Possession (1981), The Lure , Hagazussa , and the fungal photography of The Last of Us ’s more art-house moments.
What follows is not a creature feature but a —a slow, tactile study of a woman ingesting the physical memory of her husband, bite by bitter bite. The fungus spreads up the walls, across the mattress, and eventually, into Iris herself. Uncut NeonX’s Signature: Sensory Assault The “Uncut” label here is not mere branding. Where other shorts might cut away, Hungry Widow lingers. The film’s most infamous sequence—a seven-minute unbroken shot of Iris chewing a fibrous, mushroom-like mass extracted from the dead man’s sweater—plays less like horror and more like a ritual. Sound designer Marco Velez amplifies every wet crack, every reluctant swallow. The squelch of hyphae breaking between teeth is mixed to the front, uncomfortably intimate. Hungry Widow -2024- Uncut NeonX Originals Short...
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. Possession (1981), The Lure , Hagazussa , and
In the final three minutes, Iris stops eating the fungus. She lies down on the now-fully-colonized marital bed, opens her mouth, and the camera holds as a single, pale fruiting body emerges from her throat—slowly, organically, as if blooming. The film cuts to black not on a scream, but on a soft, almost sexual exhalation. Sound designer Marco Velez amplifies every wet crack,
By the 20-minute mark, Iris’s body begins to change. Not in a conventional body-horror transformation (no bursting tentacles or additional limbs), but in a : black veins creep up her neck; her tears, when they come, are viscous and amber. She coughs spores into her palm and smiles. This is not infection but communion. The Controversial Final Frame Spoilers ahead for the uncut version (a cleaner, 15-minute edit exists for mainstream horror fests, but the full NeonX cut is the definitive version).