Pretentious rubbish. An almighty bore masquerading as a) a spoof on slash horror films and b) having something important to say while c) not coming anywhere close to achieving either. Another of the dumb propositions foisted upon us by the connivance of the film festival industry to chuck at the general public movies that hoity-toity festival progammers and audiences believe deserve wider attention.
The most annoying element of this is that the subtext is merely a variation of the Dracula hypothesis that women are sexually drawn to dangerous men who can drive them into ecstasies of fear and penetrate them with sharp weapons. Here, this is spelled out in more detail, “the heroine” only able to achieve orgasm through terror and after running terrified with her breasts bouncing around and her erect nipples visible through translucent material.
And if you can work out how anyone can walk around with a slab of metal stuck to their head, you’re better than me. Oh, and to keep the woke element happy, the killer transforms from male to female.
And while we’re at the barking mad end of the horror subgenre let’s ensure that it’s the monster who’s creating the movies from his lair deep under a lake and that everyone who appears in the movies are his creations.
This is in the Anora (2024) league for repetition. Where that was sex, sex, sex, until we got the point, and way after we had got the point, this is blood, blood, blood, gushing literally like fountains or explosions from what’s left of a body once the monster, known as Little Death (which as you’ll no doubt be aware is a sly nod to “le petit mort”, the French description of orgasm), has finished chopping off select body parts.
Too much of this film is bits of the Camp Miasma series of films, initially big hits but then fading to direct-to-video flops, and which contain little more than variations of blood, blood, blood and people being impaled or chopped up.
If there is any emotional element it’s frigid lesbian Kris (Hannah Einbinder), technically in a polyamory relationship but that’s only because she permits her female bisexual partner to regularly have sex with a male, finally managing to overcome her inhibitions, helped along by Billy (Gillian Anderson), the original star of the Camp Miasma picture who bowed out after the first episode, and now lives on an abandoned tourist attraction based on the original or the original set (I couldn’t work out which).
In between making eyes at Gillian and watching the old movies in a cinema at Camp Miasma, the full-of-herself Kris is pitching her barmy notion for a horror picture where all the characters are figments of the monster’s imagination. Actually, the movie business section is the only bit that works, although Kris fails to note the negative response from potential stars.
Given that blood is the dominant color scheme, it’s not surprising that Kris and Billy end up soaked in blood and wandering, in surreal splendour, around a service station where, with equal surreality, kids are more interested in shooting each other with water guns than any stray adults who haven’t bothered to change out of their blood-soaked Halloween costumes.
This has come at us with the glow of critical approval, but, actually beyond the very repetitive obvious and some smartass intellectual dialog, this is an over-inflated mess.
I felt sorry for Hannah Einbinder (Seekers of Infinite Love, 2026) who clearly can act but less so for X-Files star Gillian Anderson who draws too much on Sunset Boulevard (1950). Written and directed Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw The TV Glow, 2024) who should stop believing her own publicity.
Truly awful.
The Magnificent 60s 