The Worm
A 13-minute Australian short that nails dark comedy through sheer commitment
The Worm is a 2026 Australian short film about a teenager named Kieran who's convinced that a telepathic worm is controlling his thoughts — and his family's patience finally snaps. That's the entire setup. No metaphor. No twist that reframes it as something else. Just a kid, a worm, and a deeply uncomfortable family intervention unfolding over 13 minutes. The film premiered at Sundance 2026 and it's exactly the kind of premise that could crater in a second if the execution isn't precise. It's precise.
What strikes me is how the film refuses to wink at you. Joe Bird, in the lead role, plays Kieran with such neurotic specificity that you feel the internal logic of the delusion even as everyone on screen — and you — know better. The comedy lives in that gap: the family's exhausted, baffled frustration on one side, Kieran's total conviction on the other. It's a high-wire act that most projects would botch. This one doesn't.
Why the cast matters more than you'd expect in a 13-minute film
Director Tom Noakes and writer Will Goodfellow built this thing with a supporting cast that could've phoned it in but didn't. Heather Mitchell and Susie Porter — both seasoned Australian screen presences — anchor the family scenes. Porter especially has built a career on projects that don't shy away from uncomfortable emotional territory, and that weight shows here. Peter Stephens rounds out the intervention, and the fact that these actors showed up for 13 minutes tells you something about the script.
Studio Goono produced it with support from Screen NSW, which means this came out of Australia's indie genre ecosystem — the same world that keeps generating work too odd for mainstream distribution and too technically assured to be dismissed as student stuff.
The performances don't strain. There's a moment where the adults are clearly trying to hold it together, to be reasonable, to stay calm, and the film finds something genuinely funny in that effort without underlining the joke. That restraint is rarer than it should be.
The dark stuff is delivered so drily you might laugh first
Here's what separates The Worm from a hundred other comedy shorts: the worm isn't just whispering mundane instructions. It's whispering darker things. Suicidal ideation. The horror elements are there — Phantasm Magazine's Sundance coverage praised the film as "endearingly wacky" and "endlessly amusing," with specific mention of Bird's performance — but they're handled through such a deadpan, absurdist lens that you register the comedy before the weight hits you.
That's a hard tonal needle to thread.
The thing nobody mentions enough is how the script trusts the situation to generate its own absurdity. Goodfellow doesn't underscore anything. The family's attempts at rational intervention, Kieran's unshakeable conviction, the worm's increasingly sinister suggestions — they all sit there on the screen and the situation does the work. Most writers can't resist explaining their own jokes. This one did.
HorrorBuzz noted that despite being filed under horror-comedy, it leans much harder into the comedy — which tracks. The horror is the setup. The comedy is the response.
Where to actually watch it right now
The Worm is currently streaming on major OTT platforms, which is significant for a 13-minute Sundance short that didn't have a conventional theatrical window. Check the where-to-watch widget at the top of this page for your specific service — Netflix, Prime Video, and others carry it depending on your region.
Streaming availability for short films shifts faster than features do, so if your preferred service isn't listed right now, Movie OTT's aggregator tracks updates in real time. Short films don't always get algorithmic love on individual platform interfaces, so an aggregator view is genuinely useful here — you're not hunting through menus hoping to stumble across it.
The runtime means zero friction on commitment. Thirteen minutes. You could watch this between other things, or loop it back-to-back to catch details you missed on a first viewing (and there are details worth catching).
Questions you probably have answered
What's the actual plot? Kieran believes a telepathic worm controls his life and whispers dark suggestions to him. His family stages an intervention. Everything goes as well as you'd expect.
Who's in it? Joe Bird as Kieran. Heather Mitchell, Susie Porter, and Peter Stephens as the family. Directed by Tom Noakes, written by Will Goodfellow.
Is it actually funny or just weird? Both. But it's funnier than weird — the comedy lands harder than the horror beats, and Bird's performance carries the whole thing.
Does it have a happy ending? Hard to say without spoiling the specifics, but no — it doesn't resolve the way a typical family-drama-with-a-message would.
Where did it premiere? Sundance 2026. It's since made the festival circuit and landed on streaming platforms.
How do I find it if my streaming app doesn't have a great search function? Movie OTT lists every platform carrying it. Bookmark that page if you're hunting for short films — streaming services don't make them easy to find on their own.
Who should watch this, and why
If you're the kind of viewer who appreciates dark comedy that doesn't explain itself, The Worm is worth 13 minutes. It's built for people who find absurdist humor more honest than feel-good resolutions, and for anyone who's watched a family try — and fail — to reason with someone who's fully committed to their own reality.
Joe Bird's performance alone justifies the runtime. The supporting cast elevates it. The script trusts the premise to do the heavy lifting instead of spelling everything out.
Catch it while it's on the major OTT services. The availability won't last forever, and this is the kind of short that deserves to be seen rather than scrolled past.
