Another

There is something profoundly unsettling about the opening idea behind Another: after mourning the person you loved, what happens when they simply walk back into your life as though death had never occurred? Andy Chen builds his feature debut around that beautifully simple nightmare, transforming an almost comforting domestic image—a supposedly dead husband preparing breakfast in his own kitchen—into the starting point for an increasingly unstable exploration of grief, memory and perception. Joey, played by India de Beaufort, has been trying to live with the death of her husband Ben, a brilliant physicist portrayed by Bob Morley, when he suddenly reappears alive and apparently unchanged. There is no grand resurrection or spectacular entrance. Ben is simply there. That restraint immediately establishes what works best about Another: its science-fiction ideas may eventually become considerably larger, but the film understands that the most disturbing impossible events are sometimes those presented as completely ordinary.

The emotional credibility of that premise depends enormously on India de Beaufort, because Joey cannot simply react to Ben's return with happiness or terror. She is confronted with something she desperately wants while simultaneously knowing that its existence contradicts everything she has experienced. India de Beaufort captures that contradiction convincingly, allowing disbelief, hope, suspicion and emotional exhaustion to coexist rather than arranging them into neat stages. Bob Morley, meanwhile, has the more deceptively difficult task of making Ben familiar enough to explain Joey's attachment while retaining just enough uncertainty to keep us examining him. Their chemistry gives the mystery an essential human foundation. The question is therefore never merely "How is Ben alive?" but something more uncomfortable: if someone looks, sounds and behaves like the person you lost, at what point does your desire to believe become stronger than your ability to question what is happening? Another repeatedly finds tension in that gap between emotional certainty and rational impossibility.

The screenplay by Andy Chen and Alexander Hernandez-Maxwell deliberately refuses to remain inside a single genre. Horror gradually contaminates domestic drama, science fiction complicates the supernatural possibilities, and mystery provides the structure holding those elements together. The influence of filmmakers such as M. Night Shyamalan, Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve can certainly be sensed in its fascination with unreliable perception, concealed information and realities that may not be as stable as they initially appear. Yet Another is at its strongest when it avoids feeling like an exercise in those influences and concentrates instead on its own intimate premise. Joey's uncertainty becomes ours, and apparently minor details acquire significance because we begin inspecting her surroundings with the same suspicion. The film knows that once an audience stops trusting reality, a kitchen, hallway or familiar conversation can become more unnerving than an elaborate monster sequence. Its 96-minute running time also prevents the central mystery from becoming unnecessarily bloated, even if the accumulation of revelations occasionally threatens to become more important than the emotional simplicity that made the story compelling in the first place.

That tension between intimacy and ambition defines much of Andy Chen's direction. Having spent more than a decade working on music videos and short-form projects, including Spider, Fiona and Close Your Eyes, he approaches the feature with an evident awareness of how an image can communicate unease before dialogue explains it. Cinematographer Connors Smyers helps turn ordinary spaces into psychological territory, while the practical effects reinforce the physical quality of the horror when Joey's world begins to fracture. For an independent production assembled by a small team with extremely limited resources, there is considerable ingenuity on display. Knowing that the filmmakers relied on close collaborators and even credit cards to bring the project to completion makes its controlled atmosphere especially impressive, but the film does not need its production circumstances to excuse its rougher edges. Some transitions between emotional drama, conceptual science fiction and more explicit genre material are less seamless than others, yet there is an appealing handmade character to the result. Instead of attempting to imitate the scale of a studio production, Another largely turns its limitations into an advantage by keeping us trapped close to Joey.

The supporting cast provides another enjoyable layer, particularly for viewers familiar with genre cinema. Doug Jones, whose extraordinary physical performances have made him such a distinctive presence in films including Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, brings an immediate otherworldly association whenever he appears. Heather Langenkamp, permanently embedded in horror history through A Nightmare on Elm Street, arrives with an equally powerful genre legacy, while Anna Akana contributes to an ensemble deliberately built around performers capable of moving between sincerity and unease. Importantly, these recognisable faces never entirely distract from the central relationship. Another remains Joey's experience, and the supporting characters function most effectively as additional pieces in a reality she can no longer confidently interpret. Alexander Taylor's music similarly understands that the film benefits more from sustained discomfort than constant sonic aggression, complementing the atmosphere rather than announcing every moment at which the audience should feel afraid.

Where Another becomes particularly interesting is in the way grief itself functions almost like an alternate reality. Losing someone already creates a strange division between intellectual knowledge and emotional instinct: you know someone is gone, yet habits, memories and expectations continue to behave as though they might return. Andy Chen takes that recognisable psychological contradiction and makes it literal. Ben's impossible presence forces Joey to confront not only the mechanics of his return but the frightening possibility that memory can no longer be treated as evidence. The science-fiction framework therefore becomes more than a puzzle box. It asks what constitutes identity when memory becomes unreliable, whether love depends upon continuity, and how much of another person exists inside our recollection of them. These ideas are not always explored with equal depth, and audiences expecting every conceptual thread to receive a perfectly clinical explanation may find portions deliberately elusive. Yet explaining absolutely everything would arguably undermine the unease that gives the film much of its personality.

There are moments when Another reveals the understandable eagerness of a first feature. Andy Chen clearly has plenty of ideas, and occasionally the film tries to accommodate almost all of them, moving between grief drama, metaphysical mystery, psychological horror and speculative science fiction when a little more restraint might have made certain revelations hit harder. Its twists are entertaining, but the strongest passages are often the quieter ones preceding them: Joey watching Ben, questioning something she remembers, or attempting to determine whether the impossible man standing before her is a miracle, a threat or something for which she does not yet possess the vocabulary. Those scenes reveal a filmmaker who understands suspense as anticipation rather than merely surprise. The practical approach also gives the film a tactile identity at a moment when independent genre productions can too easily become visually anonymous. Even when its reach exceeds its grasp, there is genuine filmmaking personality behind that ambition.

Premiering at Tubi FrightFest in the United Kingdom in August 2026, Another is consequently an encouraging debut for Andy Chen and an effective showcase for India de Beaufort and Bob Morley. It may wear some of its cinematic inspirations openly and does not escape every difficulty inherent in combining an emotional character study with a reality-bending genre mystery, but its central concept is strong enough to survive those imperfections. More importantly, the film remembers that a clever premise matters far less if we do not care about the person trapped inside it. Beneath the practical effects, scientific questions and shifting perceptions lies a recognisable fear: that grief might make us accept an impossible second chance even when some part of us knows we should run from it. Another takes the comforting fantasy of seeing a lost loved one again and asks whether that fantasy might actually be terrifying. For a feature assembled outside the traditional studio system by filmmakers determined to make the most of limited resources, that combination of emotional vulnerability and genre ambition leaves a convincing impression after the mystery has played its final hand.

Another
Directed by Andy Chen
Written by Andy Chen and Alexander Hernandez-Maxwell
Produced by Kealani Kitaura, Artin John
Starring: Bob Morley, India de Beaufort, Heather Langenkamp, Doug Jones, Anna Akana
Cinematography: Connors Smyers
Edited by 
Music by Alexander Taylor
Production companies : Locust Garden Pictures
Distributed by 
Release dates: August 2026 - Tubi FrightFest, United Kingdom
Running time: 96 minutes

Viewed on August 22, 2026 (Tubi Frightfest 2026 press screener)