Netflix has set a June 30, 2026 release date for Unhinged, a new interactive thriller from Night School Studio, the team behind Oxenfree. The horror game stars Zoe Kravitz, Sadie Sink, and Troy Baker, and plays out on a television screen while using a smartphone as the controller and as a flashlight inside the story itself. The premise centers on a hurricane-driven blackout that traps its lead character alone in her apartment, with only a smartphone connecting her to the outside world as the night turns dangerous.
A hurricane, a blackout, and Night School's horror pivot
Unhinged puts players in the shoes of Ava, played by Zoe Kravitz, who becomes trapped inside her apartment during a blackout caused by a hurricane. What starts as a survival scenario during the storm escalates once Ava realizes she is not alone in the building. Night School Studio, the developer best known for the supernatural teen mystery Oxenfree, is billing the project as a thriller that curdles into horror as the night wears on. Netflix describes the premise this way: "What begins as a terrifying blackout in a raging storm spirals into a mind-bending thriller. With only your phone to guide you, this is a story of unpredictable turns."
The phone is the flashlight, and it rings too
Unhinged is built around Netflix's format for phone-controlled TV games, and here the phone does more than steer the action. It doubles as Ava's flashlight in the fiction, with its beam syncing to how the player moves through the dark apartment. The device also lights up and vibrates when Ava gets calls or texts from the two people who become her only contact with the outside world during the blackout: her best friend Claire, who lives across the street, and Ben, the building's superintendent.
Two modes: take it slow, or race the clock
Night School Studio built two distinct ways to experience Unhinged. Story mode drops timers and the risk of death entirely, letting players move through Ava's ordeal at their own pace and focus on following the plot. Survival mode raises the tension with quick-time events bound by time limits, where failure sends the player back to a checkpoint rather than derailing the story outright. The split gives Unhinged room to work both as a cinematic narrative experience and as a tenser, more game-like version of the same story, depending on how a player wants to spend the night with Ava.
A small cast for a claustrophobic setup
Unhinged rests on a compact principal cast suited to its single-location premise. Zoe Kravitz plays Ava, the woman trapped in her apartment as the storm rages outside. Sadie Sink plays Claire, Ava's best friend and remote lifeline from across the street. Troy Baker plays Ben, the building superintendent who becomes Ava's other outside contact as the night in her apartment takes a darker turn. Unhinged arrives on Netflix on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, the latest project from Night School Studio, the team behind Oxenfree. With a blacked-out apartment during a hurricane and a phone standing in as the player's only line to the outside world, it aims to be a tense, tightly contained horror story within Netflix's interactive game library.
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