Paolo Strippoli’s supernatural drama is a moving, mortifying portrait of a village that sacrifices humanity for happiness
In The Holy Boy, washed-up and grieving judo prodigy Sergio (Michele Riondino) takes a substitute PE teacher post in the Italian mountain village of Remis, located in what locals call the “valley of smiles.” Sergio’s disarmed by the townspeople’s warmth, soon discovering their joy springs from the miraculous embrace of local teen Matteo (Giulio Feltri), whose touch erases even the deepest anguish. But that instant bliss comes at a devastating price, forcing both Sergio and Matteo to confront their own pain—as well as the desperate villagers, who are determined never to surrender their newfound happiness.
Paolo Strippoli’s third feature may be as visually sparse as the tiny village that cages the film’s narrative, but The Holy Boy remains an emotionally potent and deeply unsettling work of folk horror. With a barebones premise, Strippoli and co-writers Jacopo Del Giudice and Milo Tissone explore grief not through the lens of individual trauma, but on a chillingly vast, cultish scale. Eschewing the clichés and pitfalls of “capital-T Trauma” horror, the film questions what’s more terrifying–the grief a whole community faces, or the addictive “cure” they turn to avoid it entirely?
Earning top placement at this year’s Fantastic Fest as well as the Venice Film Festival, The Holy Boy is a film that wisely dances in the genre gray for much of its runtime, evoking similar approaches to Let the Right One In’s vampirism or Carrie‘s supernatural coming-of-age drama. Much of Strippoli’s focus is on the growing substitute father-son bond between Sergio and Matteo, both of whom share a sense of crushing loneliness in contrast to the relative connection and happiness of their fellow villagers. Still grieving his own son, Sergio finds human intimacy almost alien—especially as the warm-hearted bartender Michela (Romana Maggiora Vergano) begins to show romantic interest in him. Matteo, meanwhile, is overwhelmed by connection: burdened as the vessel for the villagers’ grief, he’s treated less as a boy going through his own issues than as the community’s emotional dumping ground. This is especially true of Matteo’s father, Mauro (Paolo Pierobon), who spends more time scheduling villagers’ sessions with Matteo than actually spending time with his son. Both men remain relative outsiders in a community that claims to embrace them, and their unlikely bond becomes a lifeline—allowing each to inhabit the paternal and filial roles their lives have been aching for. Through each other, the weary middle-aged Sergio and the coming-of-age Matteo learn to risk connection again; Sergio tentatively opens himself to Michela, and the queer Matteo reaches out to a seemingly straight bully who’s long evaded his healing embrace despite his mother’s near-fanatical faith in Matteo’s gift.
Their achingly authentic bond feels far more grounded than the villagers’ forced cheer, which skirts the raw edges of their collective pain. The film’s early horror seeps from this dissonant pastoral bliss, as lush, lived-in production design infuses the mountain-framed streets, rustic churches, and modern community halls with a fluorescent-lit gothic unease that makes the serenity feel almost sinister. As Sergio and Matteo’s substitute father-son relationship deepens, they retreat to the overgrown ruins of Remis’ abandoned train station—the site of a deadly derailment that shattered the village. The setting becomes a poignant metaphor for the community’s response to loss: by surrendering to Matteo’s miraculous powers, they’ve chosen to abandon the most visible reminder of their grief, letting it decay in the weeds rather than face it head-on. In doing so, they trade remembrance for relief, severing the very ties—to each other and to the wider world—that true healing requires.
Because as The Holy Boy chillingly reveals, nothing is more terrifying than vulnerability—except the lengths we’ll go to escape it. The film’s meditative study of grief and trauma snaps into a sharper, more unsettling gear as Matteo confronts the villagers’ growing revulsion toward him, driving him to probe darker aspects of his gift. Here, Strippoli fully embraces The Holy Boy’s genre core, steering it from the hushed, ominous mood of The Wicker Man and Bring Her Back into the body-horror dread and creeping paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The transformation is amplified by Valentina Tomljanovič, Andrea Leanza, and Denise Boccacci’s unnerving makeup work and Francesco Morosini’s piercing sound design, which render Matteo’s power increasingly monstrous as the village’s long-suppressed grief erupts in a devastating reckoning. It’s the widespread repercussions of treating Matteo as a tool to remove grief entirely that help Strippoli avoid the exasperating clichés of the tired “the real monster is trauma” trope. By depicting how everyone—from Remis’ clergy to Matteo’s own father—dehumanizes Matteo in order to exalt him as an emotional savior, Strippoli underscores that it’s our responses to tragedy that turn us into monsters. Offloading that pain onto a chosen redeemer—or a demon to vanquish—only perpetuates the same delusions and inevitable reckonings the villagers project onto Matteo.
Even more so, it’s the very same feelings we’re horrified by that remind us of our own humanity–and that true happiness or relief doesn’t lie in cutting these emotions away like some cancer or vestigial appendage, but in recognizing just how vital they are to being alive. In an age marked by the dehumanization of entire communities and a desperate craving for saviors to rescue us from collective trauma, The Holy Boy stands as a visceral parable warning against both extremes—and the devils they create of us all.
The Holy Boy had its US Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025, where it won the Next Wave Best Director and Audience Awards. Shudder has acquired the film for a US release in 2026.
