The film is called Looksmaxxing, a 15-minute body horror short from Dogma Studios, directed by Elan Alexander in his feature debut. He developed it over roughly three years and frames it as a dark satire on internet culture, virality, and the cost of chasing physical perfection, using horror to explore the subculture without promoting or villainizing it.
Dogma Studios is a small independent production company in Culver City, California, founded around 2021, working across film, video, and sound. They produced Looksmaxxing and handled trailer and poster work, and shot parts of the short on actual Kodak film stock. The name is a coincidence: no connection to Dogme 95, the 90s Danish movement from Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, and no connection to Kevin Smith’s 1999 comedy Dogma. Just a small indie outfit that happens to share the word.
Sunny Suljic plays Niles, a dopamine-depleted young man who joins an online forum promising a better life through rigid, pseudo-scientific “maxxing.” He spirals from the mild end (skincare, gym, mewing) into the deep end (jaw surgery, leg-lengthening, bonesmashing) and his face physically deforms as he “ascends.” You know Suljic as Atreus, the boy beside Kratos in God of War and God of War Ragnarök, and as Stevie, the lead in Jonah Hill’s Mid90s. He sat for hours of prosthetic makeup every day to play the ascended version of Niles, and early reviews are calling the performance “delightful, sad, real, raw.”
Jerry Habibi plays Bastion, described in reviews as a “nasty evil Zyzz” with “American Psycho energy.” Habibi, a first-generation Iranian-American actor who broke out in the 2023 Sundance hit The Persian Version, also served as second unit producer and shot some of the webcam and digital camera footage himself from his Dallas-Fort Worth home. The rest of the credited cast: Sally Kalei Davis as Mom, Isabella Ferregur Solis as Stacy, Callahan Teceno as Chad, with a cameo from Charlie Kirk.
The crew is small and stacked. Nick Buckwalter has a story-by credit and shot the film as cinematographer and executive producer. Doug Kerner produced. Executive producers include Zack Bia, Laura Lyte, Will Noyce, and John Terzian. The poster was designed by Nick Nguyen. Production split between Los Angeles and practical work shot in North Texas.
The 27-second teaser dropped around April 23, 2026 and went viral fast, reportedly clearing 1.4 million views and pulling immediate comparisons to The Substance. The LA premiere was April 28. The film hit digital on May 20 through looksmaxxingfilm.com, $7 in the US and $20 internationally.
“Ascending” is real slang. It means climbing the looks tier toward the top, “Chad” status. So is “mogging,” drastically out-attracting someone in a room, and “mewing,” pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth to sharpen your jaw. The vocabulary is part of how the movement pulls boys in, and the practices get genuinely dangerous from there: documented injuries, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and a pipeline into blackpill fatalism and misogyny.
Suljic addressed the framing directly on X. “This film does not promote nor villainize the looksmaxxing community or ideology. This is an exploration of today’s world through a body horror lens.”
The strangest part is what happened after. The looksmaxxing community embraced it. A pinned thread on Looksmax.org titled “they made a movie about us — OFFICIAL LOOKSMAXXING RELEASE COUNTDOWN,” started April 12 by user ascendingSOUL_19, calls the film “filmed on our forums. our routines. our ascension. mainstream finally acknowledged what we already knew.” The thread runs a countdown, racks up “Based” and “Mog” reactions by the hundreds, and sells official merch: a $29.99 hat, two $19.99 tees, and a $14.99 tote. The film itself is sold through the same pipeline.
Reception so far has been strong. IMDb has it at 8.1 out of 10 across about 19 ratings. Early reviews single out Suljic and Habibi, the practical effects, the soundtrack, and the way the film balances horror with dark comedy without mocking the people it’s about. A few viewers say it hits uncomfortably close.
