With a limited release in October 2025 and getting distribution in May of 2026 “Affection” is finally getting noticed by a wider audience now in the summer. It’s an independent film that falls under the category of psychological thriller. It is enticing when it stays a thriller and mystery. The lead character played wonderfully by Jessica Roth has a mental condition where her mind resets and believes she is a different person than what her husband, Bruce is telling her.  He has a daughter even though she believes she has a son. It’s the playground format that Phillip K. Dick used relentlessly in his science fiction stories questioning identity. It’s also a setting that creates a surrealist atmosphere where filmmakers can play with camera angles and extreme close-up and weird edit cuts to maintain the mystery. “Affection” follows all those protocols, but does the cardinal sin of revealing the secret of the mystery too early.  An aspect that when you do that you have to go gaudy with the horror or fill time with chases. It is a very doughy script with no real depth for characters. The kid is just gonna do kid stuff and Bruce and Ellie are not provided with any real motivation, there are mostly vessels to the plot-to which there’s little plot. 

The concept is enticing but there isn’t much there to sustain a full feature. The film musters in an incredible amount of tropes and lazy cliches that have been seen so many times before that were numb to seeing.  Why do we need a shower scene? Why are there no doctors caring for her condition? With just three characters in the film for what you have transpired is asking a lot from Jessica Roth-in fact I would demand more even though she is in it over ninety perfect of it. 

The editing is semi-amateurish and uses a film score that lulls and doesn’t boost the energy- it drags the film. The movie thinks it is winning with a slow burn, but a more speedient edit would get to where the film wants to be a ghastly horror. There are great themes that could be addressed in this that are well very under played-misogyny, domestic violence, and psychological abuse. It’s so under-played that it feels it’s being sanitized. 

The desire to get back to the status quo of the story is enough for a compelling antagonist, but how you get there is the key.  It’s pretty much the arch for every antagonist is a psychological thriller. But-there isn’t much psychology in this psychological thriller to maintain a mystery-it’s pretty much straight forward domestic violence horror.  It might be even more compelling if they fully embrace the horror of the story rather than put in front the mystery, because there is no mystery to solve and the protagonist needs to get to the vengeance as fast as possible. 6.5/10