Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is a multi-award-winning Australian film critic and the author of eleven books on cult, horror, and exploitation cinema, including the book “1000 Women in Horror,” which was adapted to a feature documentary for Shudder in 2026. In 2024, she appeared in Alexandre O. Philippe’s “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” legacy documentary “Chain Reactions” alongside Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, Karyn Kusama, and Takashi Miike, which won the Venice Classics Award for Best Documentary on Cinema at the Venice Film Festival.
“It’s like if ‘Obsession’ was from the perspective of the woman actually being obsessed over.”
Related Stories
I have just left an advance screening of Michael Schwarz’s new horror film “The Only One” with my teenage son, and the conversation is taking a surprising turn than what I perhaps expected. “Why is it the woman’s problem if men are weird about them? Why is it her job to help them figure it out?”
I’ve written a bunch of books of cult, horror, and exploitation film criticism, including monographs on rape-revenge cinema (yikes!) and “1000 Women in Horror,” my 2020 book which was adapted into a documentary for the horror streaming service Shudder in 2025, directed by Canadian filmmaker Donna Davies. I love going to horror movies with my kid because I get to experience them through different eyes to my own. But I am always a little self-conscious that our post-movie discourse leaves me sounding a little preachy, a little didactic, and, well, a little… parental.
But this kid clearly does not need spoon-feeding and is fully equipped to figure things out by himself. Unlike most of the horror movies we see together, this screening is unusual because I am here largely in a civilian capacity. We weren’t here for the rigorous social analysis of contemporary horror, but rather for largely personal reasons: one of my oldest friends, Martyn Pedler, co-wrote the film with Marek Polgar.
Martyn and I moved to the south-eastern Australian city of Melbourne over thirty years ago from the nation’s tiny and exceedingly dull capital, Canberra. Gender politics aside, “The Only One” most immediately spoke to me of that palpable anxiety from being an adult returning home to the small town you outgrew. It’s “Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael” with a body count.
“The Only One” begins in Los Angeles, where Zoe (Mel Jarnson) is working as a barista to pay the rent when her dreams of superstardom remain acutely unfulfilled. Begrudgingly returning home to the small town she left with big dreams and a string of broken hearts trailing behind her, with the help of her best friend and the town’s token goth (Saphira Moran) — there’s always one — the two women face the growing realization that someone is killing off Zoe’s many exes, one by one. Dressed as a classically cartoonish Prince Charming no less, the killer slash-and-dices his way through a list of everyone Zoe dated at high school. In doing so, an array of future possible victims return to Zoe’s life – some for better, and some for worse.
Based on this brief synopsis alone, that some of these exes (most notably the truly repugnant local cop, played by Ben O’Toole) default to slut-shaming Zoe is as depressing as it is seemingly inevitable. Refreshingly, however, the film is unambiguous: this is creepy and wrong, a reflection of his flawed character, not hers.
While “The Only One” was in production long before Curry Barker’s “Obsession” was even released, it thus provides a flip side to the same conversation about gender, agency, and that age-old question: “Why are so many men just so damned weird about women who aren’t interested in them?”
While “The Only One” might have inadvertently stumbled into the same discursive terrain as one of the biggest surprise horror hits of recent years, its heritage can be traced back much earlier. From romance-themed horror films like George Mihalka’s “My Bloody Valentine” (1981) and the long-tail of gothic romantic literature from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (1897) to Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” novels, this century alone has seen a boom of horror-romances in the indie film space especially, with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s “Spring” (2014) and Jeremy Gardner and Christian Stella’s “After Midnight” (2019) surely at the top of the list.
When it comes to Australian horror, we punch well above our weight on this front. In 2025, Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks had a commercial and critical hit on his hands with the wholly singular body horror film “Together” with Dave Franco and Alison Brie. And sixteen years earlier, national horror hero Sean Byrne won hearts and minds at genre fests around the world with his deliciously twisted heartsick-aspiring-prom-queen-run-amok cult classic, “The Loved Ones.”
But “The Only One” continues the legacy of one film in particular. While the boom period of late ‘90s/early ‘00s teen slashers are linked most immediately to multiplex blockbusters like the “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchises, in an admittedly uncharacteristic display of patriotism my favorite deep cuts were made by Australian filmmakers: Geoffrey Wright’s “Cherry Falls” (1999) and Jamie Blanks’ “Urban Legend” (1998).
If “The Only One” has one true ancestor, however, it is Blanks’ latter slasher film “Valentine” (2001) with “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star David Boreanaz. Both films are drenched with perverse subversions of romantic iconography to gleefully playful effect, right down to their respective Cupid and Prince Charming killer masks which look like they could have been crafted by the same person.
And while “The Only One” pulls no punches when it comes to being wholly Team Zoe as she contends with a steady stream of creepy, obsessive guys, the famously ambiguous ending of Blanks’ “Valentine” refuses to grant us with the neat happily ever after we initially think we might be getting.
“Valentine” and “The Only One” were made by different filmmakers at different times, but with Blanks’ unexpected death in March this year at only 54 years old, Schwarz’s film feels like an accidental homage to one of the best horror filmmakers this country has ever produced.
That younger audiences can readily identify how “The Only One” taps into the same ideas as “Obsession” underscores how the film is much more than the retro pastiche its early ’00s horror vibes might at first suggest. But at the same time, “The Only One” is very much a film that continues a successful tradition of Australian romance-themed horror, wearing its heart on its sleeve for the genre classics that came before it.
“The Only One” world premiered at MONSTER Fest and will have its international premiere at the 2026 SOHO Horror Film Festival in the UK next month.