It feels fitting, maybe even inevitable, that Twisted Pictures would make a film literally titled Twisted. This is a film that luxuriates in discomfort and indulgence, unapologetically so, and it finds a natural home in the hands of Darren Lynn Bousman, a filmmaker whose career has consistently chased visceral overstimulation over polite restraint.
From notable entries in the Saw franchise to various indie gems like Repo! The Genetic Opera, Bousman has never been a director interested in quiet horror. His scares don’t creep; they confront, overwhelm, and disorient. Twisted is no exception in that regard, and while it doesn’t always hit peak greatness, it is consistently stylish and distinct in a genre that so often defaults to familiarity.
The film centers on Paloma (a terrific Lauren LaVera), a seasoned scam artist who operates alongside her best friend and lover, Smith (Mia Healey). Together, they target wealthy New Yorkers, seducing and manipulating them into signing over massive sums of money for luxury apartments the women have no actual stake in. It’s a grift built on sexuality, performance, and control, and Twisted leans into that from the jump. This is an aggressively erotic film, at least in its first stretch, full of steam, sweat, and stylized danger, and it understands how closely intimacy and vulnerability often sit beside violence.
Paloma’s next mark is Dr. Robert Kezian (Djimon Hounsou), a brilliant neurosurgeon desperate to cement his legacy. Kezian lives alone in a sprawling apartment that quickly becomes the film’s central stage, a space Bousman and his production crew carefully establish and then relentlessly exploit. His late wife, also a neuroscientist, died years ago, and it’s a loss that has quietly hollowed him out. Beneath his calm exterior is a man driven by obsession, grief, and the dangerous belief that progress justifies any cost.
What begins as a sort of erotic thriller curdles quickly. After Paloma is brutally assaulted by another would-be target, Kezian ends up intervening and saving her life. Or at least, he saves her body. What follows is a familiar but effective horror proposition: Paloma has been saved by the wrong person, and the power dynamic she usually controls has violently flipped.
From there, Twisted spirals outward, layering in police detectives on Paloma’s trail, a disturbing lackey named Lenny (Renes Rivera) who bears the marks of Kezian’s experiments, and a series of escalating revelations about what the doctor is truly capable of. Brain surgeries are specifically the name of the game here (complete with drilling, cutting, and opening skulls) and longtime Bousman fans will immediately feel the connective tissue to Saw III’s own infamous neurosurgery sequence. This appears to be a fixation that has followed him, and here it’s expanded into something far more existentially horrifying. Kezian isn’t just mutilating bodies; he’s mixing minds, scrambling identity itself in a desperate attempt at success.
What makes all of this work more often than not is Bousman’s commitment to style. The film is riddled with Dutch angles, tilting frames, and disorienting camera movements that mirror the cracking psyches of its characters. There’s a recurring visual motif where moments of clarity are punctuated by a harsh ticking sound, the camera rotating like the hand of a clock. It’s a simple but effective reminder that time, and control, are slipping away. The secret lab beneath Kezian’s apartment is bathed in rich, Giallo-inspired purples, blues, and reds, paired with an almost elegant classical piano score that plays like a cruel joke against the onscreen gore. It’s lurid, but also precise.
The performances help anchor the chaos. Hounsou, a longtime genre veteran, delivers a strong, unsettling turn as a man whose brilliance has rotted into madness, one that manages to never tip fully into caricature. Hounsou’s performance is just as brilliant as his character, but this is ultimately LaVera’s film. Mostly known for her starring role in the Terrifier series, she gets to flex an entirely different muscle here, and she runs with it. Paloma is a performer by necessity, complete with accents, wigs, and strategic flirtation. LaVera makes her charming, sharp, and deeply resourceful. Even when stripped of power, Paloma never becomes passive. She adapts, manipulates, and fights back, often in ways Kezian never anticipates. It’s LaVera’s strongest work in the genre to date.
Credit is also due to writers Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer, whose experience on Steven Soderbergh’s excellent 2018 film Unsane shows in the script’s relentless tightening of the screws. The film’s mid-point “twist” isn’t really a twist at all, but rather a narrative entanglement that deepens the tragedy and complicates Paloma’s choices in smart, painful ways. Even the detective subplot, which is often a drag in this kind of story, is populated with enough personality by actors Gina Phillips and Jacob Lukas Anderson (AKA Prof) to stay engaging.
Twisted doesn’t always stay fully enthralling however, and there are moments where its ambitions threaten to outpace its execution. But it’s bold, original, and deeply uncomfortable in ways that feel intentional rather than purely exploitative. Its ending is brutal but oddly defiant, like a survival note struck in the darkest key possible.
This may not be Bousman’s best film, but it’s certainly one of his most assured: a confident blend of erotic thriller, body horror, and grief-soaked obsession that refuses to soften its edges. Twisted is messy, nasty, and alive, and in modern horror, that alone counts for a lot.
'Twisted' will be available on digital starting February 6th, 2026.
