Grind

There is something almost quaint about the old cinematic nightmare of having a terrible boss. In Grind, the problem is considerably larger: the boss is merely one cog in an economic machine designed to keep everyone running until they collapse. Directed by Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty and Chelsea Stardust, this gleefully vicious horror anthology takes the anxieties of contemporary employment multi-level marketing, app-based delivery, content moderation and union busting and pushes them through a grotesque funhouse mirror. The result is deliberately unsubtle, frequently absurd and often very funny, but its exaggerations work precisely because the reality underneath them is recognizable. Anyone who has stared at an impossible performance target, watched an app turn a five-minute delay into a minor existential crisis, or heard management describe exploitation as an “opportunity” will understand the joke before the blood starts flowing. Grind may deal in monsters, time loops and spectacularly unpleasant corporate solutions, yet its sharpest horror comes from realizing how little invention is required to make the modern workplace frightening.

The opening stretch establishes that philosophy through the nightmare of multi-level marketing, where cheerful entrepreneurial language conceals something much nastier. Jessika Van plays Sarah, a struggling online seller attempting to move Lala Leggings to an audience that simply is not responding enthusiastically enough. In another film, failing to meet a sales quota might result in an awkward video call; here, “getting the axe” is less an expression than a warning. Presiding over this pastel-colored kingdom is the Founder, played by Barbara Crampton with exactly the kind of radiant smile that makes the character more unsettling rather than less. Her performance understands one of Grind’s best recurring jokes: corporate menace is most effective when delivered with immaculate positivity. Rob Huebel, meanwhile, is equally at home in this universe of managerial doublespeak, where every horrifying demand can apparently be repackaged as professional development. The segment occasionally pushes its silliness harder than its satire requires, but that excess also announces the film’s intentions. This is not a carefully disguised critique of capitalism. It is a blood-spattered protest sign held directly in front of the camera.

“Delivery” changes gears without abandoning that central idea, following Benny, played with increasingly frantic commitment by Vinny Thomas, through the purgatory of app-based work. A lucrative tip seems tantalizingly close, provided he can satisfy a customer whose increasingly specific demands turn an ordinary delivery into a nightmare. The ingenious part is how quickly Grind converts familiar technological conveniences into instruments of control. Customers experience delivery apps as a few taps on a screen; workers experience them as timers, ratings, routes, instructions and algorithms capable of determining whether the night has been worthwhile. The time-loop mechanics take that imbalance to its logical extreme, trapping Benny inside the gig itself. There are echoes of Groundhog Day, Run Lola Run and even the sadistic problem-solving of Saw, but the most amusing detail is simpler: Benny keeps going because the money might still be worth it. That tiny economic calculation makes all the supernatural madness strangely plausible. The segment arguably circles its premise a little longer than necessary, yet Vinny Thomas gives the repetition an increasingly desperate physical energy, turning a delivery order into a Sisyphean task with a smartphone.

The anthology reaches its most disturbing territory with “Content Moderation,” anchored by Christopher Rodriguez Marquette as Joel. Promised the possibility of advancement at tech company DRGN, Joel discovers that the path upward first requires a trip downward, into a basement where he must process an impossible quantity of horrifying online material. It is easily Grind’s most sobering idea because there is little distance between the fictional nightmare and an actual occupation most internet users prefer not to think about. Every apparently clean social platform has human beings somewhere behind the interface encountering the material everyone else has asked not to see. Ed Dougherty turns that invisible labor into psychological horror, while the editing increasingly makes Joel’s workload feel less like employment than an assault. Christopher Rodriguez Marquette is particularly effective because he never treats Joel as an obvious victim from the outset; he is ambitious, hopeful and prepared to endure indignity because he believes there is a legitimate career waiting on the other side. That optimism is exactly what the system exploits. Among all the film’s deliberately cartoonish punishments, the simple promise that suffering now will lead to security later may be its cruelest invention.

