The Queen

Cutter (The Troop) offers a heartfelt yet horrific coming-of-age tale, starting with nascent visceral descriptions that eventually emerge, fully fledged, into a monstrously beautiful body horror. A month after her best friend Charity disappears, Margaret finds a new iPhone on her front porch with a text from her missing friend. Charity offers to tell Margaret what happened the harrowing day she disappeared, a day that ended in death and horror. Soon, Margaret discovers she never knew what lurked within her best friend. Mean Girls spliced with The Fly may sound like an odd pitch, but Cutter delivers, injecting this premise with blood-soaked horror, nerve-shredding suspense, and heartrending emotion, along with some examples of teen (and general human) cruelty. A stellar voice cast including Ariel Blake, Zac Aleman, Corey Brill, and Pete Simonelli covers the evolution and subsequent mutation of the teen girls’ friendship. Blake is a standout, perfectly portraying Margaret, the only terrified witness to the crawling evil that consumes her and her small town.