Sister Midnight (2024) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐
A genre-bending comedy about a frustrated and misanthropic newlywed who discovers certain feral impulses that land her in unlikely situations.
Look, kids, marriage is hard. It’s learning that you’ll have to deal with another humans’ idiosyncracies for..the..rest..of..your…life. Thrust into an arranged marriage and having to leave her happy, well-cared for existence, Uma (Radhika Apte) is thrown into an cultural deadspace and the expectations on her to become the all-knowing homemaker have her gnashing her teeth. Karan Kandhari’s black comedy Sister Midnight finds Uma already at the end of her rope by the honeymoon. Her new husband Sheetal (Ashok Pathak) is lazy, prudish, and completely inept at running a household. Fed up with the clustered, and loveless day in and day out of her new homestead, Uma seeks fulfillment elsewhere and finds employment working third-shift as janitorial staff, and that’s where things take a turn for the feral.
Apte is sensational as the harried Uma, searching endlessly to find her own freedom and journey, regardless of her current obligations. The film’s everchanging scenery and smash-cut mayhem lend further to the bestial call from within Uma. A metaphoric exemplar of the global and societal expectations put on women and the yearn to live one’s life on their own terms.
“Sister Midnight” premiered at the London Film Festival on October 16th and has an expected March 2025 release.
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.
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