By the time “Union Meeting” arrives, restraint has essentially left the building — and that is part of the pleasure. Employees at a suspiciously familiar corporate coffee chain decide that collective action might improve their situation, only for management to respond with the sort of union-busting strategy that would make even the most aggressive executive pause: unleashing a murderous company mascot. Ify Nwadiwe helps give the ensemble the comic timing required to sell an increasingly ridiculous premise, and Grind enthusiastically embraces practical effects and splatter as workplace negotiations descend into carnage. It is perhaps the broadest of the stories, essentially taking one very good joke and seeing how much blood can be squeezed out of it, but its placement is smart. After the psychological ugliness of content moderation, the sheer lunacy of watching corporate branding become physically homicidal provides catharsis. There is also something beautifully appropriate about a mascot — the artificial smiling face corporations use to manufacture personality — becoming the literal monster protecting the company’s interests.

What elevates Grind above a simple collection of workplace sketches is the connective tissue engineered by Chelsea Stardust, Brea Grant and Ed Dougherty. Characters, companies and ideas bleed into one another, gradually suggesting that these apparently separate forms of employment belong to the same ecosystem. A worker may escape one miserable hustle only to discover that the next opportunity is another entrance into the same labyrinth. The recurring presence of Barbara Crampton and Rob Huebel strengthens that feeling of an interconnected corporate universe, and the framing material actually earns its place rather than functioning as decorative packaging between shorts. Anthology films notoriously invite viewers to rank their chapters, usually leaving one standout surrounded by weaker material. Grind is more balanced, even if “Content Moderation” possesses the greatest emotional and thematic weight. The filmmaking itself varies in polish and some comic ideas land better than others, but the imperfections contribute to the film’s scrappy punk personality. It feels less interested in elegance than momentum, throwing another target against the wall whenever the previous one has finished bleeding.

There is, admittedly, little subtlety here. Grind knows exactly who its villains are and rarely wastes time pretending otherwise. Billionaire culture, impossible productivity metrics, algorithmic management, corporate euphemisms and the mythology that relentless hustling will eventually produce freedom are all treated with open contempt. Yet the film avoids becoming a lecture because Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty and Chelsea Stardust remember that horror satire still has to entertain. The gore grows more extravagant, the situations more deranged and the comedy more knowingly ridiculous as the anthology progresses. Beneath all that chaos, however, sits a surprisingly coherent observation: modern employment increasingly asks workers to behave as though every job is their passion while companies retain the right to treat those same people as disposable inventory. Grind simply removes the polite vocabulary surrounding that transaction. Termination becomes literal, quotas become instruments of torture, branding becomes monstrous and career advancement becomes an endurance test. The metaphors are obvious because, increasingly, they hardly need to be metaphors at all.

Grind therefore succeeds not because every punchline hits or every narrative experiment works perfectly, but because its anger, humor and affection for genre filmmaking remain infectious. Barbara Crampton brings delicious authority to the film’s corporate nightmare, Rob Huebel weaponizes managerial cheerfulness, Vinny Thomas transforms gig-economy frustration into manic physical comedy, Christopher Rodriguez Marquette supplies its most genuinely unsettling human tragedy, and Ify Nwadiwe helps propel the finale toward glorious absurdity. Together with Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty and Chelsea Stardust, they turn the everyday vocabulary of targets, engagement, promotion, productivity and workplace loyalty into the language of horror. The next time an app asks whether you would like to add a tip, a manager announces an exciting new performance initiative, or somebody online promises financial independence through a pair of suspiciously expensive leggings, Grind may briefly come back to mind. Funny, furious, knowingly excessive and refreshingly willing to get its hands dirty, this is workplace horror for a generation that has discovered the most terrifying monster may simply be the next notification telling you that your shift has begun.

Grind
Directed by Ed Dougherty, Brea Grant, Chelsea Stardust
Written by Ed Dougherty, Brea Grant
Produced by Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust
Executive produced by: Chris Alender, Dave Smith, Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty
Starring: Christopher Rodriguez Marquette, Mercedes Mason, Rob Huebel, Barbara Crampton, James Urbaniak, James Paxton, Aubrey Shea, Courtney Pauroso, Ify Nwadiwe, Jessika Van, Jon Gabrus, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Vinny Thomas, Teri Gamble, Hannah Alline
Cinematography: Yaron Levy, Mark Evans, Alexander Chinnici, Taylor Washington
Edited by Mike Mendez, Hunter Via, Jeff Betancourt, Ed Dougherty
Music by Matt Glass
Production companies: Pan Up Productions, Squirrel Park
Distributed by Squirrel Park (États-Unis)
Release dates:NC
Running time: 103 minutes

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