PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Every time I cover the Fantasia International Film Festival, I know I’m going to find some hidden gems, instant classics, and all-around amazing genre programming, and 2026, which is Fantasia’s 30th year, has come through in spades.
One of my absolute favorites from this year’s festival is Corrin Evans’ (MaXXXine) Corpus, which was written by Corrin and producer/star Lily Cowles (Roswell, New Mexico), and stars Jeff Wahlberg (Euphoria) and Brodie Townsend (Heartbreak High). A chilling body horror boundary-pushing film, Corpus exceeded all expectations.
It’s the summer of 1998 in New York City; Sayo (Jeff Wahlberg), a soulful nightlife photographer and small-time drug dealer, is invited to a party upstate by his long-time friend and unrequited love, a movie star on the rise: Vince Marlowe (Brodie Townsend). Together with their rowdy friend Ross (Michael Vlamis), they drive to a remote, bucolic manor in hopes of some summer debauchery. But when they arrive, they discover that the promise of a party is actually three mysterious women – Billie (Lily Cowles), Wren (Nuha Jes Izman), and Cata (Ching Valdes-Aran) – whose disturbing agenda draws the boys into a dark web of seduction and terror
To celebrate the film’s premiere at the festival, I chatted with producer/writer/director Corrin, and producer/writer/star Lily about developing the film, crafting the dinner scene, intimacy coordination, and more!
PopHorror: I’m really excited to speak with you both! I loved Corpus and can’t wait to hear more about it.
Lily Cowles: Excellent!
PopHorror: Corpus is the first feature from your new production company, Lily.
Lily Cowles: That’s right!
PopHorror: It’s premiering at Fantasia but it’s also been picked up by Yellow Veil Pictures, which is amazing. How does that feel?
Lily Cowles: Tiffany, it’s totally surreal and yet when I reflect back on it, I’m like there was no other way for it to happen. Very early on as Corrin and I were writing this, we just had such a deep sense that we wanted to make it on our own terms and this was the first feature film for both of us. It was the first feature film I ever wrote, first feature film that Corrin directed even though she’s been directing for decades. She’s an incredible director, but we both had such a deep sense and it was kind of a vow that we made very early on, like let’s go back to back and let’s get this made on our own terms. It was kind of a necessity as a mother of invention moment and I did not foresee myself opening a production company. That was not on my bingo card and yet that’s what happened in order for us to make it in the way that we wanted to make it and I’m so proud how it turned out. It’s a little bit “pinch me.” I feel like I’m having to catch up to the acceleration into a part of my career that I didn’t see coming quite so fast, but it feels really good.
PopHorror: I love that.
Lily Cowles: Same.
PopHorror: Corrin, you’ve spent years as an intimacy coordinator, which I think is fascinating, navigating safety and consent while choreographing these scenes. How did your unique background shape your approach to directing a film as raw and effortlessly sexy as Corpus?
Corrin Evans: Thank you, first of all. That’s very sweet of you. The funny thing with me and coordination work, intimacy coordination, is I got into intimacy coordination because I was already directing work and performing work that was very sexy and sex-focused. I think for me as an artist and a maker, I’m involved in a lot of things that are adjacent to sexuality and dealing with sexuality and material around that. Coordination came into my life because I needed money and I saw an opening in something I was already good at and interested in so I kind of already went into coordination with that skillset in terms of working with sexuality and portraying that on screen. I think working in coordination helped me to understand how to work with a coordinator and how to also create space for that coordinator to work in the way that they should be able to work. I was happy to do that with Chelsea [Pace] because a lot of directors don’t understand how to work with coordinators, so I think that was a big thing I was able to provide for Chelsea and give her my intimacy coordinator on Corpus and give her the space to do that. Obviously, all of my years doing both coordination and also working with intimate content, I’m just extremely comfortable in that space and I understand how to communicate what I’m looking for and then also create space for the actors to contribute the way that they want to express themselves. Coordination just was by way of already being involved in sexy shit.
PopHorror: That’s so interesting! Lily, you not only co-wrote and produced Corpus, but you also starred in it. Billie is dangerously magnetic. How much fun was it finding that sweet spot where she is equally horrifying and hypnotic?
