‘Ugly Cry’ Is Body Horror for the Chronically Online [SXSW 2026 Review]
Body horror is all about twisting, distorting, and ravaging bodies in ways that make us disgustingly aware of our own flesh. We fear the squishy vulnerability of our eyes (Zombi 2) and the flayed flesh of old age (The Substance). Gore is a tool to augment the innate liability in even having a body and the sundry ways it might choose to torment us.
Emily Robinson takes a different approach with Ugly Cry, a body horror movie having its World Premiere at SXSW 2026. It’s embellished, sure, but also largely rooted in reality. It’s dysphoric body horror for the chronically online. And it works.
Robinson pulls triple duty. She writes, directs, and even stars in Ugly Cry. The story of an aspiring actress hustling through modern-day Los Angeles gives the film a sense of real urgency. Delaney (Robinson) isn’t necessarily having a rough go of it, though things certainly aren’t great. Her acting feedback is so-so, her boyfriend (Aaron Dominguez, Witchboard) is leaving town to shoot a movie, and she’s in a toxic feedback loop with her best friend (and fellow actor), Maya (Ryan Simpkins, Fear Street: Part 2).
She’s always anxious, and Robinson creates something interesting out of Delaney’s internal collapse. On the outside, she seems fine, but the audience is clued into the cracks already starting to form before the inciting incident. She gets a casting call for a horror movie, and it could be her big break. Largely, the audition goes well, and the feedback is refreshingly positive after what’s presumed to be months of struggle-bus rejection. Well, except for one thing. A producer on the film would like Delaney to audition again because, while everything was great, her cry was… ugly.
Hence the title, of course. And Delaney’s grounded odyssey of combatting a perceived flaw that, really, isn’t all that noticeable. It’s nothing to worry about at first. She cries in the mirror, forces family and friends to give feedback, and even has a “preventative” Botox procedure done to tighten her muscles and (hopefully) rein in the ostensibly ugly cry.
I grappled with the titular cry a lot. Was it weird, or was my perspective just as warped as Delaney’s? It certainly felt that way whenever Delaney acted opposite Maya. Simpkins is a truly gifted performer, and Maya is no easy role to get right. She needs to be reasonably supportive but layered enough to ensure we doubt her intentions. Is she supporting Delaney, or is she just another obstacle en route to her success?
Delaney’s spiral is pathological. There are no profound moments of gore, no look-away moments as she mutilates her own body to achieve perfection. It’s entirely grounded, an unraveling of the mind as her grip on reality slowly slips away. Maybe not the most grotesque or boundary-pushing horror movie ever made, but it’s refreshingly transparent about how one small-seeming insecurity can consume an entire life. That scared the hell out of me, and it filled me with hope that Robinson will have the chance to flex her genre-bending muscles again soon.
Ugly Cry premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas on March 12, 2026.
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Ugly Cry
Summary
Emily Robinson’s Ugly Cry is a grounded, dysphoric body horror about the very real cost of fame and success.
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