‘Lead Belly’ Is A Shocking Mumblegore Nightmare [Panic Fest 2025 Review]
As I settled into my flight from Washington, DC to San Francisco, I decided to watch a Panic Fest screener. I had a press library at my fingertips and a list of films I couldn’t wait to see. So, I decided to start with Stephen Simmons’ latest feature, Lead Belly, especially because the synopsis included the line, “Lead Belly keeps the audience guessing until the final frame and leaves them shattered.” I pressed play and quickly realized that this was perhaps one of the worst films to watch a plane. Upsetting and disturbing with an ending like a knife to the gut, this mumblegore nightmare is a slow burn the likes of Dean Kapsalis’ The Swerve, a modern tragedy that leaves you feeling hollow.
12-year-old Kyle (Bastian Carrasco Betemps) and his older brother Marcus (Liam Foehl) are spending the summer with their dad Michael (Danny James), after his recent separation from their mother. With a cigarette perpetually hanging from his lips and a cheap suit hanging from his skeletal frame, he looks like a greasy used car salesman whose shifty eyes always betray some scheme he’s calculating in his head. He’s the typical deadbeat divorced dad who talks shit about their mom openly and doesn’t really understand how to be with his kids.
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Lead Belly begins as a mumblecore coming-of-age story about two brothers spending a weird summer with their alcoholic dad. They rent weird movies (Kyle especially tries out a Faces of Death-type film that introduces him to the concept of death), play laser tag in the house, and secretly smoke pot in their bedroom. It feels like another lo-fi tale about brothers trying to navigate a nasty divorce. But as the weeks pass by and the summer days get hotter, weird things start happening around the house. Strange shadow figures appear, Kyle hears strange voices, and their dad only seems to get more irritable. Simmons plays with audience expectations as he builds to the shocking third act that rewards viewers willing to take this wild and bizarre ride.
While the beginning of the film is more slice-of-life, Simmons also imbues it with a sense of dread, like there’s something going on that we’re not allowed to know about yet. This means that at times, Lead Belly feels a bit meandering and like it doesn’t belong as a genre festival. But Simmons does bring all of the puzzle pieces together in the final act as his tragedy begins to truly take shape. It’s as if he’s whispering “Trust the process” in your ear as everything builds.
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Simmons inserts analog horror moments as he flashes his own Faces of Death-inspired sequences that Kyle watches, frozen in fear. These moments are jarring in both content and style, alerting you to a sudden shift in tone that jolts you out of a stupor. They also help cultivate the undercurrent of dread, as death seems to hang over everything like a thick cloud. And these moments only increase as we approach the film’s final act. It’s a fascinating example of hybrid found footage and how the analog only enhances fear, even in the digital age.
James’ performance as dirtbag dad Michael is equal parts repulsive and empathetic as he tries to be a dad without having any idea how. He’s deeply selfish and self-absorbed, angry and narcissistic, believing money will buy his sons’ love more than anything else. James dances across the frame with a cigarette dangling from his lips, a chaotic force that shows glimmers of something better, but then hides it under an ocean of booze.
Lead Belly is a nauseating look at growing up with divorced parents and the reality of random tragedies happening to everyday people. The loneliness that comes with trying to make sense of divorce is a horror story I know all too well and Simmons uses that to his utmost advantage in setting the tone for the film. He expertly uses that dread to deliver something I haven’t stopped thinking about since I watched it two weeks ago.
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Lead Belly
Summary
Lead Belly is a nauseating look at growing up with divorced parents and the reality of random tragedy happening to everyday people.
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