Hungry Widow -2024- Uncut Neonx Originals Short... Apr 2026

The “hunger” begins subtly: Iris sets a place for Elias at dinner. Then she starts cooking his favorite meals, leaving them to rot on his side of the table. Within ten minutes, the film pivots. Iris discovers that a strange, polypore-like fungus has begun fruiting from the floorboards beneath Elias’s armchair. Rather than removing it, she tastes it. The hunger becomes literal.

The screenplay, co-written by Holt and folklorist , draws on European “widow’s mushrooms” folklore (specifically the Estonian leseseen myth, where a dead husband’s spirit manifests as a fungus the widow must consume to free his soul—or be consumed herself). But the film complicates the myth. Iris doesn’t want to be freed. She wants to be filled. Hungry Widow -2024- Uncut NeonX Originals Short...

Some viewers have read this as a tragic union. Others as a cautionary tale about refusing to let go. Holt herself, in a Q&A at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, described it simply: “She didn’t want to be a widow. So she stopped being separate.” Hungry Widow arrives amid a wave of “culinary horror” ( The Menu , Raw , Flux Gourmet ) and “ecological grief horror” ( The Beach House , Gaia ). But where those films often maintain a critical distance, Hungry Widow immerses itself in the mess. It is not interested in explaining the fungus. No scientist appears. No news report. This is a closed system of two people, one dead, one eating. The “hunger” begins subtly: Iris sets a place

★★★★½ Sticks to the ribs. Literally. Hungry Widow is currently on the festival circuit and will stream via the NeonX Uncut VOD platform in Q2 2025. Viewer discretion for strong gore, disturbing sexual imagery, and mycophobia triggers. Iris discovers that a strange, polypore-like fungus has

The final shot: a wide angle of the house from the outside, months later. The roof has caved in. From the rubble, a dense cluster of bioluminescent mushrooms pulses, forming two vague shapes—side by side, like bodies in a bed.

The short also feels like a direct response to the sanitized grief depicted in prestige dramas. There is no catharsis here. Only digestion. Hungry Widow is not for everyone. Its pacing is deliberately funereal. Its body horror is not shocking but intimate —which, for many, is worse. Yet for those who seek out Uncut NeonX’s brand of challenging, sensory-first horror, this short is essential viewing. It understands that sometimes the most frightening thing about loss is not the absence of the loved one, but the desperate, hungry wish to make them part of you again—no matter what form they take.