There seems to be a lot going on in Sợi Chỉ Đỏ – a serial killer, a girl who can see the dead, a paranormal podcaster, a mysterious red thread and a man who suddenly discovers a third eye growing on his forehead, where Hàm Trần has deliberately thrown all those pieces into the same box and started shaking it.
The Vietnamese horror film was scheduled to open in Vietnamese cinemas on August 14, 2026, following its earlier world premiere at the 2026 New York Asian Film Festival, but seems to have now been postponed to December 4, 2026.
A Red Thread Connection
The central mystery seems to revolve around a red thread that connects seemingly unrelated people and events, where the official synopsis gives us a particularly dark starting point – a fanatic suffers intense headaches before discovering a strange vertical eye on his forehead, and that revelation is followed by a series of murders, supernatural encounters and ghosts moving through ordinary life.
The fuller international logline gives the film a clearer shape though – a podcaster investigating ghost stories crosses paths with a young girl who is cursed to see the dead and a killer who believes he is collecting souls for Hell, where the ancient red thread connecting them begins to tighten, dragging all three towards damnation.
The film appears to be playing with several different kinds of horror at once too – body horror, psychological horror, serial-killer thriller and Vietnamese spiritual horror, and IMDb currently categorises it across body horror, psychological horror and horror, which feels pretty accurate from the material released so far.
Trailer
Hàm Trần Returns to Horror
Director Hàm Trần (Ham Tran) isn’t exactly new to this territory, because he has been working in Vietnamese and international cinema for more than two decades and has previously had two films screen at the Sundance Film Festival, and his recent work includes the horror series Tiệm Ăn Của Quỷ, while his 2025 action film Tử Chiến Trên Không became a major Vietnamese box-office success, earning close to 252 billion VND – Tiệm Ăn Của Quỷ is particularly relevant because Sợi Chỉ Đỏ reunites Hàm Trần with members of that creative team.
The cast of the film includes Đoàn Minh Anh, Quang Tuấn, Ba Tây, Loube Nguyễn, Trần Nghĩa, Cao Thùy Linh, Gia Tuệ, Ngọc Phước and Thư Nguyễn, according to Vietnamese cinema listings.
Sợi Chỉ Đỏ translates as Red Thread, and the marketing also repeatedly connects the film with spirituality, ghosts, karma and the idea of unseen connections between people, where Vietnamese cinema listings categorise it not only as horror but, in some cases, explicitly as spiritual horror, and the podcaster angle reminds me a but of Undertone.
Sợi Chỉ Đỏ isn’t solely being positioned as a domestic Vietnamese genre release either, as EAST Films’ international sales material identifies the film as a Vietnam/Singapore/Philippines/Taiwan production, with EAST Films attached and Nelson Mok handling sales – Vietnamese reports also identify Kontribute Studio as handling production, post-production and visual effects, while EAST Films is involved in the project’s international ambitions.
The film also had its world premiere came at the 25th New York Asian Film Festival on July 24, 2026, where the festival placed Red Thread within its special Country in Focus: Vietnam programme.
The thing I’m most curious about though with Sợi Chỉ Đỏ is whether all these ideas actually fit together, as on paper, you’ve got serial murder + ghosts + a supernatural child + paranormal podcasting + body horror + a third eye + spiritual symbolism + an invisible red connection between characters, which could become gloriously deranged, but it could also become one of those horror films where the director has about seven films’ worth of ideas and tries to cram them into 100 minutes.
We shall see.
Check out some more Vietnamese horror movies.
Leave a Reply