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MOUTHWASHING Horror Game Is Becoming a Movie With Karyn Kusama Directing

Sony's Screen Gems is developing a movie version of the acclaimed psychological horror game, with the director of THE INVITATION attached.

By KazooWatch Newsroom
Editor, KazooWatch

Published October 30, 2026 · 2:21 PM EDT

MOUTHWASHING, the unsettling psychological horror video game from Wrong Organ, is headed for a movie adaptation at Sony’s Screen Gems.

Reporting published October 29 identifies Karyn Kusama as the director, with Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay attached to write. Producers include Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill and Vince Cheng through Crooked Highway.

The game’s publisher, Critical Reflex, also acknowledged the project. The original game follows the crew of a stranded space freighter through a story that deliberately disrupts chronology and forces players to reconsider what they know about its characters. Its horror is rooted less in traditional monsters than in culpability, isolation and the gradual collapse of trust.

Three horizontal strips showing close-up views of a person’s eyes and upper face against a dark background, with textured overlays and wavy, smoke-like distortions at the left edges. — A fragmented triptych of close-up eye and upper-face portraits uses horizontal strips and textured distortions to create a disorienting, stylized portrait effect that emphasizes the image’s unsettling mood.

That is precisely why this adaptation is interesting.

Kusama’s work on THE INVITATION and JENNIFER’S BODY demonstrates an ability to turn intimate relationships and uncomfortable social dynamics into horror. The challenge will be translating a story that depends on a player’s shifting understanding into a feature film without losing the reason the game unsettled people in the first place.

The project remains in development. No cast, production start or theatrical release date has been announced.

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