Lily Cowles: Oh, wow, thank you for saying that. People are just starting to see the film, so I love to think of Billie as being magnetic and hypnotic. It was amazing. It’s funny because I wrote the film so I wrote the part, so I knew what I had written, but there was a strange separation between my writer brain and as it turned out, my producer brain, and then my actor brain. These three things, although they all came from inside of my body, I was always in touch with Billie, but it wasn’t really until I would say two weeks before production that something started to really shift because I suddenly went into producer mode and I was in a full sprint trying to get this film financed and getting it across the line so we could start shooting. It was from March until July and I was just full sprint. I was like, I guess I’m acting this but it was not even in my mind. I remember it was maybe about two weeks out from production when I felt like, okay we have enough momentum, the rocket is taking off into space, I have to take my hands off the wheel now and just know that everyone else is doing the jobs that they need to be doing and remember that I’m an actor in this film, and remember that at some point we had decided… We had talked about some special effects that have to go on and there was a moment when Corrin and I were like, “How does this work?” and I was like, “Well, she can’t be like wearing pajamas! That’s dumb. She obviously has to be naked.”
Corrin Evans: Be nude!
Lily Cowles: In the next moment I’m like, “Oh, that’s me, right? That’s me. Eh, well, what are you going to do?” It did kind of catch me off guard. I was a little bit like, oh my gosh, there’s this flesh and blood character that actually has an enormous amount of depth and I guess she’d been like a seed that had been slowly growing inside of me. But truly, Tiffany, it was like two weeks out when I suddenly was like, I need to look square in the face at Billie and really figure out what’s happening in Billie’s body and how to honor that story because it was heavy. There were some big shifts that happened in those two weeks from then until production. I was like, oh, that’s the character, wow, okay! I kind of had a scent of her on the wind but then I finally found her and was like, damn, oh that’s heavy. But I’m so glad that you find Billie to be both dangerous and magnetic. To answer your question, I think I was just trying to honor an emotional position of this character and what a complex, textured character to get to play. I’m glad that you feel that she was those things.
PopHorror: I love that it’s body horror because that is my number one thing, but the scene that disturbed me and made me the most uncomfortable was the dinner scene.
Lily Cowles: Oh!
PopHorror: It is brilliantly deeply uncomfortable. What did your collaboration process look like and how did the cast react to it?
Corrin Evans: I think the dinner scene was an interesting scene to put together because there was a lot of technical aspects to that scene, so when I think about that scene, I think a lot about just all the things that had to be happening with the camera, with the chicken, with the way that it was all orchestrated, all six of them having to eat throughout the scene and the way that we were capturing the scene. The actors didn’t have a lot of time, so I think they all got one, maybe a couple of them got two takes each on their closeup but beyond that it was the wides and the moving dolly, which both captured closeups of them and the wides. Our whole shoot, because we had so many big technical things that we were trying to achieve, there wasn’t a lot of on-camera time so there was a lot of rehearsing, talking about it, and then the actors just delivering these amazing, amazing performances in the moment and trusting each other. I know Lily and Nuha who plays Wren had talked a lot about their characters’ dynamics and we had all talked about it as a group. There was just a lot of preparation, both with me and the cast and then them together that informed those performances and the way those scenes come off because really, we didn’t have that many takes.
Lily Cowles: I will say I think that was the one scene where we actually had a rehearsal day where the full cast rehearsed that.
Corrin Evans: We did, yeah.
Lily Cowles: That was one that we did. That was a tricky scene, Tiffany. We rewrote that scene a lot. That was a scene we were like, how do you find that scene and what is going on? We knew the emotional tone of it, we didn’t quite know how to get there for a while, and now it’s like one of the best scenes. But what I’ll say about working with Corrin that’s amazing, as an actor when you don’t have a lot of takes as often on indie films, you’re trying to go go go. I’ve worked with Corrin a number of times. She’s the best! She’s the best for an actor to work with because she has such an innate ear for tone. I trusted her implicitly to keep us all in the pocket. You know if you’re out of the pocket she’ll let you know, but in general I think that trust knowing that you can let go, like I’m going to try something and really trust in your director because it’s not always the case. And if you’re out of the pocket very gently, it’s really effective to get back in. She’s really good at bringing us back in. I remember that night, Nuha’s performance, she stands up-
Corrin Evans: Amazing, amazing!
Lily Cowles: And delivered that Latin. When they cut, the entire crew burst into applause. Everyone was like, what the fuck?! Finger to the source, she was like channeling. It was a fun scene. It was hot. All those candles, it was hot.
Corrin Evans: And drinking the wine, people weren’t feeling good because they had to keep drinking the grape juice.
Thank you so much to Corrin and Lily for taking the time to chat with us! Corpus had its world premiere on July 26, 2026, as part of the Cheval Noir Competition and is currently playing the festival circuit so stay tuned for more information!
