horror-obsessive
Nick Kozakis keeps saying Kick On hits like John Wick cracked out on meth, and once the mobster’s son starts working through the four friends trapped in his apartment, that is not marketing talk. It is a mission statement. What Kozakis has actually built, though, is a home-invasion siege picture with a body count and a bloodstream: the kind of movie horror fans have been claiming as their own for decades even when the credits say “thriller.”
That claim matters here. Kick On is the first produced feature from Fableist, the production banner run by Stephanie Troost and Simon Bell, and the sophomore feature from Kozakis, whose debut, Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism, was straight supernatural horror before it was picked up out of the festival circuit. Watching him pivot from a haunted rural exorcism story to a secular, blood-soaked siege thriller says something about where Australian genre filmmaking goes once a director has one hit behind him: further into the body, less into the beyond.
A Stunt Philosophy Built for Horror Fans
Per Kozakis’s own press notes, the goal was that “wired, sweat-soaked, out of control energy,” achieved by leaning on real stunt performers instead of digital augmentation wherever the budget allowed. He even cast a childhood friend, now a working stunt performer, as the doorman standing between Eden’s group and the exit. That is not a trivia footnote. Horror has always known a body absorbing real impact reads differently than one animated to absorb it, and a siege thriller committed to practical carnage speaks the same visual language as the slasher and torture cycles that built Fantastic Fest’s midnight reputation.
The Genre Kick On Actually Belongs To
“That wired, sweat-soaked, out of control energy” is how Kozakis has described the sensation he was chasing.
Strip away the crime-boss framing and Kick On‘s premise, four people trapped inside an apartment by an unstable host who controls every exit, is a home-invasion setup any horror programmer would recognize. It sits closer to Ready or Not or You’re Next than to a straight crime thriller, using genre’s oldest trick: a location the characters cannot leave, and a host whose hospitality is the threat. Eden’s arc, weighed down by a dying sister and the financial strain that pushed her into Ray’s apartment, gives the siege a reason to matter beyond the kill count, even if the film spends more time on the exits than on her.
The detail that stuck with me watching the coverage build out of Toronto and into Fantastic Fest: Kozakis did not hide his stuntman doorman in a mask or a crowd shot, he put him at the one exit the whole film revolves around, which means the most dangerous person in the room is also the most visibly, physically real one. That is a smarter design choice than most siege thrillers bother making, because it means the geography of the threat is never in doubt.
Kick On has already sold. Blue Finch Films took worldwide sales rights out of Toronto, with Umbrella Entertainment handling Australia and New Zealand, and Kozakis has since signed with CAA off the premiere. None of that guarantees the film lands with horror audiences the way Godless did with genre distributors. But a siege thriller this committed to practical violence, from a director who already has one foot in supernatural horror, is exactly the kind of title that ends up reclassified as horror the moment it reaches a wider audience. Fantastic Fest crowds are usually the first to make that call.
Quick Takes
- Kick On is the sophomore feature from director Nick Kozakis, following the supernatural horror film Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism.
- The film had its world premiere in Toronto’s Midnight Madness program before screening at Fantastic Fest 2026.
- Markella Kavenagh and Nikolai Nikolaeff lead a cast trapped inside a Melbourne apartment controlled by a volatile crime boss’s son.
- Blue Finch Films holds worldwide sales rights excluding Australia and New Zealand, where Umbrella Entertainment handles distribution.
- Kozakis has signed with CAA following the film’s festival premiere.
