If there’s one thing that After Dark is good for (just kidding, there’s many things!) it’s providing a launching pad for new filmmaking voices and visions through both its Short Film showcases and the sharp and discerning eyes of their programmers and their feature selections. In past editions of After Dark, I’ve seen filmmakers like Mike Flanagan drop his debut feature Absentia in 2011, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead showcase every bit of the promise of their subsequent films in their debut Resolution in 2012, and Jennifer Kent show off her hugely influential and iconic The Babadook in 2014, just to name a few. Marion Le Corroller, with her debut feature Species (Sanguine), is unquestionably one of those voices as she unveils one of the most shocking, sharp (in a few senses of that word), and astute horror movies of 2026. And that’s really saying something in a year that brought us ground-breaking work like Buffet Infinity, Inherit, Obsession, Backrooms, and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
Species (not that one), opens on the machine-like and super-demanding work environment of a burger restaurant as we see a smiling, multiple-time employee of the month fast food worker being berated by an influencer who wants to order off-menu. The cashier, who up to that point has displayed the patience and level-headedness of a saint, suddenly snaps on the guy and violently beats him down, all while sporting the kind of ear-to-ear grin that (like so many of the scenes in this movie) will probably stick with you for some time after Species is over. It’s a shocking, almost Technicolor-toned scream that this is a movie about an underclass of young people being thrown into the meat grinder of unrestrained ambition and exploitation.
We pick up on Margot (Mara Taquin) who is fulfilling her lifelong dream of practicing medicine in an ultra-competitive hospital under the tutelage of the ice-cold, demanding, and hyper-perceptive Professor Virgile (Karin Viard). This is an internship program that already feels like the stuff of nightmares as the live-in dorms at the hospital resemble some combination of prison cells and the haunted Tanz Dance Academy of Argento’s Suspiria. Everything is painted black and austere, there’s anti-suicide measures on all the windows, and what’s the deal with those bloodstains on the mattress?
When the actual work starts, Margot discovers a strange illness in several of her patients, mostly those within a specific age range (20-30ish, so Gen Z) who begin to exhibit both physical changes in the form of profuse and inexplicable bleeding with no clear source and what seems to be an intravenous fungal infection, and a possibly-related aggression and heightened perception. The commonality between these patients appears to be heavily demanding, competitive jobs. And under the strict hand of Virgile where the interns’ patient turnaround times are monitored and ranked on a leaderboard in the break room, Margot’s job becomes just as demanding and competitive. So it’s only a matter of time before Margot’s own blood starts mysteriously pouring out of her and weird, grotesque sores and rashes start appearing on her body. Needless to say that things only escalate from there. We follow Margot as she first tries to conceal her condition and then frantically tries to understand and reverse it. But the disease is resilient and adaptive, and easily-spread. And perhaps there’s even an upside that Margot hasn’t discovered yet.
Visually and aurally, Le Corroller keeps you engaged the entire time with unconventional camera movements, dissonant soundtrack choices, and pops of colour where you’d never expect them, like in that burger scene at the beginning of the film. And none of this works without Mara Taquin’s performance as Margot, taking up a literally obscene amount of screen real estate and putting her entire decaying, scabbed-out, bloody body on display along with an interiority that’s up there with the best horror performances I’ve seen this year. She’s supported by a fantastic cast, including Viard’s Virgile, and both she and her classmates manage scenes that could play as too over-the-top but feel real enough that you’ll find yourself itching and scratching at yourself just as they do.
Species easily makes it into the conversation as one of my favourite horrors of 2026. It’s everything scary about emergency rooms, late stage capitalism, and picking scabs, in one deliciously gnarly package. Blending the vibes of Julia Ducournau’s 2016 debut Raw with those of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and medical-themed horror like Brea Grant’s 12 Hour Shift (2020) and shows like The Pitt, Species creates a skin-crawling smoothie absolutely designed to make you squirm. It is vicious and unrelenting, while managing to, more than once, hit that particular horror note where you’re so viscerally uncomfortable and shifting in your seat that you can’t help but laugh. People like to throw around “Cronenbergian” when the body horror in a movie is particularly explicit and well-crafted (both the case here), but they so often miss the aspect that makes Big Dave special and that’s the social and cultural commentary that is supported by all those grody gore effects. Le Corroller does that precisely and while never letting go of the in-the-moment horror of an unknown disease taking over your body and reaching its veiny tendrils into every aspect of your life, and society as a whole, while making sure that you’re keenly aware that the reputation and legacy of French extremity is as alive and thriving as that vicious viral infection just underneath your skin.
Marion Le Corroller’s Species (Sanguine) comes to Shudder in 2027.
