School Spirits fans, be excited—star Sarah Yarkin, who will be returning as Ronda Rosen in the just-renewed Season 4, briefly left the world of Split River High to create a terrifying new short film called Visitors. The short follows a young pregnant woman who starts seeing odd things that suggest an alien invasion might have begun, but everyone around her has no idea what she's talking about and thinks everything is fine.
The short film premiered at South by Southwest 2026 and received high praise from viewers. The Direct can back up those positive reactions, as Yarkin's wonderful performance excels, and the entire short will have you on the edge of your seat, not knowing what to think.
At SXSW 2026, The Direct spoke with Sarah Yarkins to talk about her new short, its paranoia-filled narrative, deeper messages, and feature-film potential. For more from Yarkin, be sure to check out The Direct's interview with the School Spirits star about Season 3 of the Paramount+ streaming series.
Sarah Yarkin Pitches 'Visitors' & Its Feature Film Future
"My One-Minute Pitch to the Best Fans Ever..."
- The Direct: "I know a lot of people know you from School Spirits right now. So, assuming that a lot of people from School Spirits are going to see you in this and they're going to be interested, what is your one-minute pitch to those people?"
Sarah Yarkin: Okay, my one-minute pitch to the best fans ever. I think it's really cool. I'm a little bit older than what I play in the show, so it's really cool to be playing a woman who is an adult woman dealing with adult woman issues. I'm allowed to age in real life. And my brilliant writer-director friend Minnie Schedeen has been wanting to work together for many years. She's mostly a sci-fi writer, and I think that's such an amazing genre and medium for exploring many of the issues women face.
And this deals in this sort of sci-fi psychological thriller way, about like anxieties and pregnancy stuff. And when you turn 30, people start asking you this thing all the time, and your body is changing, and this horror that a lot of people don't really talk about. And I think also she's constantly thinking about aliens, and I think having this sort of underlying thing of, like, what is it like? What would the first day be like if we were actually visited by aliens? So it's sort of like 'Rosemary's Baby' meets'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.' And I think people who love 'School Spirits' would love the genre of it.
The key idea behind the narrative is to get audiences to question their reality within the context of the short, just as Sarah Yarkin's protagonist does; she keeps seeing odd occurrences while everyone around her tries to convince her otherwise.
Sarah Yarkin: I mean, I think there's a lot of gaslighting for women's issues, and I think that the play of that, of sort of like wondering, Is she crazy? And I think I feel that all the time, am I crazy, or are the people around me crazy, or whatever is going on?
And so I think kind of that walking that line, which I love. What Minnie does with this short... you're kind of seeing it through my perspective as the main character, and you're seeing these crazy things happen, and then you're seeing everyone gaslight me, and so you really have to question your own reality, which I think is something exciting to do. I think [for] the short, we kind of want people to wonder. And I think as we develop this into a feature, obviously, I think things would become clearer.
Many shorts have a journey from their original form to becoming a feature film adaptation. With something like Visitors, once you see the short itself, it'll be clear the potential it has to expand into a movie.
- The Direct: "What would a feature of this look like? Would we be more concrete and like there is something happening, or would we keep this short idea of like in the middle the whole time?"
Sarah Yarkin: I mean, this was just written as a short. Minnie wrote it with just a short in mind, and then as we were doing these drafts, and we were doing notes and talking about it, she was like, 'Oh my God, there's a feature here.' So, I think the plan was just to make a really good short. And I think shorts are a very hard thing to accomplish. You have a short period of time to cover so much, to make people feel something. And she did such an amazing job with this.
So I feel like with a feature, I think it would have to be a lot clearer, right, like, what exactly is going on, and she has a whole thing she's already told me. So, when she gave me this last draft that we were shooting, I was like, 'Oh my God, I know where this goes. So I think, of course, we're gonna be playing with the craziness of it all. But I think once people kind of know what's going on and the visiting happens, I think it would be a lot clearer what's really happening.
The Deeper Messages of 'Visitors'
"Pregnancy is Kind of the Scariest Thing a Woman Can Possible Do."
- The Direct: "Your character in this film is pregnant. Can you talk about how that plays into kind of the deeper messages that the film is tackling?"
Sarah Yarkin: I mean, I think Minnie speaks on this so well, but pregnancy is kind of the scariest thing a woman can possibly do. And looking at these ultrasounds and talking with friends who've been through that, and you're like, there is literally, like a creature in your body, and there's so much ripe for horror, and like body horror in that way, and sort of just this psychological—I mean, it's terrifying, and I feel like it's just like a commonplace thing, like we've been doing this forever, and so the horror of your body changing and not knowing what this creature is, and all of that, and what's going to come after that, but also just, I think, like, the hormones in your body.
Many kept talking about [how hormones] are skyrocketing at this point. And people talk about baby brain, and so there's so much gaslighting in that as well. Of being like, 'Oh, you must be crazy. You're in your period, or you're pregnant,' or whatever it is, but kind of like to the nth degree. So I think it is just a terrifying thing. And I think when you reach a certain age, and you're a woman, people are gonna ask you, and your clock is ticking, and that is, like the cliche, and it's true, and people are gonna continue to tell you about it. And I think that's exactly my own psychological horror there. Like that is terrifying.
On top of the horror of pregnancy, as mentioned by Yarkin herself, the issue of gaslighting is also addressed in Visitors:
Sarah Yarkin: I think there's a lot of, especially like women, there's this, especially [gaslighting in medicine], I think there's a lot of doctors not listening to women. This is a huge actual issue. A lot of studies are not actually done on women's bodies, because if there's a uterus, it will throw off the test results. There is so much of that constantly happening.
And I think to not make a movie about, like a therapy term, you know, you can see bad movies that kind of, make fun of this stuff, but I think to do it in a very grounded way, where the audience is seeing that something is wrong, and she's seeing it, and then every single person around her is going, like, are you good? Are you okay? You seem crazy.
And so I think that's such a relatable feeling, often that I'm sure everyone has every once in a while, but I think to really play with the audience's experience as well, and they go, 'Wait, are we supposed to know? What do we think is happening?' And to keep them guessing. And I think that's such an exciting thing as a viewer as well.
The entire interview with Sarah Yarkin can be viewed below.
