A debut feature that announced itself loudly on the festival circuit is about to reach a wider audience.

There are two things I struggle to watch in TV shows and movies. The first is prolonged scenes of people eating, it can’t be fun to shoot, and the end result is enough to induce immediate Misophonia. If you don’t know, Google it to fully appreciate that mildly humorous comparison. I accept I could have just explained what Misophonia is with fewer words, but here we are. There’s a scene in Captain America: The First Avenger where Tommy Lee Jones eats a steak that blindsided me in the cinema. Every time I’ve rewatched that film, I have to skip the now infamous steak-eating scene. The second thing is watching people itch. I don’t know about you, but seeing someone itch makes every inch of my skin crawl in sympathy – and yet here I am, telling you about Itch!, Bari Kang’s debut horror feature, which arrives on UK digital on April 20th. 

The film marks Kang’s first horror feature, and it’s a notably committed one. He writes, directs and produces, and puts himself front and centre as Jay, a widower already worn down by grief when civilisation starts coming apart around him. The outbreak at the film’s core is spreading fast, turning those infected into frenzied, self-destructive shells of people, and Jay’s only focus is keeping his daughter alive. Proving that is a family movie (of sorts), that daughter is played by Kang’s own child, Olivia Kang. The rest of the cast includes Patrick Michael Valley, Ximena Uribe, Mia Ventura Lucas and Douglas Stirling.

Paranoia, fractured trust, and the impossible calculus of protecting someone you love when every decision could be fatal, these are the pressure points the film keeps pressing. The critical reception from Grimmfest was strong, and it’s easy to see why. As a first horror feature, Itch! shows a filmmaker who understands that the best virus movies were never really about the virus. That said, I have a sudden need to go and buy ALL the Calamine lotion my local supermarket has in stock.

Itch! is on UK digital from April 20th via Seven Tales. US digital follows on April 21st.