Why Soulm8te's Lily Sullivan Looks So Familiar
There's a new movie from the world of M3GAN on the way, and its star, Lily Sullivan, will be a familiar face to horror movie aficionados.
Excitement around the M3GAN franchise might have cooled a little after the release of 2.0, but real ones know that the sequel had a lot more to offer than the box office figures and reviews suggested. Now we have an intriguing trailer for Soulm8te, the franchise’s first spin-off and a movie about the other inevitable end result of creating an advanced humanoid robot — if you’ve seen Companion, you’ll know what we're talking about.
Those who watched the trailer this week may be wondering why the movie’s star looks so familiar, and it’s probably because Lucy Sullivan has already attained low key scream queen status both in her native Australian and increasingly in Hollywood — thanks to in no small part to movies like Monolith and Evil Dead Rise.
In the list below, you’ll find more info on the Soulm8te star’s biggest movies to date along with all the info you need about where to watch them — including one that's currently free to stream on the JustWatch TV player for your horror viewing pleasure.
If you appreciate science fiction with a touch of dread and horror, the kind that builds gradually over the course of the story (like one of the more contained episodes of Black Mirror), you should definitely add Monolith to your watch list!
The story follows a true crime podcaster (played by Sullivan) who happens upon a mystery when a group of callers each start to tell a similar story involving a strange black brick.
Released in 2022, this was Sullivan’s first lead role after a string of small parts and supporting turns — mostly in Australian movies and TV shows — but it has proven to be her big breakout. Catch it now for free on JustWatch TV.
If you’re already a Sam Raimi head, we don’t need to tell you about Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise — easily the best installment in the franchise since Raimi gave up the reins back in the 1990s. If you’re new to all this, however, don’t let the lore turn you off: this is a horror that can easily be watched on its own — just be warned that it’s not exactly for the faint of heart.
For this one, Sullivan takes the lead again as Beth, a pregnant woman who moves into her sister Ellie’s apartment — where of course she becomes trapped with Ellie’s kids as her host becomes possessed by a Deadite demon.
The movie was a huge success for Cronin and Sullivan, who would go on to collaborate again just a few years after in…
Earlier this year, Sullivan was back on screens in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, Hollywood’s latest attempt to revive the mummified genre — and a movie that I think was a fair bit stronger than most critics let on.
Like Evil Dead Rise, this is a horror movie that makes terrifying use of demonic possession in confined spaces. Here, Sullivan plays a teacher, watching over a girl whose sister goes missing in Cairo but miraculously turns up alive after eight years spent in a sarcophagus.
You can probably guess what happens, but like Cronin’s earlier movie, it’s less about the what than the how.
Peter Wier’s 1975 movie of Picnic at Hanging Rock is such an Aussie cinema classic that fans were nervous to hear that a new TV show based on the real life story was being made — but this six episode mini-series holds its own.
The show is based on a mysterious event that happened in 1900, when a class day out to Hanging Rock in Victoria led to the disappearance of three girls and a governess from an all girls school. Natalie Dormer (of Game of Thrones) stars as the school’s headmistress with Sullivan and her fellow Aussie scream queen Samara Weaving (Ready or Not) leading the supporting cast.
Since the success of Monolith, which blew up from the SXSW festival in 2023, Sullivan has only made one feature in the Antipodes since: a crazy horror Western from New Zealand called Forgive Us All. This one sees Sullivan again play a mother, although this time the story takes place in a post apocalyptic zombie world where she’s already had to kill her own infected daughter — yeesh!
As pulpy horrors go, Forgive Us All is pretty rough around the edges, but if you’re a fan of Ozploitation classic like The Road Warrior, you'll probably get a kick out of seeing a movie drawing from those same traditions again.
