The United Kingdom may be thousands of miles away from us here at TrulyDisturbing, but when it comes to horror, the Brits have certainly earned their place at the table. British filmmakers have given the genre some of its most memorable nightmares, and every so often a new film comes along that reminds us just how effectively they can get under our skin. Crushed looks ready to continue that tradition.
Directed by Simon Rumley, the filmmaker behind Red White & Blue and The Living and the Dead, Crushed is a dark thriller centered on a man whose faith is pushed into territory he could never have imagined. The film stars Steve Oram, best known for Sightseers, The End of the F**ing World* and DI Ray, as Daniel, a British vicar living with his wife and young daughter in the suburbs of Bangkok.
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR “CRUSHED” BELOW
OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: Daniel and his family appear to have built a quiet life together, but that sense of security begins to collapse after their 10-year-old daughter Olivia encounters a disturbing animal cruelty video. What follows leads to Olivia being abducted and sends Daniel and his wife, May, into an increasingly desperate search to bring their daughter home.
For Daniel, the nightmare isn’t simply about finding Olivia. As the search exposes him to the darkest corners of human depravity, the vicar is forced to confront a brutal question about the principles he has spent his life preaching. Can faith survive when confronted with an evil that seems impossible to forgive, or will the desire for revenge eventually overwhelm everything he believes?
Rumley expands on his 2012 short film P is for Pressure, which appeared in the horror anthology The ABCs of Death. That earlier work explored the disturbing subject of exploitation crush videos, and Crushed takes the concept into feature-length territory while examining the consequences of trauma and the complicated relationship between forgiveness, vengeance and religious faith.
WATCH “P IS FOR PRESSURE” BELOW
The film was shot entirely in Thailand, giving the story a setting far removed from the United Kingdom while maintaining its focus on deeply unsettling contemporary issues. Alongside its fictional story, Crushed also aims to draw attention to the realities surrounding child trafficking and animal cruelty.
Oram leads the cast as a father pushed beyond the boundaries of his own convictions, with May Nattaporn Rawddon portraying his wife May and Margaux Dietrich playing their daughter Olivia. The film marks another unsettling entry in Rumley’s body of work, with the filmmaker turning his attention toward some particularly uncomfortable aspects of human behavior.
Crushed will make its UK digital debut on Oct. 5, 2026, courtesy of GrimmVision. While the film may be arriving from across the pond, its subject matter is universal in the most disturbing sense of the word. Sometimes the scariest stories aren’t about things that go bump in the night. They’re about discovering just how far a human being can be pushed when everything they love is taken away.