Movies
Why ‘Dumplings’ (2004) Is the Crown Jewel of Gastronomic Horror
In the small subgenre that is gastronomic horror, horror focused primarily on food, only a few films in recent memory have managed to make an impact. Flesh was wet spaghetti slapping you in the face, while The Menu was a surface-to-air rocket that blew up the pop culture landscape on release. Dumplings predates both of them and, in my humble opinion, surpasses them on a filmmaking and narrative level completely.
If there’s one thing my friends have heard time and time again, it’s that I’m always ready for some dumplings. They are one of my favorite things; not just my favorite things to eat, my favorite things bar none. If you steam them or fry them, I will come.
Now, I say this because the 2004 film Dumplings by director Fruit Chan made me fall out of love with dumplings for months after I had watched it. It is a film that I will never forget and utilizes food on film to tell a bizarre, tragic story in a way very few have.
Exploring the Gastronomic Horror Genre
In the small subgenre that is gastronomic horror, horror focused primarily on food, only a few films in recent memory have managed to make an impact. Flesh was wet spaghetti slapping you in the face, while The Menu was a surface-to-air rocket that blew up the pop culture landscape on release. Dumplings predates both of them and, in my humble opinion, surpasses them on a filmmaking and narrative level completely.
I remember first encountering Dumplings during a time in high school when I had gotten into that genre of YouTube video that talked about “disturbing films”, something I’ve derided in previous articles on Horror Press; I stand by the opinion that 9 times out of 10, you will be disappointed when you see a film on those lists. And Dumplings, ultimately, is a very grotesque film that is undoubtedly disturbing, but it’d be a reductive descriptor. Because it’s freaky, bloody, and sometimes psychosexual expression is not so secretly a piece of political counterculture created by a Hong Kong visionary: Fruit Chan.
Fruit Chan, The Man And The Myth
Cinema savant Fruit Chan is a one-man show of film talents: he’s an editor, a writer, but foremost a director. He cemented himself as a legend of the independent film scene in Hong Kong following a slow decade-long crawl to the top and is seen by many as the man who resurrected indie filmmaking during a time of great uncertainty.
The Handover of Hong Kong in ’97, in which Britain relinquished control of the country to mainland China, threatened the country’s economic stability due to speculation of a harsher and more restrictive regime than the United Kingdom’s. This meant a risk to all sectors, including film, and in turn, spurred a new generation of indie filmmakers to take center stage from their mainstream counterparts.
Alongside cinema legendary Wong Kar Wai and terribly underrated master Mabel Cheung, Fruit Chan became a hero of the Hong Kong New Wave era with his crime thrillers Made in Hong Kong and The Longest Summer which tackled the motif of change and Hong Kong’s evolution. And eventually, he brought those same ideas to the horror of Dumplings.
A Story of Tasting Beauty And It’s Ugliest Parts
SPOILERS FOR DUMPLINGS BEGIN HERE.
Released in October of 2004, Dumplings was adapted from the Lilian Lee book of the same name, and later cut into a short film collected in the anthology Three…Extremes. The star of the show is Mrs. Li, an aging starlet whose marriage is slowly dying due to her husband’s infidelity. Blaming her appearance and infertility, Mrs. Li begins paying lump sums of cash to a medicine woman named “Aunt” Mei for miracle dumplings: with a bit of ginger, cabbage, pork, and a potent secret ingredient minced extra fine, Mei cooks up dumplings that restore the youth of the eater. Just one problem…the secret ingredient is fetuses.
The Tragic Descent of Mrs. Li
As Mrs. Li and Mei’s relationship progresses, the duo becomes more entangled as the actress wrestles with the creation and side effects of the “magical” cure to all her problems, which may or may not actually be working at all. The story is equal parts modern fairy tale, drama, and horror show as we watch Mrs. Li’s mind deteriorate and see her slowly become more and more unstable as she’s entrenched in the craving for youth and beauty.
Miriam Yeung as Mrs. Li, captures a depressing sight with elegance, as you watch a figure of beauty and grace be swallowed up by the delusion of becoming “beautiful enough” for a man who doesn’t love her, all the while being acutely aware of her husband’s emotional abuse and infidelity.
