By RACHEL MEGHAN
Starring Dilette Guglielmi, Angelica Kim and Hugo Alexander-Rose
Written and directed by Josh Heaps
Factory 25
Do you remember, back in the early days of home video, when you’d roll up to a seedy independent video rental store, go to the horror section and find a weird little movie that no one had heard of? And when you watched it, it felt like something you really shouldn’t be seeing, something that feels a little too gritty, a little too real. It’s rare to find a movie like that in 2026, but one little indie film has broken through to give viewers some well-earned nostalgia. That movie is CITY WIDE FEVER.
Written and directed by Josh Heaps, CITY WIDE FEVER is a love letter to Italian horror cinema, a giallo film for the Gen-Z era. The cinematography is striking and abrasive from the opening credits, giving the ambiance of a video nasty from the ’70s. This is a case where a low budget and guerilla filmmaking serve the narrative, creating an atmospheric vision littered with references to Argento, Bava and even the Puppet Master series. All at once, it’s disorienting, disturbing, and entirely nightmarish.
CITY WIDE FEVER follows Sam (Diletta Guglielmi and Nancy Kimball), a film student who uncovers a mysterious USB drive on the streets of New York. Upon exploring its contents, she discovers an archive of forgotten giallo filmmaker Saturnino Barresi. With the help of her lovesick roommate Chloe (Angelica Kim) and fellow film nerd classmate Raina (Hugo Alexander-Rose), Sam unravels a mystery that trails through New York’s underbelly, taking her from sex shops to under bridges to Sleepy Hollow.
It’s a movie that showcases peak New York sleaze, making you feel like you’ve jumped into a time warp to the Manhattan of the 1980s, while commenting on the gentrification of today. “You’re in Gowanus down the street from Whole Foods,” Chloe reminds Sam as she becomes increasingly terrified by the horrors unfolding around her. The grimy subways and porn DVDs littering the sex shop make New York a prominent character in film and an effective backdrop to the horror of it all.
Naturalistic performances ground this highly stylized movie. Guglielmi nails the look, style, and swagger of a ’70s final girl, effortlessly cool and intelligent. Kim’s Chloe is a great foil to the insanity of it all and really shines in the final fifteen minutes of the film, while Alexander-Rose is a solid representation of femme horror enthusiasts, one that many women in the genre space can probably relate to in one way or another. Onur Tukel is also a convincing conspiracy theory-spouting creep as Keith, the students’ horror-obsessed professor and mentor.
However, there is the baffling choice to also have Sam played by a second actress, Nancy Kimball, who does a fine job but leaves us with a lot of questions. Is it a style choice? Is it a reference to giallo that goes over this reviewer’s head? Or are they just taking turns? Whatever it is, it isn’t answered in the conclusion. Besides that one head-scratching choice, this is a well-crafted film that speaks to a long-lost era of cinema, with well-earned jump scares and utterly creepy sound design that crawls under your skin and stays there until the credits roll.
As the titular city-wide fever overtakes Sam and turns the film into a meta exercise (complete with a fourth-wall break). The gore keeps coming, and it’s hard to look away. Even an effect as simple as a hairpin through the palm is bloody and nauseating. Each gory setpiece gives CITY WIDE FEVER a snuff film quality. It’s a feast for the eyes and a treat for the horror-loving soul. By the end of the film, the viewer feels like they’re snapping in real time with Sam, catching the fever along with her as it reaches its gruesome conclusion. But hey, that’s just what happens when watching something like this. That’s what a diet of too many horror movies does to a girl, after all.
CITY WIDE FEVER opens at Alamo Dragthouse locations nationwide on April 15.
