“What if a mother’s love was the most terrifying thing in the room?”
That question hovers over every frame of Salt Along the Tongue, the audacious second feature from Italian-Australian writer-director Parish Malfitano. And for anyone who grew up in a household where food was the language of love, obligation, and simmering resentment, the answer might hit closer to home than any jump scare ever could.
Malfitano’s debut, Bloodshot Heart, marked him as a bold new voice in Australian horror. But this time, he’s doing something weirder, and far more ambitious. Drawing from his own Italian heritage, he crafts a possession horror that swaps demonic possession for maternal possession. The result plays like Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver had a fever dream with The Exorcist and woke up in a kitchen surrounded by the malocchio (evil eye) superstition. It’s an odd, intoxicating brew.
So what exactly is this film? After her mother Mina dies suddenly, shy teenager Mattia (Laneikka Denne) is forced to live with her estranged aunt Carol (Dina Panozzo), who is also Mina’s identical twin. Carol runs a popular cooking show with her circle of friends, and welcomes Mattia into her boisterous world. But soon, Mattia begins exhibiting traits of her dead mother, leading Carol to suspect the malocchio is at work. The haunting truth? Mina has possessed her own daughter from beyond the grave, not to harm her, but to protect her and seek reconciliation with the sister she left behind.
This is the spine of the film, but Salt Along the Tongue defies easy categorisation. It’s a supernatural drama, a lesbian-coded gothic fairy tale, and a food horror movie all at once. The camerawork from DOP Susan Lumsdon evokes a grainy, 70s aesthetic, deliberately leaning into the look of 16mm film to create something that feels like a half-remembered nightmare. Malfitano isn’t interested in cheap scares. The horror here is atmospheric and creeping, concerned more with the rot of family secrets than with levitating bodies (though those show up, too).
Ahead of the film’s VOD release via Yellow Veil Pictures on May 1st, 2026, we’ve sat down to digest every ingredient in this strange and sensuous stew. Here is our full Salt Along the Tongue film review.
Salt Along the Tongue Review: Where Grief Meets the Malocchio
A Horror Movie review by Matt Weiner
It should be a given that any good exorcism movie worth its, well, salt comes with a massive trigger warning for emetophobia – fear of vomiting. And that applies to the stylish and sensuous Salt Along the Tongue, sure. But the gripping new possession horror from writer-director Parish Malfitano spends more time reveling in the potent allure of food and its power to bring together cultures, families and more than a few primordial memories that have been buried far too long.
Awkward and shy Mattia (Laneikka Denne) has her insular life turned upside down when her mother Mina (Dina Panozzo) dies suddenly. While Mattia would prefer to stay with Mina’s pregnant partner Yuma (Mayu Iwasaki), the lack of a specified guardian forces her to move in with Mina’s estranged twin sister, Carol (also Panozzo).
The boisterous and self-assured Carol welcomes Mattia into her confident world. Carol stars in a cooking show that she films with her friends and partner. Mattia has inherited her family’s aptitude for cooking (if not her aunt’s camera-ready demeanor), and Carol swiftly thrusts Mattia onto the show. The all-female cast gives Mattia a safe sisterhood to assert her own identity while working through the trauma and grief of her mother’s passing.
Soon this trauma seems to take on a malevolent physical form. Carol suspects the work of the malocchio (evil eye), which the film tells us is a curse caused by envy or jealousy. But whether the culprit is Mattia, the work of Mina from beyond the grave or something else entirely is a mystery Carol needs to solve before the entity fully takes over Mattia and destroys Carol.
What makes this Salt Along the Tongue so urgent is that Malfitano has crafted something genuinely singular: a possession horror where the scariest thing isn’t a demon, but the love a mother refuses to let go.
Given the budget, the film’s horror draws from the atmospheric and thematic side over splashy scares. But this ends up being an asset under Malfitano’s direction. There’s a pervasive tension that echoes the film’s clear influences from both The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, with the ratcheting unease and stomach-churning secrets providing more than enough shocks.
There are some threads that you wish Malfitano pulled on a little harder. The film sets up so much visually, including some clever doubling between Mina/Carol and Mattia, that the actual climax felt almost rushed and perfunctory.
But Malfitano and the film’s stars do a lot with what they have. The food on display opens up a gateway to illicit desires and the past, with Proustian reverie giving way to demonic nightmares. There’s more than enough to chew on here.
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