-18C (2026) – First Look At New Italian Horror

Posted on by Jim Cox

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There comes a point when cinema stops asking for permission. This is that point.

With the release of the first official images, Domiziano Christopharo returns to a territory that has never truly stopped belonging to me: underground cinema. Raw, visceral, necessary. A place where images don’t comfort — they dig. Where storytelling doesn’t offer itself — it imposes.

This new work takes shape as a ghost story set in a dystopian future, but that definition barely scratches the surface. This is not just a story about ghosts — it is a story that is a ghost. An echo of bodies, identities, and memories decomposing and reforming in a space outside of time, where the boundary between presence and absence becomes unstable, almost obscene.

The first images reveal a world in ruins, but never passive. A universe that pulses and breathes through its protagonists — creatures rather than characters, presences rather than performers.

Among them, José Vera, a powerful stage actor also seen in YOKAI, appears here in an even more radical, almost unrecognizable form.

Vanessa Santana Garcia, previously featured in the award-winning THE LAST COMMISSION, moves through the frame with an ambiguous force — fragile and feral at once.

And then, at the center of it all: Giuseppe Sartori.

Working with Sartori was an act of total trust. A rising icon of Italian theatre, trained with Ricci/Forte and at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, he steps into cinema for the first time with no protection. He doesn’t perform — he exposes himself. Body and soul. No filters, no distance. The result is something you don’t simply watch — you endure.

Guiding this descent are the compositions of Alexander Cimini, already widely acclaimed for his award-winning scores for RED KROKODIL and BELLEROFONTE / DARK WAVES. Here, his work doesn’t accompany — it infects. A living sonic organism that seeps into the images and destabilizes them from within.

This is not a nostalgic return. It’s a violent one.

The first images are only a threshold. And what lies beyond it is not meant to reassure.

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