rest until she finds out what really happened, why it happened, who did it, and why the truth is being buried. But as she investigates, she becomes the next target.
Blair now lives alone in their apartment, spending her days grieving and restless. She begs her best friend and neighbor, Charlotte (Alexis Louder), a Black woman who is also in law enforcement, to help her obtain video footage of the crime. She refuses and Blair considers taking drastic measures. It was odd that there wasn’t more of a public outcry about Nick’s death. But it does a good job of illustrating just how alone Blair is in this.
The film’s description suggests Blair toes the line between ally and white savior. However, I didn’t get that impression. I just saw her as a heartbroken woman wanting answers surrounding her partner’s violent death, though she doesn’t really go about it wisely.
As usual in horror movies, she regularly makes stupid decisions, which then makes it hard to root for her sometimes, like when she walks into near pitch black rooms alone, or when she tells the police they’re useless then tearfully pleads for their help. At one point, she unnecessarily live-streams herself crying about the lack of transparency from the police, which does come off as a little performative. It results in consequences that could have been avoided.
It’s an interesting choice to have the protagonist be a white woman seeking justice for her Black boyfriend. For a brief moment, it seems like she could get some headway with the police. But it’s quickly established that they have no concern for her. She may be a white woman, but she’s a hysterical white woman who was in a relationship with a Black man. All they do is dismiss her. The police being the secondary bad guys is kind of predictable. Just like Jollyface, they’re all one-note, sometimes cartoonish villains purely driven by racism.
Kimball does a good job of making Blair mostly sympathetic, even when the character makes frustrating choices. Since Blair is on her own a lot of the time, the film really rested on her shoulders acting-wise. She had some rough dialogue to work with, but she handled it well.
Less than halfway through the 77-minute runtime, the film becomes a home invasion horror. Most of the story takes place in one location, but Floyd doesn’t limit all the action to a single apartment; he utilizes the entire building. Hallways, elevators, and rooftops become an obstacle course for survival. Even if you’re not particularly scared, the fight to stay alive is incredibly tense. Composers Max Aruj (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning) and Steffen Thum (The Old Guard 2) are effective in their suspenseful music, from Blair slowly and cautiously walking around her dark apartment to full-on running from a killer.
One of the enjoyable elements of Jollyface is Azariah Bjørvig’s (Tonic) crisp cinematography. The film is really well lit and shot. While the first ten or so minutes are bright and rich with color, the rest of the film is less warm and much darker. The shadowy halls of the building are the perfect setting to maximize the terror of the film’s titular villain, Jollyface (Jacob Bridges).
The image of the dark figure literally crawling (or sometimes lunging/sprinting) out of the darkness is genuinely unsettling, especially when the whites of his eyes and teeth are the only visible parts of his body at first.
Jollyface (though the film never refers to him as such) is scary in a way similar to Da Tap Dance Man from season one of Them, except silent and menacing and white. But while Da Tap Dance Man is a supernatural entity that manipulates a Black man to violently act on his inner rage about the injustices done to him, Jollyface is all too real. He is the violence, terrifying not just because of how he looks and moves, but because of what he represents.
Jollyface is a mostly thrilling exploration of racism and the violence it begets. While the message isn’t always clear, and it can’t decide whether it’s a psychological thriller or a slasher flick, it’s a film that stays with you after the credits roll, making Floyd an intriguing new voice in the genre.
Jollyface had its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026.