Aunt Mei: The Sinister Medicine Woman
Bai Ling’s performance as Aunt Mei is especially memorable and the part of the film that brought it back to the forefront of my mind. Ling embodies the quirks and mannerisms of a witch who has her client by the throat with this underlying sinister mood. There’s a subtle malicious tint to all she says and sings as she tries to sell a ghastly cure to a desperate woman.
And by the end, you’re not particularly rooting for either of them. Still, their chemistry on screen has you craving some resolution as their relationship gets messier and messier. Fruit Chan gives you just that, and a side of cruelty to go with it.
Unsettling Atmospheres and Claustrophobic Spaces
When it comes to the film’s look, Dumplings has a very specific inhospitable vibe that clashes with the small, would-be-comfortable interiors you’re forced to sit in. Mei’s apartment is a tight space, with a wall often being the central feature dividing her and Mrs. Li. The walls are adorned with photos, knick-knacks, and kitschy paintings of children that take on a sinister new meaning watching over the duo as Mrs. Li eats. Shot in Shek Kip Mei Estate, the first public housing estate in all of Hong Kong, it’s filled with people living their lives quietly in the background, but still feels lonely because of how everyone is spaced and placed.
When you get to Mrs. Li’s unfinished mansion, the interiors are framed, often blocking off her guests, shooting around corners and in close-ups being a crucial part of Fruit Chan’s camerawork that communicates the isolation of his subjects. The pristine white walls are more sanitary than classy, and the space as a whole feels like an eternal spec house, never meant to be inhabited.
Cold Lighting and Disgusting Delicacies
Lighting is the key element to making these spaces as uncomfortable as possible, and it’s also the driving force behind making the food in the film unbelievably unappetizing. Because Fruit Chan commits the cardinal sin of food photography, he uses cold lighting. Nothing makes food more unappetizing than cold lighting, and if you’ve ever been in a takeout restaurant late at night with fluorescent bulbs beaming down on whatever combination plate you ordered, you know how bad food can look in the wrong context. This might seem obvious, but this simple cinematic choice amplifies the already disturbing nature of Mrs. Li’s story by taking comfort food and making it feel like something being forced down your throat rather than willingly eaten (a recurring motif of Yeung’s performance while eating in the film).
And none of that is to discount the incredible foley work that gives you every agonizing sound of consumption; every chew, lick, and swallow is audible, and if you’re like me, you’ll want to squirm out of your headphones when you hear it. In a way, Fruit Chan invented a proto-ASMR.
If the goal of ASMR was to be as disgusting as humanly possible.
Deeper Themes: Misogyny, Consumption, and Cultural Anxiety
The script itself? That’s a whole other philosophical feast on its own.
The film’s writer and acclaimed author, Lilian Lee, weaves a story that delves into internalized misogyny, sexual violence, and the commodification of young women by the industries and men that use them. Lee makes a contrast early on between Mrs. Li’s consumption of the dumplings and her husband Mr. Li’s taste for balut (fertilized eggs with unhatched chicks in them); there is a clear mirroring between Mr. Li’s appetite for younger women and Mrs. Li’s appetite for his love, one that makes her story all the more futile and tragic as she decays both literally and morally to “better match” her husband.
Betrayal and Structural Violence
Mei’s eventual betrayal of Mrs. Li to sleep with her husband becomes a multiplying factor in that tragedy, as she becomes just one more person to act on the misogyny torturing Mrs. Li. Dumplings has a Cronenberg-esque relationship with sexuality, reminiscent of Videodrome and Crimes of the Future (2022) where sex is often correlated with violence; more on the Crimes end of the spectrum, Dumplings shows sex as a metaphor for structural violence, and how that violence often gets people to act against their own best interest.
Political and Cultural Reflections
What is a messed-up folk tale of misogyny and lost love on the surface also becomes a historically and politically charged film. The illegality of abortion in Hong Kong is brought up several times during the film by Mei, a doctor working in abortion clinics in China during the 1960s and whose marriage dissolved because of it. She travels back and forth from China to Hong Kong in the film, and a great emphasis is put on not only the physical and legal divide, but the cultural divide between the two countries: they’re so close, but so far apart.
