There is a moment in the trailer for The Other People when the movie stops feeling like a horror film and starts feeling like something you really shouldn’t be watching alone.
That distinction matters.
I’ve seen enough horror trailers to know the formula by heart: ominous music, a child saying something creepy, three increasingly violent jump scares, one screaming woman, and a final shot designed to make you forget that you’ve already seen most of the movie. The Other People doesn’t completely escape those conventions, but it understands something many studio horror films have forgotten: the most frightening thing in a house isn’t always the monster. It’s the possibility that someone is already there.
Directed by Chad McClarnon in his feature debut and distributed by The Horror Collective and Indie Rights, The Other People arrives on digital platforms on September 15, 2026. The film has already built an impressive reputation through its festival run, collecting awards and generating the kind of word-of-mouth that independent horror desperately needs.
And after watching the official trailer, I understand why.
I’m not ready to call it one of the year’s best horror films yet. A trailer can lie. We’ve all been burned by beautifully edited previews for mediocre movies. But this one has something I genuinely want from horror in 2026: restraint.
The Trailer’s Best Idea Is Also Its Simplest
The setup sounds familiar on paper.
William, played by Bryce Johnson, has moved into a new home with his eight-year-old daughter Abby, portrayed by Valentina Lucido, and his new wife Rachel, played by Lyndie Greenwood. They’re attempting to build something resembling a normal family life in an isolated community.
Naturally, normal doesn’t last.
Abby starts talking about Eric, an imaginary friend who seems harmless enough at first. Rachel is willing to entertain the possibility that the child simply has an active imagination. William isn’t having it.
His response is revealing because it immediately establishes the family conflict. He doesn’t want Abby encouraged. He wants discipline, stability and, above everything else, the appearance that everything is fine.
That attitude becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
Abby eventually tells Rachel that she doesn’t want to play with Eric anymore because a frightening man has been coming out of her closet.
That’s the point where the trailer gets under your skin.
Not because the line is particularly original. It isn’t. Horror has been putting things in children’s closets forever. What makes it work here is the gradual buildup surrounding it. The film doesn’t immediately scream, “HERE IS THE MONSTER.” Instead, it lets the idea sit there.
And then it starts showing us the evidence.
Food disappears.
Clothes go missing.
Something scratches inside the walls.
There are strange movements in the darkness.
The house begins to feel occupied.
That’s considerably more effective than throwing a CGI creature at the camera.
The Other People Understands That Houses Can Be Terrifying
The strongest material in the trailer revolves around the physical space.
The house isn’t just a setting. It becomes a threat.
McClarnon repeatedly places his characters in cramped rooms, narrow hallways and doorways that seem to conceal more darkness than they should. The camera doesn’t always rush toward whatever might be hiding. Sometimes it simply waits.
That is where the trailer earns my attention.
Modern horror has become obsessed with making every frame loud. Bigger creature designs. Bigger sound effects. Faster editing. More obvious scares.
The Other People appears to be going in the opposite direction.
Its cinematography is cold, restrained and deliberately uncomfortable. Blues, grays and deep shadows dominate the imagery, while Abby’s bedroom becomes particularly disturbing because it looks so ordinary. Toys, furniture and a child’s closet shouldn’t be frightening.
Here, they are.
The editing deserves credit too. The trailer frequently gives shots enough time to breathe, which means you’re encouraged to look around the frame rather than simply wait for the next cut.
That’s a dangerous strategy for a horror movie.
Give the audience time to look and they’ll start inventing things.
And sometimes what the audience imagines is much worse than what the filmmaker could actually show.
The Real Horror Might Not Be Supernatural
This is where The Other People becomes much more interesting than its basic premise suggests.
The trailer initially appears to be setting up a conventional supernatural story. Child. Imaginary friend. Haunted house. Strange noises. Mysterious deaths.
We’ve seen this movie before.
But the trailer repeatedly introduces details that point somewhere less comfortable.
People are disappearing.
Residents are dying under unexplained circumstances.
One woman in the neighborhood apparently refuses to sleep inside her own house and instead lives in a trailer parked outside.
That detail is fantastic.
It’s weird enough to demand an explanation without giving us one.
Then there is the growing suspicion that the threat may not be paranormal at all. Some viewers have connected the film’s imagery to phrogging, the disturbing phenomenon in which people secretly occupy someone else’s home without the residents realizing it.
If that’s where the film is heading, the premise suddenly becomes much more frightening.
Ghosts are terrifying, sure. But ghosts belong to another category of fear. You can tell yourself they aren’t real.
Someone hiding inside your walls?
That’s different.
Someone watching your family while you sleep?
That’s the kind of possibility that makes people check their attic before going to bed.
The Cast Keeps the Movie Grounded
The trailer would collapse without convincing performances, and thankfully the actors appear to understand that this isn’t a movie that needs constant screaming.
Lyndie Greenwood is the standout.
