--- title: "Electra" year: 2025 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/electra-2025" fi1m_id: "electra-2025" imdb_id: "tt22375408" tmdb_id: 1029555 wikidata_id: "Q133573214" fi1m_score: 56 critics_reviews: 1 published: "2026-10-12T20:10:16.906859+00:00" updated: "2026-10-12T20:10:17.539050+00:00" region: "IS" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Electra (2025) Directed by Hala Matar · 1h 25m · Drama, Thriller ## Identity Electra - **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/electra-2025 - **Type:** Film - **Fi1m ID:** electra-2025 - **IMDb ID:** tt22375408 - **TMDB ID:** 1029555 - **Wikidata ID:** Q133573214 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22375408/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1029555, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133573214 **Fi1m score: 56** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Four beautiful people in a villa, and the only thing anyone steals is the afternoon > Hala Matar’s 85-minute con game has a handsome house, a sharp cast and a script that keeps promising a sting it never quite delivers. Maria Bakalova is reason enough to stay for a drink; the plot is not reason enough to stay for dinner. ## Synopsis A journalist, Dylan (Daryl Wein), arrives with his girlfriend Lucy (Abigail Cowen) at the villa of Milo (Jack Farthing), a rock star who has agreed to an interview and expects to be flattered. Also in the house is Francesca (Maria Bakalova), Milo’s companion, who is watching the visitors more closely than either of them realises. The interview is a pretext. Dylan and Lucy have come for something in the house, and the first act is spent with the four of them at the table, by the pool and in the long corridors, drinking, flirting and testing one another while the guests work out how to get what they came for and the hosts work out what their guests are. The film runs 85 minutes and everything that matters happens within the villa’s walls. ## Review Hala Matar’s *Electra* belongs to a small and agreeable genre: the house-guest thriller, in which strangers arrive somewhere grand and sunlit and spend the running time deciding how badly to behave. A journalist, Dylan, and his girlfriend Lucy turn up to interview a rock star, Milo, at his villa, and it is quickly clear that the interview is cover for something else. Matar, who wrote the script with Daryl Wein and Paul Sado, has the right ingredients and the right length. What she does not have is a second act that builds on the first. The cast is the film’s best argument. Maria Bakalova plays Francesca, the woman of the house, with a stillness that reads as boredom until you notice how much she is taking in, and she gets the film’s only properly good lines, delivered as if she were slightly embarrassed to be the cleverest person at the table. Jack Farthing’s Milo is a faded star who talks about himself in the past tense and expects to be interrupted with praise. Farthing is funny about this without tipping into caricature, and the scenes where Bakalova and Farthing circle each other have a tension the rest of the film borrows from. Wein, who also wrote the screenplay, plays Dylan as the sort of man who is sure he is the cleverest person present and has never once been right. It is a brave thing to write yourself and then play, and he does it with some honesty. Abigail Cowen’s Lucy has the harder job, because the script cannot decide whether she is Dylan’s accomplice, his conscience or his victim, and Cowen plays all three in turn, well enough that we wished the writers had picked one. Michael Alden Lloyd shoots the villa with warm, soft light through tall windows and a pool that looks cold even at noon, and he keeps the camera close enough to faces that the house never becomes a travelogue. Alessandro Cicoria’s production design gives Milo’s rooms the look of money spent a long time ago and not since: good furniture, dusty, a few things on the walls that the visitors keep glancing at. Ali Helnwein’s score is sparse, a few plucked strings and a low hum under the dinners, and it is better the less of it there is. Matt Berardi and Spencer Rollins cut the first half hour with an easy rhythm that lets scenes breathe; the back half is cut more nervously, as if the editors knew something was missing and were trying to hurry past it. Something is missing. A con film owes us a con, and *Electra* keeps deferring its own. Scenes of drink and flirtation that were charming at the twenty-minute mark are still going at the fifty, and the thing the guests came for recedes rather than approaches. We found ourselves, around an hour in, doing what the characters should have