Tag Archives: LGBTQ horror

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Girl Power Activate

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The Serpent’s Skin

by Rachel Willis

Channeling films such as Carrie and The Craft, director Alice Maio Mackay brings a new take on women with power in her film, The Serpent’s Skin.

Fleeing from her transphobic home life, Anna (Alexandra McVicker) moves to the city to live with her sister (Charlotte Chimes). An intense opening scene lets us know how bad things are for Anna at home, so as she settles into her new life, you can’t help but hope she’ll find acceptance.

Anna finds more than acceptance as she reckons with newfound powers that allow her to defend herself in unexpected ways. When she meets Gen (Avalon Fast), a woman with similar powers, the two form an instant bond.

The film treads familiar ground as Anna and Gen learn both the depth of their power and the ability to harness it.

Mackay is fond of montages. Several occur in the film’s quick runtime. Some of those feel more relevant than others. Anna learning the ropes of her new job is a montage we could have done without. The time would have been better spent deepening her relationship with Gen or fleshing out ancillary characters.

Mackay writes with Benjamin Pahl Robinson. Their dialogue is clunky and repetitive, and it’s not always delivered with the right tone or emotion. While there are a few decent actors among the cast, the two leads are often the weakest of the bunch.

It’s not always clear why some of the events occur as they do. Mackay’s metaphor gets muddy as Anna and Gen deal with the consequences of their power. The filmmaker’s quest to mine new ground seems to obscure the larger theme.

It’s disappointing that The Serpent’s Skin isn’t as strong as it could be, because its allegory is both important and timely. 

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Domesticated Animals

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Huesera: The Bone Woman

by Hope Madden

As Huesera: The Bone Woman opens, women climb the 640 steps leading to the world’s largest statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, located in Ocuilan, Mexico. Valeria (Natalia Solián) and her mother are among the pilgrims, their goal: a blessing leading to Valeria’s fruitful womb.

As writer/director Michelle Garza Cervera’s camera pulls back and back and back, suddenly the 108’ virgin looms like a serene-faced golden Godzilla above a woman who no longer looks so certain about her prayer.

It’s a confident opening to the entirely assured feature debut from Cervera. Her maternal nightmare is bright and decisive, pulling in common genre tropes only long enough to grant entrance to the territory of a central metaphor before casting them aside for something sinister, honest and honestly terrifying.

While it toes certain familiar ground – the gaslighting of Rosemary’s Baby, for instance – what sets Huesera apart from other maternal horror is its deliberate untidiness. Cervera refuses to embrace the good mother/bad mother dichotomy and disregards the common cinematic journey of convincing a woman that all she really wants is to be a mom. 

There’s complexity and subtlety in the various relationships as well, elevating the material above standard horror fare. Valeria has real, joyous chemistry with husband Raúl (Alfonso Dosal). And if he’s weak in the face of his mother’s wishes, Valeria is hardly standing up to her own mother or sister. The ways in which we all dodge family conflict feed into the writing, helping ground the larger metaphor in reality.

Solián’s performance weaves effortlessly and authentically from one family dynamic to the next, each presenting only opportunities to submit, to accept or to be ostracized and rejected. Huesera’s metaphor is brave and timely. Brave not only because of its LGBTQ themes but because of its motherhood themes. It’s a melancholy and necessary look at what you give up, what you kill.