A Review of Melania (2026)
2025 was an exciting year for horror with films like Weapons,
Sinners, Eddington, and 28 Years Later that used familiar film
tropes to examine the horrors and monsters that we face regularly, whether
these are supernatural or even if they walk among us. It looks like 2026 is off
to a horrific start, meaning that there have been some further exciting and
terrifying moments that have played out in entertainment. However, nothing can
prepare audiences for the sheer horror that they will encounter in one of the
most terrifying and shocking displays of sociopathy and evil captured on film
since Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. The new movie Melania is
truly a frightening display of a creature possessed with the desire to infiltrate
and infect the upper echelons of American power in order to breed to ensure a
future for her alien race in America. There have been other great horror-sci-fi
films that have used these kind of shape-shifting creatures who often take on the
role of a beautiful woman, from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the
underrated 80s flick The Hidden, but none of them have incorporated the
sheer psychopathy and disregard for humanity in the way Melania does. In
some ways Melania also resembles a more horror- themed version of the
classic Nicolas Roeg-David Bowie film The Man Who Fell to Earth, where we
witness an alien abandoning his family for the spoils of capitalism. However,
even Bowie’s alien experiences love and some sense of humanity with his
memories of his family and previous life on his home planet. Melania has
none of this human emotion. As an invading alien, she brilliantly plots a
scheme to access and draw close to the nexus of power by selecting an animated
corpse, a hollowed out rotten husk of a human, as her future breeder. These
scenes interacting with her husband reminded me of the film Nekromantic,
where the characters are driven by a Thanatos-like death drive to ultimately
find pleasure in the decay and violence around death. Indeed Melania and her
corpse-groom make a great couple, as they both seem to be incapable of human
emotion, much like Henry and Otis in Henry. However, they eventually
breed and give birth to Melania’s progeny, who may be destined to take control
of the corpse-man’s empire.
Audiences watch as Melania climbs the social and political
ladder, gaining closer access to the nexus of power. What is most frightening about
Melania’s will to power is her utter disregard for other’s feelings or
emotions. It is truly the banality of evil. Audiences watch as Melania picks
out gold fixtures for a bathroom while children are placed in cages, implicitly
awaiting their eventual slaughter and used as food for Melania and her progeny.
Melania decorates her home in a bizarre and disturbing style while American
families go hungry, with no government access to food stamps or other methods
of aid. Melania selects outfits from a vast wardrobe of high-end fashion designers
while American citizens are gunned down in cold-blood by her corpse-groom’s
hired henchman. What is most terrifying is that as Melania continues to climb towards
power, more violence, bloodshed, cruelty and terror erupt like a gaping wound
across the land. She remains silent throughout all of this, only using her new
access for her own benefit, and not recognizing the suffering of the people—women,
children, and men. Audiences are left to speculate whether she chooses to
ignore the violence and bloodshed or whether she revels in it, taking more and
more while others give. It’s this kind of ambiguity that makes the film so
terrifying and leaves audiences assured that she really doesn’t care, but it
leaves us wondering whether we do. Melania has many elements and markers
of the great horror films of the last 30 years, but what makes Melania
truly terrifying isn’t the blood, violence, or threats of alien invasions; it’s
the complete indifference to humanity, the callousness towards suffering and
violence, and the complete sociopathy. Melania is a fascinating and
terrifying character study and allegory of how far certain creatures will go to
access power, and how they won’t allow anything to stand in their way.
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