“What it reminded me of was if they were on a road trip to hell, and the road itself was purgatory.”
STILL OHIO was an indie horror-thriller film that was released in 2026, written and directed by Kaylin Allshouse and starring Fernanda Lopez as Ana and it's basically about this college girl trying to fix her relationship who takes a road trip, but ends up stuck in a creepy time loop where every single time they pull over at this sketchy middle-of-nowhere Ohio gas station, things get way weirder and more terrifying.
Day four of GenreBlast Film Festival 2026 is here! While I haven’t been able to check out every single release this year, the films I have seen have all been diverse in quality, creativity, and overall experience.
One of the titles I was probably most interested to check out was a little film called Still Ohio for a couple of reasons. The premise felt time-loop adjacent, which of course is one of my favorite subgenres out there. Beyond that, I was reminded of something my kids once told me while we were on our own road trip through Ohio. They were under the absolute belief that if you drove through Ohio, you’d get stuck... like you wouldn’t be able to leave, and you would literally be stuck in an infinite loop. Turns out this was a huge viral thing that I’d never heard of before. I remember looking back at my kids and asking them, “What are you even talking about?” Now, here we have a literal film playing out that exact premise! My kids would be thrilled.
Instead of the film playing out like a traditional time loop, as I half-expected, Still Ohio feels much more in line with something out of The Twilight Zone. Written and directed by Kaylin Allshouse and starring Fernanda Lopez as Ana, this indie horror-thriller follows a college girl trying to fix her relationship on a road trip, only to end up stuck in a creepy spatial loop. The group runs into a gas station, and then when they leave, they drive past the same rotting deer carcass before driving right back to that exact same gas station over and over throughout the runtime. Every time they walk into the station, the building itself rots more and more. Vegetation begins to grow through the aisles, the bathrooms get dirtier, and the patrons become increasingly agitated and violent. It’s actually crazy. What it reminded me of was a road trip to hell where the road itself was purgatory. So, while the road may have been looping, the degradation was completely linear. That was a really cool touch.
Let’s not forget that, as usual with most of these GenreBlast films, the budget for Still Ohio was likely pretty low. However, they were one of the smartest filmmaking teams this year when it came to balancing their budget. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: lower-budget projects can benefit deeply from a time-loop or time-loop-adjacent structure. They really only have two or three locations to shoot at over and over again... this gas station, the dead carcass, and random stretches of road. That’s it! They redress the gas station setup continuously to make it appear as though time has passed, and it works extremely well.
The production and set design in Still Ohio were very impressive for what they were able to accomplish with so little. The performances were really strong overall, and the group’s chemistry together was consistently on point. I even liked the mystery at the heart of the film regarding one of the mirrors in the gas station and how it somehow has mystical properties of its own.
At the heart of the story, I want to say this entire thing functions as an allegory for a couple of deeper messages... like how being in the wrong relationship can cause you to make really poor decisions and spiral. I will say the ending feels as though it thinks it’s smarter than it is... and maybe it is! Maybe it’s brilliant, but the ending certainly lost me a little bit as it tied up all of the loose ends. The allegory, if that’s what it really was, could have used maybe an extra scene or two to drive everything home.
Overall, I had high hopes for this one, and for the most part, it was a good time! I don’t know if it’s too early to crown this as the best film I’ll watch at GenreBlast 2026 or not, but as of right now, it’s my favorite that I’ve seen.
Unbiased / Technical Score: 37/50 (74%)
Biased / Entertainment Score: 41/50 (82%)
Total Combined Score: 78/100 (78% or 4/5 on Letterboxd)