Skincare (2024) ⭐️⭐️⭐

Famed aesthetician Hope Goldman’s skincare business faces sabotage when rival Angel Vergara opens a boutique across the street. Aided by friend Jordan, Hope seeks to uncover who’s trying to ruin her reputation.

As a girl who used to have a career in skincare, but also was an entrepreneur with her own line and one private practice, let me tell that the biz is CUT. THROAT. A multi-billion dollar industry earns its keep on trade secrets, being “the next big thing” and snaking the competition. Austin Peter’s Skincare, takes the bitter rivalry trope to a whole new level with it’s story torn from the headlines.

Skincare is a fun blend of suspense, thriller, and dark humor starring Elizabeth Banks as Hope Goldman, a Hollywood esthetician on the cusp of launching her own long-time coming and hard won skincare line. Days after she tapes a segment soft-launching her brand on LA’s hottest moring talk show, her plans go up in smoke as a new skin spa owned by new-age and TikTok friendly Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) has opened just across the parking lot. In a quest to avoid possible sabotage at any cost, Hope’s likfe spirals as defamation and humiliation ensue, and she leans on her new-found self-help guru friend Jordan (Lewis Pullman) who vows to help shine her tarnished image and teach her the ways of modern marketing, with disasterous results.

Peter’s points the finger and stokes the divisive and competitve fires of the Hollywood beauty industry and the lengths some will go keep their reputation and hard work in tact, a folly understood and resonant of those whose well-crafted and cruated social personas can take a beating at the slightest mock, knock or rival. Banks is hysterical as hapless Hope, who’s bet her entire farm and thensome on her product launch, and watching her Lucy Arnaz her way out of one jam and into another keeps this map-cap thriller buzzing. Nathan Fillion playing suave and misogynistic on-air personality Brett Wright throws a few wrenches in Hope’s but she’s lovingly anad wholeheartedly supported by her receptionist Marine (Michaela Jae Rodriguez) and chopshop buddy Emerson (Jason Manuel Olazábal)

Skincare debuted at London Film Festival on October 12th and was released in US theatres on August 16th, IFC has plans to release it on streaming services soon.

Mo Moshaty is a horror writer, lecturer and producer. As a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and life long horror fan, Mo has lectured with Prairie View A&M Film & TV Program as a Keynote, BAFSS Horror Studies Sig  and The University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom. Mo has partnered with horror giant, Shudder Channel, to co-produce the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival 2021 and 2022 with Nyx Horror Collective and her literary work “Love the Sinner” was published with Brigid’s Gate Press in July of 2023 and her two volume collection, “Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment will be published with Tenebrous Press in 2025. Mo is the creator and Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and the Founder of Mourning Manor Media.

Mo Moshaty

Mo Moshaty is an acclaimed horror writer, lecturer, and producer whose work combines visceral storytelling with the psychological insight of her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy background. She has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker at Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium (Prairie View A&M), No Return: A Yellowjackets Symposium (Horror Studies BAFSS Sig), The Whole Damn Swarm: Celebrating 30 Years of Candyman (University of California), and with the Centre for the History of the Gothic (University of Sheffield). Mo has also presented at the BFI, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Brain Binge on women’s trauma in horror cinema, Cine-Excess on The Creepy Kid Horror Subgenre and Mother/Daughter Trauma in Horror, and Romancing the Gothic on Cosmic Horror’s Havoc on The Body Electric Her short film, 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Short Film. As a core producer with Nyx Horror Collective, Mo co-created the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Fest and partnered with Shudder in 2021 and 2022, while also establishing a Stowe Story Labs fellowship supporting women creatives over 40+ in horror. A member of the Black Women in Horror Class of 2023 and featured in 160 Black Women in Horror, Mo’s short fiction appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigid’s Gate Press) and 206 Word Stories (Bag O’ Bones Press). Her debut novella, Love the Sinner, was released July 5, 2024, with Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment released in October 2025. The first of her five-volume non-fiction series, The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife, will be released in 2027 from Tenebrous Press. As the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media, Mo champions marginalized voices in horror. Under her leadership, NightTide plans to launch a film festival in 2028, furthering her mission to reshape the genre through inclusivity and representation.