Christian has barely secured his West End opportunity before an unseen woman begins coaching his singing. For a young performer trying to establish himself, that creates an awkward incentive to keep listening. The advice is welcome; its source is harder to explain. City of Masks gives its haunting this useful point of entry: the ghostly presence participates in the work. Before Christian can understand who is speaking, he has already accepted her help, and his professional ambition has made room for an attachment he cannot easily account for.
The woman is Eve, played by Amanda Jiang, whom Christian encounters at a backstage piano before she disappears again. Giving the voice a visible source might ordinarily settle our nerves. Here, her disappearance keeps the connection unstable. Offscreen sound simply means sound whose source lies outside the image, and the film uses that separation to let Eve establish intimacy before Christian can place her within the theatre’s physical world. Charlie Goddard’s earnestness makes his willingness to pursue her understandable. He has found someone who takes his talent seriously, even if finding her again presents certain practical difficulties.
Director Andrea M. Catinella extends that uncertainty through the building itself. The New Wimbledon Theatre supplies an ornate setting, but the dressing rooms and backstage spaces matter as much as the auditorium. Changes in lighting and musical atmosphere make familiar rooms feel newly threatening. The effect is economical and appropriate: a theatre already possesses the equipment to transform what an audience thinks it sees. Wider framing can leave figures exposed within that space, while closer views permit intimacy. I like the film’s trust in those basic resources. Its supernatural world grows out of a functioning workplace, complete with the tools needed to manufacture an illusion.
That connection becomes sharper once the revival’s creative history enters the picture. Christian has been cast in City of Masks, a musical now controlled by Victor, the imperious impresario played by Deano Bugatti Mitchison. Eve composed its songs, and the fire that supposedly killed her belongs to a history Victor has every reason to conceal. Enrico Tessarin’s screenplay makes artistic theft a practical source of horror. Victor can mount the show and command its performers because the person responsible for its music has been removed from public view. Eve’s continued presence threatens his claim to the production.
The debt to The Phantom of the Opera is readily apparent, with a female composer occupying the masked mentor’s position and a young man becoming her pupil and romantic attachment. The reversal has some dramatic substance because Eve’s struggle concerns recognition for work that another person controls. Her instruction allows Christian to benefit from the talent Victor appropriated. Yet she also starts treating that instruction as an entitlement to Christian himself. Her jealous reactions to his contact with Lena, a fellow cast member played by Shayli Reagan, put pressure on the sympathetic account of a wronged artist seeking justice.
Jiang gives that conflict an appealing reserve. Eve can seem welcoming without becoming fully available, which helps sustain the attraction across her appearances and disappearances. When she reveals the scarring beneath her half-mask, the gesture makes concealment personal after the earlier mystery has made it theatrical. Goddard’s open manner gives her something responsive to play against. Their connection is easiest to believe through these exchanges of guidance and trust. Eve’s jealousy asks the relationship to carry a heavier burden, and the film is less assured about making affection, dependence, and revenge feel like parts of the same developing bond.
Victor brings a very different energy into the building. He dismisses the possibility of ghosts by invoking the modern world and the presence of CCTV, as though a security system could settle a supernatural dispute. Those objections have a pleasingly mundane quality: this is a man trying to manage a haunting as an inconvenient production problem. His later emergence from his office with a gun pushes the character toward a much louder form of menace. The escalation is startling, but it also makes his behavior so conspicuous that the mystery loses some room to breathe. Watching him conceal anything becomes difficult when he seems ready to announce his instability to the entire company.
Mitchison’s volatile performance and Jiang’s controlled mystery pull the film toward different dramatic speeds. Eve invites us to study an appearance or hesitate over an intention; Victor demands an immediate response. A gothic musical can accommodate extravagant behavior, and the stage setting gives that extravagance a natural home. The difficulty is the movement between registers. The gun episode shifts attention from the gradual discovery of a buried crime to Victor’s capacity for immediate violence, leaving the quieter uncertainty surrounding Eve struggling to regain its force.
Maya, the reporter played by Madalina Bellariu Ion, adds a public investigation to Christian’s private encounters. Her interest in the fire gives the concealed history a route beyond backstage rumor. Still, the film has trouble keeping its different kinds of uncertainty distinct. Questions about Victor’s actions, Eve’s physical existence, and her intentions toward Christian accumulate around the same events. Her disappearing appearances and the disturbances involving lights and rigging generate atmosphere, but atmosphere cannot explain how all those pressures connect. The attraction of an unresolved presence starts competing with the need to understand the danger she represents.
The songs give that tangled investigation a welcome material focus. Eve has left work that can be learned, rehearsed, and performed, and the film treats musical theatre with an affection that survives its less convincing dramatic turns.
As opening night approaches, the revival places her music before an audience under the control of the man who stole it. Christian’s participation acquires a responsibility beyond uncovering what happened in the fire. He is preparing to perform the work through which Eve has reached him, inside a production that still benefits from her disappearance.
City of Masks lands in cinemas on October 30, 2026, following its world premiere. Directed by Andrea M. Catinella, this stylish dramatic thriller serves as a modern re-imagining of The Phantom of the Opera, following a young actor drawn into a web of ambition, obsession, and psychological terror within a historic theater.
Full Credits
Title: City of Masks
Distributor: BUFF Studios, Starmist Films
Release date: October 30, 2026 (UK Theatrical)
- Director: Andrea M. Catinella
Writers: Enrico Tessarin
Producers and Executive Producers: Enrico Tessarin, Amanda Jiang, Andrea M. Catinella, Carla Fuschillo, Arnaldo Stafa, Clare Anyiam-Osigwe, Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe
Cast: Amanda Jiang, Charlie Goddard, Deano Bugatti, Charlotte Coleman, Amber Doig-Thorne, Mădălina Bellariu Ion, Lewis Santer, Shayli Reagan
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Carla Fuschillo
Editors: Yusuf Ziya Kaya, Davin Jeayes
Composer: Peter Michaels
The Review
City of Masks
City of Masks finds an appealing connection between theatrical illusion and supernatural intimacy. Eve’s unseen vocal coaching and the theatre’s shifting atmosphere give its haunting a personality, while the stolen songs make artistic ownership a meaningful conflict. I like its affection for musical theatre, but the tangled mystery, competing acting styles, and uncertain development of Eve’s possessiveness weaken the romance. There is pleasure in its gothic sincerity, provided you can tolerate some dramatic muddle.
PROS
- Effective use of offscreen voices and theatrical lighting.
- Artistic theft gives the haunting dramatic substance.
- Appealing intimacy between Christian and Eve.
- Genuine affection for musical theatre.
CONS
- Supernatural questions become difficult to untangle.
- Clashing performance styles disrupt the tension.
- Eve’s jealousy strains the romantic development.
