The Girl We Let In (2026)
Ryan Callaway has spent well over a decade quietly building one of the more prolific independent horror operations in America. Through his own company, Shady Dawn Pictures, he writes, directs and produces films that get made outside the studio system entirely and have found their way into more than 150 countries, from Let's Not Meet to the recent New Jersey Devil. It is the kind of career that only exists because someone kept going, and kept making things, without waiting for permission.
The Girl We Let In is his latest, and it arrives with its premiere at the Northern Horror Fest in Bergenfield, New Jersey, a small, defiantly grassroots one-day festival now in its eighth year, built to give independent horror and thriller filmmakers a room, an audience and a shot at being seen. Callaway sent the film over ahead of that premiere, and I watched it with no idea what to expect.
I want to be fair to it, because there is a decent film buried in here that never quite gets out.
I'll start with what works, because it's the story. The plot is genuinely solid, and Callaway pulls off some proper misdirection along the way. I had assumptions about where this was heading and it wrongfooted me more than once, which is not something I can say about most indie horror. There are a handful of well-placed shocks too, and they land.
The trouble is what's around it.
The acting in the opening act is rough. The older couple who open the film never quite convince, and it's the sort of thing that can lose an audience before the story has had a chance to grab them. It very nearly lost me. To its credit, it settles, and the younger cast are considerably stronger. By the back half it's a different beast entirely.
The cinematography is fine, and there isn't much more to say about it. It's functional, it gets the job done, but it rarely does anything interesting with the frame. Given how much a genre film can wring out of shadow, space and what you choose not to show, that feels more like a missed opportunity than a budget problem.
This is billed as horror. There are very few horror elements in it at and it's actually closer to a thriller, and a reasonably effective one. That's not fatal, but it is a mis-sell, and anyone arriving expecting to be frightened is going to come away wondering what happened. Call it what it is and I suspect it plays considerably better.
So, I'm going to go right down the middle here and give it 2.5 stars. There's a good storyteller in Ryan Callaway. The bones here are sound and the misdirection shows real craft. It just needs stronger performances and a camera with some ambition to do those bones justice.
Worth a look if you fancy a slow-burn thriller. Just don't go in expecting horror.
Filmmakers who send me their work get an honest review, because an honest review is the only kind worth having and the only kind worth reading. Ryan Callaway did not ask me for a favour, he asked me for a verdict, and there is a great deal here to build on. A storyteller who can wrongfoot me twice in ninety minutes is a storyteller worth watching. I will be first in the queue for whatever he makes next, and I suspect that when the performances and the camerawork catch up with the writing, he is going to have something really strong.
Reviewed from a screener provided by the director ahead of the film's premiere at the Northern Horror Fest in Bergenfield, New Jersey, where The Girl We Let In screens on 17 July 2026.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from the 2020s: Look Back (2024), The Whale (2022), All That's Left of You (2025)
More thriller: Once Upon a Time in Gaza (2025), Nameless (2026), 1001 Frames (2025)
