A horror anthology which takes aim at our modern gig economy to deliver a depressingly timely selection of future shocks. Grind’s collection of doomed protagonists are those most at the mercy of late-stage capitalism. An overworked warehouse operative punished for her ‘tardiness.’ A pyramid scheme salesperson struggling to meet her quota. A food delivery driver forced to leap through a series of increasingly ridiculous hoops. An online moderator monitoring video uploads for violent and objectionable content. Fed-up coffee shop workers attempting to take a stand. All will be familiar to anyone who’s browsed LinkedIn for a job over the past decade. One will be particularly recognisable to those who’ve seen the Faces of Death remake.
Indie darlings Ed Dougherty, Brea Grant and Chelsea Stardust are the filmmakers behind this unified dystopian vision split across four distinct strands. Each contribute to an interconnected web of modern pulp fiction, with Dougherty and Grant taking writing duties. Given the low budget, the cast ranges from passable to mildly subpar, although no-one’s sticking around long enough for it to be a black mark in the ledger. Keep an eye out for genre icon Barbara Crampton, lending the film a sense of credibility amid the silliest of its tales.
Of the short films (plus bookend) presented here, some are vastly more successful than others. It’s become a cliché to describe the anthology horror film as a ‘mixed bag,’ but how else to talk about one which has a woman spewing mouthfuls of glitter in one moment, then a delivery driver thrown into his own private Groundhog Day the next? Most veer toward the sillier end of the spectrum than your average episode of Black Mirror, which tends to soften any bite Grind might have hoped for.
Grind is too silly to have our corporate overlords quaking in their boots, but it largely achieves its goal of poking fun at the absurdism of the world in which we live.
GRIND premiered at Tubi FrightFest on August 29, 2026.
