{"id":13101,"date":"2026-10-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=13101"},"modified":"2026-09-24T09:40:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T09:40:36","slug":"a-burlesque-queen-begins-to-unravel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/a-burlesque-queen-begins-to-unravel\/","title":{"rendered":"A Burlesque Queen Begins to Unravel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MOVIE REVIEWS
\nThe Belladonna<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Psychological Thriller, Horror
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2026
\nRuntime: <\/strong>15m
\nDirector:<\/strong> Javid Rezai
\nWriter: <\/strong>Javid Rezai
\nCast:<\/strong> Stella Talpo, Janiq, Anna Tymoshenko, Sé Carr
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>shown at the BronzeLens Film Festival and Brighton Rocks International Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n

RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>There’s something wonderfully strange about describing a movie as a “psychoglitter thriller,” but THE BELLADONNA earns every part of it. Writer-director Javid Rezai surrounds grief, jealousy, and psychological instability with sequins, corsets, bright makeup, and the theatricality of a burlesque club. Instead of those two sides fighting each other, the glitter makes the darkness underneath much easier to see.<\/p>\n

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Stella (Stella Talpo) has inherited more than the spotlight after her mother's death. She’s now the Queen of the Belladonna Club, stepping into a position that comes with attention, expectations, and the lingering presence of the woman who occupied such an important place in her life. Grief has already left Stella emotionally unsteady, and the arrival of fellow performer Cherry (Janiq) gives all those feelings somewhere dangerous to go.<\/p>\n

What starts as insecurity begins changing shape. Stella becomes convinced that Cherry isn't merely another performer sharing the same stage, but someone positioning herself to take what Stella believes belongs to her. Rezai lets that suspicion grow from something almost understandable into something increasingly difficult to separate from Stella's own grief. The threat may be real, exaggerated, or entirely reconstructed by someone who's losing confidence in her ability to understand what's happening around her.<\/p>\n

Talpo carries nearly all of that weight, and THE BELLADONNA would fall apart quickly without the right performance in its lead. Stella needs to be vulnerable without becoming helpless, jealous without becoming immediately unsympathetic, and unstable without turning into a collection of exaggerated breakdowns. Talpo moves between those states convincingly, often letting a reaction or expression tell us more than another line of dialogue could.<\/p>\n

Her strongest moments come when grief and ambition become almost impossible to separate. Stella doesn't simply want to succeed because she enjoys performing; the crown has become tied to memory, approval, and the complicated relationship she still maintains with her mother after death. Losing her position would therefore mean more than losing a performance slot. In Stella's mind, it risks confirming every insecurity she's already carrying.<\/p>\n

That gives the movie an emotional layer underneath its more playful presentation. THE BELLADONNA could have been content to use burlesque as an unusual setting for a psychological horror short, but Rezai understands that performance itself belongs in the story. These women step onto a stage and deliberately construct heightened versions of themselves, using costume, movement, and confidence to control how audiences see them. Stella's problem is that maintaining control becomes much harder once she leaves that stage.<\/p>\n

Janiq makes Cherry an effective counterweight because she doesn't immediately play the character as an obvious villain. Her performance is provocative and confident enough to show why Stella would feel threatened, but Cherry isn't walking around announcing herself as someone determined to destroy another woman. That uncertainty matters. If THE BELLADONNA told us exactly how we should interpret Cherry from the beginning, much of Stella's paranoia would lose its power.<\/p>\n

The burlesque setting is also one of the film's greatest visual strengths. Costumes, makeup, and stage lighting create an environment designed to attract attention, while the backstage spaces allow the glamour to fall away almost immediately. That difference between the person under the lights and the person waiting behind the curtain fits Stella especially well. She's surrounded by color and performance, yet grows more isolated, frightened, and uncertain inside.<\/p>\n

Rezai also understands how quickly 15 minutes can disappear. Rather than trying to build an entire feature's worth of mythology into the short, THE BELLADONNA stays close to Stella and gives her deterioration the majority of its attention. Images of her late mother interrupt the present without turning the film into a complicated supernatural mystery, and reality becomes unstable enough that we begin questioning moments without needing to explain each one.<\/p>\n

The sound design and music become particularly useful as Stella's mental state worsens. What initially feels energetic and theatrical gradually becomes more abrasive, and the film finds ways to make a busy performance space feel surprisingly claustrophobic. Close-ups become increasingly uncomfortable because we're spending so much time studying Stella's face while she studies everyone around her. The room hasn't necessarily become smaller, but her perception of it has.<\/p>\n

The short's limited runtime works against it in places. Cherry and the other performers are primarily experienced through Stella's suspicion, which makes sense for the story but leaves little opportunity to understand who they are outside her perspective. A few minutes might have complicated those relationships further and made it even harder to determine how much of Stella's fear is justified.<\/p>\n

Some of the film's thematic ideas are also stated more directly than they need to be. THE BELLADONNA is strongest when grief, competition, and the pressure surrounding women's bodies emerge naturally from the environment rather than when a specific moment announces what the movie is discussing. Rezai's visual instincts are strong enough that the film rarely needs to explain itself, making the quieter moments more effective than the ones that push their meaning toward us.<\/p>\n

What I especially like is that the movie never treats Stella's grief as separate from everything else happening to her. Losing someone doesn't put the rest of your personality on hold. Jealousy still exists. Ambition still exists. Insecurity doesn't disappear because there's a more sympathetic explanation available, and grief can amplify flaws just as easily as it can expose vulnerability. THE BELLADONNA lets Stella hurt without requiring her to become perfect.<\/p>\n

The short also explores an interesting relationship between femininity and horror. The glitter, lingerie, makeup, and exaggerated performance aren't presented as things the thriller must eventually strip away to become serious. They're part of the horror itself, letting beauty and anxiety occupy the same space. Even as Stella begins losing her grip on what she believes, the movie never suggests the world around her was shallow or meaningless to begin with.<\/p>\n

That confidence sets THE BELLADONNA apart from the countless shorts that spend most of their limited runtime building toward one final reveal. Rezai has somewhere he wants the story to go, but the film doesn't depend on the destination suddenly making the previous 14 minutes worthwhile. Stella's unraveling is already compelling before everything settles into place, and the final stretch works because it sharpens what we've been watching rather than replacing it.<\/p>\n

Knowing that Rezai and Talpo originally made home movies together as kids adds a nice piece of background to the finished film, because THE BELLADONNA feels made by people who understand exactly what they enjoy. Horror sits next to camp without embarrassment, glitter sits next to grief, and a burlesque stage becomes an unexpectedly effective place to explore a woman terrified that she's losing both her position and herself. That combination could have become messy very quickly, yet the film rarely loses control of its tone.<\/p>\n

At only 15 minutes, THE BELLADONNA leaves me wanting more without feeling unfinished. A few supporting characters could use more room, and some of its ideas could be left less explicit. Still, those are minor frustrations in a short that establishes a distinct identity almost immediately. Rezai doesn't hide the psychological thriller underneath all that glitter. He realizes the glitter is exactly what makes it shine.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of DOLPHRAGON, NOIA FILMS]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEWS The Belladonna –      Genre: Psychological Thriller, Horror Year Released: 2026 Runtime: 15m Director: Javid Rezai Writer: Javid Rezai Cast: Stella Talpo, Janiq, Anna Tymoshenko, Sé Carr Where to Watch: shown at the BronzeLens Film Festival and Brighton Rocks International Film Festival RAVING REVIEW: There’s something wonderfully strange about describing a movie as a “psychoglitter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367791.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t