The film’s most memorable song is Mei’s renditions of “Wave after Wave in Honghu Lake”, a CCP folk song whose tune changes throughout the film as she sings it to Mrs. Li. It is ultimately completely changed in meaning and tone by the time it is played through the film’s final moments, reflecting the shift in the cultural and political landscape of Hong Kong since the handover.
Cannibalism as Cultural Critique
Yun-Chu Tsai, a doctorate in East Asian languages and literature, posits that the film is a modern analysis of Chinese society and the act of consumption on both the personal and national scale. In her dissertation, “You Are Whom You Eat: Cannibalism in Contemporary Chinese Fiction and Film”, Tsai sees Dumplings as one of the late-stage pieces of media that take cannibalism and uses it to tell the story of a particular cultural anxiety: “both the anxiety of being marginalized and consumed others and the desire for consumption in a post-socialist, neoliberal Chinese society”.
Why Dumplings Remains Unforgettable
In all that I’ve said here today, I have yet to begin to scratch past the surface of Dumplings. To capture all the intricacies and finer details of this film, let alone the numerous readings you can make of it would be borderline impossible.
Dumplings takes a simple staple food and turns it into a conversation that, as any good one shared over a meal, can branch out in a hundred different directions with a thousand different trains of thought wrestling for control. And that conversation will keep the movie in your mind for much, much longer.
So, get out there and get to watching.
If you have been following my journey with Horror Press, then you would know I’m a huge advocate for short films. (And if you listened to last week’s episode of the Horror Press Podcast, then you’d know how I really feel about filmmakers who look down on short films!) Oftentimes, short films force creatives into a corner, both creatively and fiscally. Some of the best art comes from limitation. Just look at Riccardo Suriano’s The Waking Call, a beautifully shot short film that looks 100 times its actual budget.
While I was excited to watch Catch a Killer and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, I was most excited to catch the three blocks of short films at Night Frights LA. When I met The Winchesters, I felt their true passion for bringing stellar horror to the forefront. When the credits rolled on the final short film from block three, I understood that they put their money where their mouths are. If my editor and I had unlimited time, I would review every single short film I had the opportunity to watch at Night Frights LA. Unfortunately, we don’t.
So, I took on the difficult task of whittling down every short film I watched to this list of my five favorites.
Our 5 Favorite Short Films From Night Frights LA 2025
5. Keep Coming Back // Short Film Block 2: Mental Carnage
Written by Dylan Garrett Smith, Travis Bacon (yes, that Bacon), and Kyle Kouri // Directed by Kyle Kouri
Paul (Kyle Kouri) attends an AA meeting to try to turn over a new leaf. But things quickly turn dark when Paul’s past comes back to haunt him. As it turns out, alcohol may be the least of the troubles for this AA group.
Keep Coming Back is a bloody blast that goes from 0 to 60 in a split second. This film was the shot of caffeine I desperately needed. It’s loud, brash, and mean. It takes you to the true depths that can come from a violent drunk and amps it up to an 11.
4. Knife // Short Film Block 1: Best In Blood
Written & Directed by Michael Kuciak
Have you ever wondered what a horror film looked like…from the perspective of the killer’s weapon? If you have, Knife aims to answer that question for you. This three and a half minute film is as quick and deadly as its title. In a Violent Nature may put the audience in the point of view of the killer, but Knife puts them in the point of view of the weapon. It’s a short, sweet, and effective piece that requires little elaboration.
3. The Last Thing She Saw // Short Film Block 2: Mental Carnage
Written by Brady Richards // Directed by Anthony Cousins and Rebecca Daugherty
(Yes, Frogman’s Anthony Cousins!)
Emma (Bailey Bolton) is housesitting for the owners of a gigantic mansion. Her day gets flipped upside down when two intruders (Agatha Rae Pokrzywinski and Nathan Tymoshuk) break in to try and get into a safe. Even though she doesn’t have any information on how to get into the safe, Emma finds herself at a crossroads. I don’t see a way out of this for Emma.
I remember catching this short film at either Final Girls Berlin Film Festival or Popcorn Frights some time ago, and I was stunned. My first thought was, “I bet this film would kill in an audience.” Boy, was I right. Hearing my fellow festivalgoers groan and squirm made me feel right at home. The Last Thing She Saw is grotesque and unique. It’s extremely hardcore and doesn’t pull a single punch with its content. And the practicals? My god. Extraordinary.
