Sony picks up Mouthwashing for film, Karyn Kusama to direct

Sony Pictures has acquired the feature film rights to the horror game Mouthwashing, with Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) attached to direct, announced Thursday, October 29.¹² The game comes from Wrong Organ, a Stockholm-based indie studio, and launched on PC in 2024.³ Darlings, a spotlight has swung across the room and landed on a very strange little spaceship.

The creative lineup is a horror-lover’s guest list. Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay, who wrote The Invitation, are writing the script, and Scott Derrickson, the filmmaker behind The Black Phone and Sinister, is producing through his Crooked Highway banner with C. Robert Cargill and Vince Cheng.²³ Crooked Highway has a producing deal with Sony for Screen Gems.² Kusama, Manfredi and Hay previously worked together on The Invitation and Destroyer.²

The game itself follows five crew members stranded aboard the space freighter Tulpar after it crash lands on an asteroid.² Dwindling supplies, isolation and paranoia pry open the cracks between them.² Publisher Critical Reflex put it out, and it now plays on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, plus Game Pass on console and PC, with the console launch landing the same day as the film news.²¹

What sets it apart is the telling. It is a first-person psychological horror game that pairs surreal imagery with a nonlinear narrative about responsibility, denial and the consequences of unchecked power.² IGN’s reviewer praised the PS1-esque look, in which characters are recognizably human but just off enough to unsettle, and the time-hopping structure that never lost the thread.⁴ Engadget notes it leans less on jump scares than on heavy themes and odd imagery, which makes it an intriguing pick for the screen.¹ I’d add that a story built on fractured timelines and ugly human behavior is exactly the sort of thing a filmmaker with Kusama’s taste for dread could chew on.

The numbers back up the buzz. The game earned an 88 on Metacritic, won Best Narrative and Players’ Choice at the Horror Game Awards, and took Best Hidden Gem at the New York Game Awards.²³ It has sold close to one million units, and content about it has drawn 63 million YouTube views and nearly one billion on TikTok.²³ IGN gave the game a 9 out of 10.⁵

As for timing, there is little to report. The film has no release date and no cast has been announced.¹⁵ The story is also under wraps, so how closely it will follow the game is unknown.³ IGN notes that some characters were directly inspired by real-life actors, such as Shelley Duvall, so casting will be fun to watch.⁵

Wrong Organ, meanwhile, is working on Carcass Clad, a co-op tank horror game.³

Our read: A Stockholm indie game that found its audience on PC and then through clips online now has a studio, a director and writers with real horror credits attached. That is a big night for Wrong Organ. Whether Sony hopes to echo its Resident Evil success is my guess, not something the sources say, but the timing is hard to ignore.¹ What to watch next: a cast, a release date and any word on how faithful the film plans to be.

Footnotes

1. Engadget, “Sony is working on a film adaptation of viral indie horror game Mouthwashing”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. The Hollywood Reporter, “‘Mouthwashing’ Video Game Adaptation in the Works From Scott Derrickson, Karyn Kusama (Exclusive)”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

3. Deadline, “Sony Takes Rights To ‘Mouthwashing’ Videogame; Karyn Kusama Directing With Crooked Highway Producing”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. IGN, “Mouthwashing Review”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩

5. IGN, “Hit Indie Horror Game Mouthwashing is Getting a Live-Action Movie From the Director of Jennifer’s Body”. Retrieved October 29, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³