Close to a million copies sold, an 88 Metacritic score, and almost a billion TikTok views: the numbers explain why Hollywood came calling for Mouthwashing. Sony Pictures has acquired the film rights to the Swedish indie horror phenomenon, with Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama attached to direct a live-action adaptation for the studio’s Screen Gems label.
The announcement, confirmed on 29 October by developer Wrong Organ and Screen Gems, ends more than two weeks of speculation that began with a scooped report on 16 October. For a game that started life as a scrappy first-person horror project from a small Stockholm studio, a full-length feature film is a remarkable destination — and a sign of just how loudly the Mouthwashing story travelled.
“I’m going to fix everything. We’re going to make it.”
Who Is Behind the Camera?
Kusama arrives with a formidable horror-and-drama CV. Her debut Girlfight won both Best Director and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; The Invitation became a modern chamber-piece classic; Jennifer’s Body has enjoyed a long second life as a cult favourite; and her work on Yellowjackets earned two Primetime Emmy nominations.
She is reuniting with her frequent writing partners Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay — collaborators on The Invitation, Destroyer and the Ride Along films — who will pen the screenplay. Producing through their Crooked Highway banner, which holds a deal at Screen Gems, are Scott Derrickson, the Doctor Strange and The Black Phone director, alongside C. Robert Cargill and Vince Cheng. It is, on paper, close to a dream team for psychological dread: Crooked Highway is the outfit behind Sinister and The Black Phone, two of the sharpest studio horror hits of the past fifteen years.
What Happens Aboard the Tulpar
The film’s storyline is officially under wraps, but anyone who played the 2024 release knows exactly what Sony has bought. Mouthwashing follows five crew members aboard the Tulpar, a freight ship operated by the Pony Express shipping company. When the vessel goes catastrophically off course, the crew are left stranded with dwindling supplies, fighting starvation, isolation, paranoia and hallucinations — and, eventually, each other.
Key point: The game pairs its survival premise with a nonlinear narrative and surreal imagery, exploring responsibility, denial and the consequences of unchecked power. It won Best Narrative and Players’ Choice at the Horror Game Awards, plus Best Hidden Gem at the New York Game Awards.
That structure — fractured, guilt-soaked, unreliable — is precisely the kind of material Kusama handled so well in The Invitation. Casting has yet to be announced, though fans have noted that several characters were inspired by real actors, Shelley Duvall among them.
There has never been a better moment to catch up before the cameras roll. The game launched on PC in 2024 to a glowing 9/10 from IGN, reached consoles this week across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, and is heading to Game Pass. Wrong Organ, meanwhile, is already building its next project: Carcass Clad, a co-op tank horror game about escaping a war-torn city.
Horror’s Hot Streak at the Box Office
Mouthwashing joins a rapidly lengthening queue of game adaptations in serious hands. PUBG is getting a live-action series at Netflix written, directed and starring Donald Glover; Michael B. Jordan is helming a Battlefield film; Capcom’s Street Fighter movie arrived in cinemas earlier this month. And horror specifically is booming, with Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie tearing up box-office records this year.
Why This One Feels Different
Video game movies have shed their curse, but Mouthwashing is a rarer creature still: a small, strange, deeply authored horror game with a built-in audience that discovered it largely through creators rather than marketing. Nearly a billion TikTok views did what no billboard campaign could.
If Kusama keeps the claustrophobia intact and resists the urge to explain the surrealism, Screen Gems could have the horror sleeper of the decade on its hands. The Tulpar’s doomed voyage is finally headed for a cinema near you — and this time, nobody is going to make it.