2. The Carvening // Short Film Block 1: Best In Blood
Written & Directed by Matthew R. Incontri
Two kids sit down and put on a VHS tape of a slasher film called The Carvening that follows a Jack O’ Lantern killer. But for these kids, the film hits a little too close to home.
Like Knife, The Carvening is basically a microshort. And still incredibly effective. At just two minutes and 53 seconds, it knocked my socks off. The film itself is animated, while the slasher film they’re watching is live action. It’s a unique blend that is as fun as it is wholesome. Incontri’s film is a brilliant aperitif that should be played before any horror film in the theaters.
1. Where the Shadows Feast // Short Film Block 1: Best In Blood
Written by Aaron M. Cabrera and Jerod Nawrocki // Directed by Aaron M. Cabrera
Children are vanishing at astounding numbers. Now, it’s up to a detective (Corey Allen) and a grieving mother (Alicia Blasingame) to get to the bottom of it. But they might not like what they find.
Where the Shadows Feast is a visual treat. It’s a black and white noir that has danger lurking behind every shadow. Cabrera and Naworcki’s script is beyond scary, but it’s horror icon Troy James that truly brings the fright to this fest. While I love the story, visual style, and worldbuilding here, I can’t help but say Troy James absolutely steals the show. The way he brings this horror to life is as astounding as always.
Actors like James and Javier Botet show that physical movement can do more than words ever could. Say what you will, but I think there is very little difference between the actors who play Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Seeing an icon like Troy James truly melt into the role of whatever this creature is like watching the Mona Lisa being painted. That’s not to say the only reason I picked Shadows as my number one is because of Troy James. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a damn good reason to.
I don’t know about you, but it feels like I stepped out of the theater after seeing Wolf Man, blinked, and suddenly it was September. It’s been a very busy year in general, but as always, especially so for the horror genre. We’ve had some misses and some hits, but overall, I’d say it’s been a strong year (though maybe not quite as strong as 2024 and its deluge of incredible movies).
Though your mind might still be primarily occupied with a more recent release, there have been a lot of incredible movies to hit both theaters and especially streaming services like Shudder in 2025. So, we here at Horror Press have decided to put together a shortlist of the best horror the year has had to offer so far.
The Best Horror of 2025 So Far
Feel free to wave this list in the face of your friends who say that all the horror they’ve watched this year is bad. Or just to celebrate because your favorite made the cut! Without further ado, let’s start with…
Dangerous Animals
Fun and insane animal horror movies are so hard to come across these days, but Dangerous Animals chums the waters with some fresh meat for the subgenre. Sean Byrne, best known for his work on the Australian sleeper hit The Loved Ones, tells a story reminiscent of Wolf Creek on the high seas.
A surfer and her boyfriend fall prey to a boat captain who promises a thrilling cage diving experience, but with a catch: he secretly enjoys torturing people before feeding them to sharks. Jai Courtney shines as the antagonist Tucker, whose mealy-mouthed grins and demented demeanor sell the danger our leads are in.
Clown in a Cornfield
The pick for the best slasher offering this year (until Black Phone 2 releases, #JoeHillHypeTrain) is a no-brainer. Shudder has finally delivered the long-awaited adaptation of Adam Cesare’s Clown In A Cornfield. And helmed by Eli Craig of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil fame no less! In the now dead hamlet of Kettle Springs, Missouri, a group of teens run afoul of its former mascot Frendo. While it initially presents itself as a basic corn-fed killer clown movie, if you stick with it, you’ll find it’s actually much more clever and thrilling than it lets on.
Predator: Killer of Killers
When I say Dan Trachtenberg does not miss, he does not miss in the slightest. The current creative director of the Predator franchise, fans of the series have been eating good ever since his work on 2022’s Prey, and have Predator: Badlands to look forward to early next month.
While Predator: Killer of Killers could have easily been a cheap animated film to tide over fans while they wait for Badlands, it proved to be one of the best films in the franchise yet. An anthology film featuring Yautja hunting throughout human history and across cultures, the animation here is slicker than slick. Killer of Killers delivers the action horror that everyone has been asking for from the franchise for years.