As Rachel, she plays someone who is caught between several impossible responsibilities. She wants to protect Abby, but she isn’t Abby’s biological mother. She wants to trust William, but William increasingly seems determined to dismiss everything happening around them.
That gives Greenwood something far more interesting to play than generic horror-movie panic.
Rachel isn’t simply afraid.
She’s isolated.
There’s a difference.
Bryce Johnson’s William is equally interesting because the character isn’t presented as a cartoonishly useless husband. His refusal to believe Abby appears tied to grief, denial and a desperate desire to preserve his family.
That makes his skepticism frustrating rather than ridiculous.
And then there’s Valentina Lucido.
Child performances in horror are notoriously difficult. Too polished and the character feels artificial. Too exaggerated and the entire movie becomes distracting.
Lucido’s Abby appears to operate somewhere in between. Her exhaustion is more disturbing than screaming would be. She looks like a child who has stopped expecting adults to understand what she’s experiencing.
That is a nasty little detail.
The Festival Buzz Isn’t Just Marketing Noise
The Other People didn’t suddenly appear because someone cut together a scary trailer.
The film already has festival credibility behind it.
| Festival / Recognition | Result |
|---|---|
| Nashville Film Festival | Audience Award |
| deadCenter Film Festival | Special Jury Prize – Best Narrative Feature |
| La Samhain du Cinema Fantastique | Best Screenplay |
| 2026 Popcorn List | Festival standout |
That matters for an independent horror film.
Festival awards don’t guarantee a great movie, and I’m always suspicious when marketing starts stacking trophies into a trailer as if awards automatically equal quality. They don’t.
But an Audience Award at Nashville is especially encouraging for a movie like this because it suggests the film isn’t merely an austere critic-bait exercise. There appears to be an actual emotional and entertainment payoff underneath the atmosphere.
That’s exactly what I want.
Give me atmosphere, but don’t forget to give me a movie.
The “Inspired by True Events” Line Makes Everything Worse
The trailer also leans heavily into the phrase “inspired by disturbing true events.”
Normally, I roll my eyes.
Horror marketing has squeezed that phrase almost completely dry. At this point, a movie can involve a haunted toaster and someone will find a way to describe it as inspired by true events.
But here, the claim fits the material surprisingly well.
The film’s central fears aren’t dependent on supernatural mythology. They’re about domestic safety, family instability and the violation of personal space.
Your home is supposed to be the place where you can lower your guard.
What happens when you discover you can’t?
That’s a much more interesting question than “What if a ghost was angry?”
What I’m Excited About — And What Still Worries Me
There is a lot to like in this trailer, but I’m not going to pretend it has completely sold me.
The biggest concern is the third act.
The trailer is smart enough to hide its biggest reveals, but that creates a problem: The Other People now has to deliver on all the possibilities it’s suggesting.
If the answer is simply “evil supernatural creature,” some of the tension will evaporate.
If the movie turns into a conventional home-invasion thriller, it could still work, but it would feel less surprising.
The best version of this film is one that keeps those possibilities alive for as long as possible and then lands somewhere genuinely unsettling.
That’s a difficult balancing act.
But the trailer gives me enough confidence to stay interested.
What Works
- Excellent atmosphere without relying on constant jump scares.
- A genuinely unsettling house setting that feels dangerous before anything is revealed.
- Strong performances, particularly from Lyndie Greenwood and Valentina Lucido.
- A mystery that actually invites speculation instead of explaining everything immediately.
- Festival recognition that suggests the film has substance beyond its trailer.
What Could Go Wrong
- The mystery could collapse into a familiar supernatural explanation.
- The “true events” angle could turn out to be little more than marketing.
- The deliberately slow pacing may test viewers expecting conventional horror.
- The final act has an enormous amount of expectation to satisfy.
My Verdict on The Other People Trailer
I’m impressed.
More importantly, I’m curious.
Those aren’t the same thing.
A great horror trailer doesn’t need to convince me that every second of the movie will be terrifying. It needs to make me wonder what happens after the trailer ends. The Other People accomplishes that surprisingly well.
The image of a child talking to an imaginary friend isn’t new. Neither is the creepy closet, the isolated house or the strange scratching behind the walls.
What feels fresher is the suggestion that the family may be reacting to something that was already there long before they arrived.
That’s the kind of premise that sticks.
Chad McClarnon’s feature debut also has the advantage of arriving at a time when audiences seem increasingly hungry for horror that trusts them. Not every scare needs an orchestral blast. Not every monster needs to be shown. Sometimes a dark hallway and ten seconds of silence can do more damage than $20 million worth of visual effects.
Whether The Other People can sustain that tension for an entire feature remains the big question.
For now, though, I’m absolutely watching it.
The Other People premieres digitally on September 15, 2026, and based on this trailer, it may be one of those small horror releases that starts quietly and becomes impossible to stop talking about.
And if the movie really does answer the question of who — or what — has been living inside that house, I suspect the answer is going to be considerably worse than a ghost.
Rating for the trailer: 8.5/10
