‘Josephine’ Review: Another Heartsick Horror Film About Real Monsters from ‘Soft & Quiet’ Filmmaker

Sundance: Beth de Araújo's sophomore outing, following her remarkable 2022 debut, is another finely-tuned exploration of the pervasive power and perversion of real evil.

At this point, filmmaker Beth de Araújo is two for two. Not just in terms of the quality of her films — impeccably crafted fever dreams of very different stripes and horrifyingly similar themes — but in how these films make the viewer feel.

More concisely: with her “Soft & Quiet” and “Josephine,” de Araújo remains undefeated when it comes to making stunning films that I will both heartily recommend and never, ever watch again.

The word that comes to mind when watching a de Araújo feature is heartsick. That applies to the feeling bestowed on both the audience and her characters (the good guys and the bad guys). While her first film, the unrelenting “Soft & Quiet,” was cleverly designed to appear as if it was shot in a single real-time take, her sophomore feature is more about the steady accumulation of dread. The heroines of “Soft & Quiet” recognize what they are dealing with almost immediately (the force of the evil that is bent on destroying them is what’s surprises most), but the star at the center of “Josephine” is not just wounded by the sickness that suddenly infiltrates her young life, but her complete lack of understanding about what is happening to her and why.

In both films, it’s not just bad deeds that upends everyday lives, it’s real evil, actual monsters, perversions that don’t only show up in a movie screen. That’s true terror.

Based loosely on an experience de Araújo, who both wrote and directed the film, experienced as a child, “Josephine” initially lulls us into a false sense of safety. It’s early morning in San Francisco, and fledgling soccer star Josephine (Mason Reeves, riveting in her first role) is getting ready for a run with her devoted dad Damien (Channing Tatum, bringing incredible girl-dad energy to the role). It’s something the pair do every Sunday morning: get up early to watch Premier League football, run through a woodsy neighboring park, and kick the ball around.

For her second film, de Araújo leans less on clever camera tricks, though she and cinematographer Greta Zozula occasionally put us in Josephine’s own perspective, shooting as if we are looking through the eight-year-old’s eyes. As with “Soft & Quiet,” the gimmick works, grounding us in Josephine’s world and immersing us, if briefly, in what the world looks like from her vantage. Jo-Jo, as her dad calls her, is plucky and fun and filled with energy, so when she briefly zips ahead of her dad while on their run through Golden Gate Park, it just seems like everyday high-jinks.

But when the path forks (about as heavy-handed a metaphor as de Araújo will ever employ), Josephine goes to the left, while Damien goes to the right. What she finds there will forever alter the course of her life, and set “Josephine” off on a heart-wrenching journey with no easy answers. Curious and watchful, Josephine ducks behind a tree when she sees a woman (Syra McCarthy) running into a public bathroom at the bottom of a scrubby hill, and she sinks even further down when a young man (a bone-chilling Philip Ettinger) follows the unknown woman into the tiny building.

De Araújo’s approach to portraying on-screen violence only furthers that heartsick feeling: straightforward, unsparing, and absolutely devoid of any possibility of being compared to “torture porn.” What we see, what Josephine sees, is something no person should ever witness or experience. And that’s the root of the film’s power: how do we talk about things that we should not have words for?

When Damien arrives on the scene, it kicks off what will become one of Tatum’s best performances yet, a deep-feeling and heartbreaking exploration of layers of emotional unease. Damien does everything “right,” ensuring both Josephine and the woman are safe, chasing after the assailant, calling the cops, a neat little checklist of “how to handle an emergency.” And yet, the damage has already been done. There will be more to come.

Even when Josephine begins to seek out answers to what she’s seen (snatching her mom’s phone to search “raip,” reeling at what she discovers), it’s impossible to make sense of everything. There are things to fear she never even know existed, and the deep-seated powerlessness that overtakes her causes her to act out in chilling and increasingly volatile ways. Her parents’ reactions don’t help: her exceedingly calm mother Claire (Gemma Chan, thrilling as a character just barely holding it together) wants her to see a therapist now, her more action-oriented dad is eager to put her into self-defense classes. The mixed messages both give off (to say nothing of their own barely concealed terror) do little to help Josephine, who soon becomes someone almost entirely different than the care-free kid she just was.

She also picks up a new friend: Ettinger begins to appear to her, a literal haunting figure, never saying a word, yet barging into nearly every moment of Josephine’s already upended life. It’s the sort of choice another filmmaker fight fill tricksy or silly, but that de Araújo delivers with the maximum of impact. And that we, like Josephine and only Josephine, can see him only furthers our immersion into her world. It almost goes beyond empathy.

Josephine’s steadily unfolding breakdown is only compounded by the arrival of yet another situation no eight-year-old should ever have to encounter: handling the messy investigation of the crime itself. How she might help (or not) drives one more wedge between Josephine and her parents, who all have a different take on what the “right” thing to do is.

If these questions sound heady and heavy, they are, but de Araújo’s masterful ability to interrogate tension on every level keeps the film clipping along, each turn both a surprise and an inevitability. The monsters are here, they are real, and they’re coming.

Grade: A-

“Josephine” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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