The Ugly Stepsister
When I heard The Ugly Stepsister was a collaboration between a bevy of film institutes and production companies across four different Nordic countries, I wondered what made it so special. What I saw explained it. While it is technically Cinderella, it’s specifically a retelling of Aschenputtel, one of the original and much darker iterations of Cinderella collected by the Brothers Grimm. And dark this is.
Told from the perspective of Cinderella’s stepsister Elvira, we watch her spiral as she tries to beautify herself in the ugliest of ways, all in an effort to secure a wealthy male suitor. Truly inspired costuming, grotesque body horror played for both shock and laughs, and a dead-on sense of comedic timing make this one a very memorable watch.
Weapons
Director Zach Cregger’s sophomore outing in the horror genre following his smash hit Barbarian is well-loved, and for good reason. This time, Weapons shines a spotlight on lives in a small town, and how they intersect, trying to make sense of a horrifying incident: the disappearance of 17 children who run out the front doors of their homes in the dead of night.
Cregger dances deftly on the line between horror and comedy in a way I can only describe as masterful, creating a film that is both viciously funny and aggressively disturbing. Where the film goes is a curveball, even for those who have seen the trailers, and a delightful one at that, since Weapons brings a new horror icon to the stage.
Companion
And speaking of Zach Cregger, this sci-fi horror is another one of his productions. If you’ve somehow avoided seeing anything about Companion until now and don’t know what it’s about, keep it that way and go watch it immediately. The ad campaign spoiled it, but the story is undeniably enthralling even if you know where it’s going. This movie features what is, by far, Sophie Thatcher’s most dynamic performance yet, supported by a stellar cast and the film’s pitch-black humor.
Fréwaka
The first Irish-language horror film is also one of the nation’s best cinematic offerings yet. A gripping and immersive folk horror film, it follows a home nurse named Shoo assigned to a superstitious older woman named Peig who lives on the edge of a remote village. Shoo soon begins to see dark ongoings in her dreams and waking life, plagued by the same mysterious group that Peig has been dealing with her entire life.
Fréwaka is a precision-made film, chock full of high impact editing and cinematography. It evokes a kind of existential monster, both man-made horrors of human cruelty and the mythological ones that lie deep in belief and the dark corners of Irish folklore. In short, unsettlingly effective.
Ash
Flying Lotus’ directorial career has been a point of interest for me ever since the genre shapeshifter that was Kuso and the demented parody that was his segment “Ozzy’s Dungeon” in V/H/S/99. And even with the high hopes those ventures gave me, Ash is so much more than I could have expected.
After astronaut Riya wakes up to nightmares of bodies being melted and screams of agony, she finds herself as one of only two survivors in a mission to colonize a planet gone horribly wrong. Ash is a lovely middle point between Event Horizon and The Void, a mixture that is sure to please those of us who like our science fiction dripping with an evil atmosphere and dark visuals. It also boasts some of the best color grading and lighting in any film this year.
Sinners
If you haven’t seen Sinners already, what have you been up to? Brain science? Rocket surgery? Here, visionary director Ryan Coogler tells the tale of a repressed young black man in 1930s Mississippi, trying to break away from his preacher father’s restrictive ways. His journey to do so lands him a performance at a juke joint out in the woods, one he plays so well that it lures in an ageless and relentless vampire.
Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, and Wunmi Mosaku lead an all-star cast through a mystical horror story with purpose. It explores the meaning of culture, religion, music, and the Black American experience—all while delivering one of the best vampire films of all time. The showstopping original soundtrack by Ludwig and Serena Göransson that it boasts isn’t half bad either.
Bring Her Back
I won’t mark this with the caveat of “so far”—this will be the most disturbing film you see this year. Bring Her Back blew any expectations you might have had from the Phillipou Brothers’ Talk To Me out of the water. While the premise of an orphaned brother and sister who are sent to live with an off-kilter foster mother and another mute child she’s fostering might seem predictable, this film is anything but.
It’s truly an emotionally draining watch, blow after blow with both the physical and emotional trauma it puts its characters through, and forces you to watch. It refuses to let you breathe for even a minute in its final act. It’s definitively Sally Hawkin’s finest hour as an actress, and beyond this short list, it’s firmly some of the best horror of all time.
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