The Containment has some gruesome tricks up its sleeve

The Containment is a brand new horror film that joins the possession universe. Directed by the Mexican horror duo Zagha Boys: Jack Zagha Kababie and Yossy Zagha Kababie, it stars Gia Hunter, fresh off her role in the popular 2026 film Primate. The premise of the film is young Caroline Cobbler (Gia Hunter) is troubled and battling the grief and death of her father. Everything is made much worse whenever a beetle embeds itself under her skin, effectively possessing her and plunging her and her family into a world they cannot comprehend as they seek to absolve her of her demons.

The Containment has a simple possession premise: the girl is possessed and her family is trying to help in any way they can. The film is easy to follow and it has some very interesting effects that I really have not seen before, most notably the embedding of the beetle. Some of the interesting and creative shots and the use of interesting effects was the highlight of this film.

Hunter turns in a strong and creepy performance, especially in the scenes where she is really playing out the possession visually. I really appreciate how hard her family seems to be working to fix Caroline. Typically, in these films, you will see a family try a priest and sort of throw their hands up if it doesn’t work, but they really explore many options here. The run time was tight, and the scares were a little light in the first act but revved up as the film went on. I do think the directors had something meaningful to say about the Catholic church and picking up on nuggets of that throughout was fascinating.

The Containment via Level 33 Entertainment

Ultimately, I did think there were quite a few missteps here. Horror in this age has reached a point of near complete saturation. Very rarely do we see something completely out of left field that doesn’t have elements of something else in the genre anymore. This makes total originality tough. This film felt like it was almost engineered backwards, where the writer had an interesting twist for the ending of a possession film and they just worked backwards to write the plot. This may work sometimes but ultimately the front half of the film did feel very procedural. It was something we see in so many possession accounts.

The writing overall feels a bit disjointed and shallow. The characters have motivations, but they don’t feel layered and the world feels a bit superficial at times. I liked that there was something they wanted to say about Catholicism here, but it felt very ham-fisted in the way it was presented. Ultimately, I do think the twist at the end provided a fresh little spin that the viewer really needed but it felt like a cheap payoff due to the shallow characterization and lead up to it.

All in all, this is a worthy addition to the possession genre. It is visually exciting and I do look forward to seeing the future visions of the Zagha Boys as they further build out their technical prowess and continue to polish their writing and directing chops. We will be seeing a lot more of Gia Hunter, hopefully in the horror genre as she really nails this role. Keep an eye out for this new possession horror and burrow into it as soon as you can. 

The Containment is currently playing in theaters.