No Choice is a movie with an obvious sociopolitical message — and some horror fans may not be receptive
Whether you like No Choice or not probably hinges on your personal politics. It’s a movie that doesn’t hide its own opinion on one of the most controversial topics in United States society — but even if you agree with the filmmakers’ stance, you may not necessarily like how No Choice goes about addressing it.
There’s no point in being vague. No Choice is a horror movie about abortion — particularly, a movie about a young woman in an obvious red state who can’t get a legal abortion. It’s a counter-reactionary movie about the Supreme Court dismantling Roe v. Wade and the subsequent push by legislators in Republican states to do everything in their power to outlaw abortion outright. It’s a gravely serious issue and an unmistakably contentious one and I’m sure a lot of people on both sides of the debate are going to be offended that this movie even exists in the first place.
No Choice, however, isn’t a reactionary film about abortion in the same way something like It’s Alive or The Unborn or even The Suckling may be. Those movies all have obvious supernatural/science fiction hooks, while this film plays the material very straight. Indeed, the only element of the film that truly pushes No Choice out of strict melodrama territory and into lowkey psychological horror is a plot point about its central character having nightmarish visions about the fetus growing inside her. She’s convinced herself that if she doesn’t get an abortion, she’ll die. And it obviously paints the rest of the movie and all of the character’s actions.
Hannah Deale plays Amy, the central figure of the film. She’s a community college student who desperately wants a better life. She works a dead-end job at a convenience store to support herself, she lives in a trailer park and her mother is a hopeless opioid abuser. The location of the film is never divulged, but really, it could be any number of states in the U.S. at the moment. Just looking at the landscape and hearing characters talk, you instinctively know which political party is calling the shots here.
Amy ends up having a one-night affair with some random guy who drives a pickup truck and immediately afterwards she starts having those aforementioned prophesies of doom and death in her sleep. She goes through endless hoops to buy the morning after pill and she gets a stern talking to from a nurse, who suspects she’s trying to instigate a miscarriage on purpose. She lets Amy know pointedly that in this state — whichever state it may be — intentional, chemically-induced miscarriages are considered murder and if she gets caught, it’s a long prison stint.
By the way, that kind of thing is ALREADY happening in America right now. Just so you know.
The movie takes its sweet time pushing Amy to a fateful decision, one way or another. The filmmaker makes it a point to demonstrate just how economically hamstrung she is and how even rudimentary health care is out of her price range. She doesn’t get a lot of help and assistance from her peers and her mother is about as useless as a fish’s bicycle. You know something is going to happen eventually, and as her nightmares get weirder and more bizarre, the end outcome doesn’t look very rosy for anybody involved.
It’s a slow burn to a fairly obvious conclusion. And that’s not exactly a bad thing. It’s not so much that this one thing happens to Amy that makes the movie worth watching as it is seeing how she gets from point A to point B. It’s a captivating movie even when the director telegraphs a bit too much of the ending; you know a “happy” ending is impossible, it’s just a question of how bad it’s going to be for our main character.
The ensemble cast is OK but nothing spectacular. There’s not much in the way of special effects here but what’s included in No Choice is mostly respectable. It’s a film that’s all about atmosphere and tension and it does an admirable job getting the emptiness and despair across to the viewer. It’s not a classic piece of world cinema a’la 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — a 2008 movie that kinda-sorta covers similar thematic material — but by the time it’s over you certainly know what No Choice was trying to say.
Even if you like the movie you have to admit that it’s wildly uneven and unpolished at times. There are some obvious pacing issues and not all of the performances are terribly convincing. It’s a movie that tends to cling to stereotypes about the Southern poor and its inherent bleakness might be too unappetizing to some viewers, even if they are adamantly pro-choice. And at the end of the day, it’s kind of hard to overlook the most apparent built-in issue of No Choice: namely, it’s a movie about a woman trying to get an abortion, but it’s directed by a man.
Nate Hilgartner obviously feels passionate (and deeply unnerved) about the thematic content of his film. Try as he may, though, it never really feels like a feminist movie. Amy is sort of a best guess at what real womanhood is like and let’s be real — if you’ll never experience ovulation, menstruation or menopause yourself, it’s a bit iffy to be making movies about women’s health reproductive health. That’s not to say that No Choice is inauthentic or insincere in its intents, just that it lacks a certain perspective that’s certainly needed for a movie of its type.
Is No Choice a good horror movie, regardless of the politics involved? Well, objectively speaking, it’s hard to come to that conclusion. In a lot of ways the horror elements of No Choice are the *least* effective aspects of the movie and the supernatural stuff almost manages to dilute the pro-choice messaging altogether. It’s an interesting horror film and a respectable one, but it’s hard to overlook the parts where No Choice stumbles.
No Choice, though, is worth checking out, if only to catch a half-successful/half-unsuccessful attempt at addressing a massive hot button issue through a modern genre lens. It’s not a movie that’s afraid to piss you off and when No Choice is effective it’s quite effective.
Just don’t expect it to change your views on abortion, whatever they were heading into the movie.
GIVE IT A WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Psychological thrillers (in general), The Handmaid’s Tale, voting Democrat
DIRECTOR: Nate Hilgartner
WRITER: Nate Hilgartner
STARRING: Hannah Deale, Jennifer Herzog, Hayden Frank, Maria Prudente
STUDIO: Hilgartner Productions
DISTRIBUTOR: Indie Rights
RUNTIME: 95 minutes
LANGUAGE: English
RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2026 (VOD)
