Bowels of Hell [Fantasia International Film Festival Review]

by Mike McGranaghan

Bowels of Hell is the kind of movie that makes you want to take a bath when it’s over. Or maybe scrub your body with a Brillo pad. Since that is quite obviously the filmmakers' intention, I can only call this oddball Portuguese horror flick, which screened at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, a rousing success. If it was only an exercise in fecal madness, I’d probably be quicker to write it off. The mixture of social commentary and sincere parent/child drama renders the picture a little more than that.

Malu (Martha Nowill) is a constipated event planner who has a rocky relationship with her non-binary child Genesis (Benjamín Damini). She’s also got a severe phobia of toilets due to a traumatic event from her past. The phobia is so severe that, as we fully witness in one scene, she strains to take a bowel movement in a pot. As Malu works to set up a livestream gender reveal party for a pregnant influencer, tragedy strikes inside the apartment building where they all live. The toilets begin sucking people into them, never to be seen again. Oh, believe me, there’s quite a mess left behind afterward. The mess is so bad that I kept expecting Mark Renton from Trainspotting to show up ready to dive into the commodes.

I’m going to say this bluntly: there’s a ton of shit in Bowels of Hell. Watching the film reminded me of six years ago, when Fantasia screened Troma’s #ShakespearesShitstorm, an adaptation of The Tempest with feces. Words seem insufficient to describe the sights shown here. Be advised that this is the kind of story where a woman gives birth on the toilet and has to yank on the umbilical cord to prevent her newborn from being sucked down by whatever’s lurking in the pipes. Is this sick, funny, or both? As someone who laughed at all the Jackass movies, my vote goes to “both.”

Amid the potty humor, the film delves into the fractured relationship between Malu and Genesis. Malu refuses to accept that her child is not the daughter she expected. She constantly refers to Genesis as a girl and openly deadnames them. A refusal to be accepted causes Genesis’s resentment to build. Appropriately, this subplot resolves itself in a spectacularly shit-tastic manner. Of course it does. But it’s easy to see that the writing/directing team of Gurcius Gewdner and Gustavo Vinagre are criticizing enbyphobia (bigotry against non-binary people) and transphobia, suggesting that it is a bunch of…well, you know.

Social media influencers are targeted for satire, as well. Bowels of Hell envisions a world that’s going down the toilet, both literally and figuratively. Not everyone will jibe with its scatological approach. If you can stomach it, though, the movie is sickeningly funny, surprisingly sweet, and undeniably unforgettable. It’s a rare case where you can call a picture “shitty” and have it be a compliment.