Yellow Eyes (2026) Review | Jesse Korman's Haunting Sci-Fi

The setup is vintage genre comfort food. Julia (Nena Martins) and Brad (Michael Kunicki) are a young couple who inherit a dilapidated house from a distant relative they never met. The real estate is a horror cliché - dusty corridors, flickering lights, and a basement full of ominous junk. But the real trouble starts when Brad uncovers a peculiar relic, a small, carved idol with unsettling yellow gems for eyes. Naturally, he touches it, and just as naturally, the spirit of a powerful demon - an entity that seems to have been waiting for exactly this kind of careless behavior - takes up residence inside him.

What follows is a standard-issue possession narrative. Brad becomes moody, then violent, then speaks in a voice that is decidedly not his own. Julia, desperate and terrified, realizes that the demon isn’t just a ghost; it’s an ancient evil that wants to use Brad’s body as a vessel to return to the physical world. Her only hope is to find an exorcist before the transformation becomes permanent. She enlists the help of Ronnie (Jimmy Chung), a skeptical friend, and a parade of supernatural experts, including the enigmatic Abbott Penrose (Brian Rooney) and the no-nonsense Lana (Margo O’Donnell). The plot is a scavenger hunt for solutions, with Julia racing against time while Brad deteriorates at an alarmingly inconsistent rate - sometimes a shuddering mess, sometimes calmly menacing, depending on what the scene requires.

The central problem with Yellow Eyes is that it never decides what kind of demon it’s dealing with. Is it a biblical fiend? A folkloric trickster? A cosmic horror? The script, credited to a small team, throws in bits of everything - ancient Mesopotamian names, Catholic exorcism rites, and vague references to “the old ones” - but synthesizes them into nothing. The demon’s backstory is delivered through long, clunky monologues, mostly from William Derrick III’s “The Doctor,” a character who exists solely to provide exposition and then disappear for large stretches. It’s frustrating, because the initial possession scenes are genuinely unsettling. Director Jesse Korman has an eye for composition, and he knows how to frame a shadow or stage a jump scare. The film’s production design is also a cut above its B-movie peers; the house feels lived-in and oppressive, and the relic itself is a beautifully grotesque piece of practical prop work.

Martins is the film’s anchor. Julia is a thankless role - she spends most of the movie reacting, crying, and driving from one location to another - but Martins invests her with a ferocious desperation that elevates the material. When she finally confronts the demon in its most theatrical form, you almost believe she can win. Kunicki, on the other hand, struggles with the dual role of husband and vessel. His “possessed” mode is a lot of tilting his head backwards and contorting his face, which is effective in close-ups but becomes laughable once the camera pulls back. The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Jimmy Chung brings a welcome lightness as the skeptical friend, while Margo O’Donnell chews scenery as a ruthless exorcist-for-hire, but Brian Rooney’s Abbott Penrose is so dry and academic that he sucks the energy out of every scene he’s in.

The pacing is the real killer. After a tight, tense first act, the middle of the film drags through a series of repetitive dialogue scenes in which Julia begs for help and is turned away. The exorcism sequence that should be the climax is muddled, cutting between practical effects and cheap CGI that looks like a screensaver from 2004. The runtime is mercifully short, but even 86 minutes feels too long when the plot is treading water. The ending, meanwhile, is a cop-out that tries to have it both ways - a “twist” that is less surprising and more apologetic, as if the filmmakers were unsure whether to commit to a downer finale or a crowd-pleasing save.

Pros

• Nena Martins delivers a raw, committed performance as the desperate wife.
• The practical effects and production design create a genuinely ominous atmosphere.
• Effective jump scares in the first half, before the film loses its nerve.
• A lean runtime that respects the viewer’s time, even when it meanders.

Cons

• The demon’s mythology is a tangled mess of half-baked lore.
• Pacing issues - the middle act is baggy and repetitive.
• Kunicki’s possessed performance wavers between frightening and silly.
• Cheap-looking CGI in the finale undermines the practical work elsewhere.
• Excessive expository dialogue that explains everything except why we should care.

Yellow Eyes is the cinematic equivalent of a haunted house walkthrough at a state fair: it gives you a few good frights, but you can see the plywood walls and the guy holding the chainsaw is just a college student earning minimum wage. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better in The Conjuring or Hereditary, and the film’s attempts to forge its own identity get lost in a swamp of borrowed tropes. That said, there is a scrappy sincerity to it. It’s not a cynical cash grab; it’s a labor of love that simply doesn’t have the script or the budget to fully realize its ambitions.

For fans of Nena Martins, it’s worth a look to see her carry a movie on her back. For everyone else, it’s a passable time-waster on a lazy Sunday, provided your expectations are firmly grounded in bargain-bin territory. The demon may have yellow eyes, but the film itself is a bland shade of gray. You won’t remember it a week from now, and that’s probably for the best.