been doing: working out the plan, because the film had not. It is a particular kind of disappointment, watching good actors wait for a script to give them a move, and we felt it as impatience first and then as a mild sense of having been had, which is presumably not the sense the film wanted us to have. The second half takes a turn we will not describe, and the turn is better than the road to it. There is one scene late on between Bakalova and Cowen, two women who have been talked over all evening finally talking to each other, that is quiet and sharp and shows what the film might have been. It lasts a few minutes. Then the plot remembers it has to end and does so briskly. Against the genre’s best, *La Piscine* or *The Talented Mr Ripley*, this is thin stuff; those films knew that the house is only ever the setting and that wanting is the story. Matar has the house and the wanting and has not yet learned how to make one press on the other. At 85 minutes it does not outstay its welcome, and with a glass of something in hand and low expectations it passes pleasantly. Watch it for Bakalova. She is the only person in the villa who seems to know what she is there for. *Fi1m score 56, published 12 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is Electra worth watching?** *Electra* is a mixed recommendation at best, and we scored it 56: a handsome 85-minute con thriller with a sharp cast and a script that keeps promising a sting it never quite delivers. Maria Bakalova is reason enough to watch if you have a glass in hand and low expectations. Anyone wanting an actual con, with a plan that builds, will be left waiting. **How long is Electra, and what is it rated?** *Electra* runs 1h 25m. It is a drama and thriller film. **Where can I watch Electra in Iceland?** *Electra* is not on any streaming or rental service in Iceland at the moment. It is available in 7 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is Electra, and is it suitable for children?** *Electra* carries no certificate in the UK or the US, so there is no official guide, and nothing in it suggests anything frightening. What the film contains is adults drinking, flirting and plotting round a villa, and a late turn we will not describe. It is not for children, less because of what it shows than because they would find an afternoon of grown-ups talking at a table very dull. **What should I watch after Electra?** After *Electra*, try [*The Talented Mr Ripley*](https://film.one/film/the-talented-mr-ripley) (1999, Fi1m 80): The outsider who wants the rich friend’s life, and takes it. Then [*Performance*](https://film.one/film/performance) (1970, Fi1m 81): Jagger as the retired star whose house swallows a visitor whole; and [*The Servant*](https://film.one/film/the-servant) (1963, Fi1m 89): Losey’s house where the power changes hands one room at a time. ### Reviews we read (1) - **The New York Times** (64/100, inferred): The page is inaccessible, so the critic’s verdict cannot be determined. I cannot verify what the review singles out for praise or complaint. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/movies/electra-review.html) ## Details - **Director:** Hala Matar - **Director:** Hala Matar - **Screenplay:** Paul Sado, Hala Matar, Daryl Wein - **Cinematography:** Michael Alden Lloyd - **Editor:** Matt Berardi, Spencer Rollins - **Music:** Ali Helnwein - **Production design:** Alessandro Cicoria - **Producer:** Jordan Beckerman, Luca Cottafavi, Jordan Yale Levine - **Cast:** Maria Bakalova as Francesca; Jack Farthing as Milo; Daryl Wein as Dylan; Abigail Cowen as Lucy - **Runtime:** 1h 25m - **First release (the US):** 9 February 2024 - **Genres:** Drama, Thriller - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsc1m4Gbkx8 ## Where to watch in Iceland Not streaming, renting or buying in Iceland at the last check. Also available in: BE, CA, CL, CO, MX, NL, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *La Piscine* (1969): Delon, Schneider and a pool; the villa thriller done with real menace. - *The Talented Mr Ripley* (1999), Fi1m 80: The outsider who wants the rich friend’s life, and takes it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-talented-mr-ripley.md) - *A Bigger Splash* (2015): A rock star, an island house, and guests who should have left. - *Performance* (1970), Fi1m 81: Jagger as the retired star whose house swallows a visitor whole. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/performance.md) - *The Servant* (1963), Fi1m 89: Losey’s house where the power changes hands one room at a time. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-servant.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/electra-2025