Kombucha (2025) Film Review - A Darkly Humorous Body Horror

Is there a job that’s actually worth dying for? Director Jake Myers takes on the modern grind culture with this darkly humorous body horror about a mind-altering drink that makes employees work themselves to death.

Early on in the film, a young woman is seen working overtime at a mysterious office when she gets a phone call from her mother, who worries about her working herself too much. “If you don’t stop working so much, it’s going to kill you,” her mother warns her. The film then introduces us to Luke (Terrence Carey), an aspiring musical artist who can’t find a big break with his passion and is left with a mountain of bills to pay. When he bumps into an old acquaintance of his, Andy (Jesse Kendall), the latter shares about giving up his passion for music, retreating to the corporate world for a much more stable job, and even offering him a recommendation to enter the company. “Entry level starts at a hundred K. No experience required.”

The offer was pretty tempting, and after being convinced by his girlfriend Elyse (Paige Bourne), he eventually found himself joining the mysterious company called Symbio. Everyone seems to be nice and accommodating around him in the workplace, but there’s just one thing that keeps bothering him: everyone keeps on pushing him to drink the free kombucha produced by their company, called Mother’s Secret, as it is said to help employees become more productive. “Every employee working with peak energy and laser-focused,” his boss proudly exclaims. “Team unity at a cellular level.”

Penned by Geoff Bakken and Jake Myers, this body horror laced with a tinge of black comedy offers a satirical take on modern-day capitalism. Using a specially formulated kombucha drink that changes the personality overnight and forces its drinker to work tirelessly, it feels like Body Snatchers meets The Faculty, but set against the backdrop of the corporate world. It’s smartly written, although I find the main protagonist underdeveloped as compared to the rest of the characters around him, who are far more interesting, including his girlfriend Elyse and his eccentric boss Kelsey (Claire McFadden). Given its premise, the film could have also explored the body horror aspect further, but I suppose budget constraints limited their ability to do so. Despite this, the film boasts a pretty unique and nasty-looking creature in the form of Mother, who provides the source of the kombucha’s main ingredient.

Performance-wise, the film’s cast is pretty effective, with an absorbing turn from Terrence Carey as its lead. Jesse Kendall is pretty fun to watch as Luke’s former friend turned co-worker, Andy, while Paige Bourne delivers a believable performance as Elyse. But it is Claire McFadden who runs the show with her fun performance as the weird boss Kelsey.

While it could have embraced its weird concept and pushed things into far more disgusting and crazier territory, this latest feature from Jake Myers is admittedly quite entertaining on its own. Clocking in at a brisk 93 minutes, this is a lean body horror that boasts plenty of potential, delivering a healthy dose of satire mixed with some slimy scares and fun.