The indy films for which Jane Schoenbrun is best known (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow) have been charged with the anxiety of a young person with emerging trans identity. It is a process which the New York filmmaker has themself been through, though in their case they were well into adulthood before it finished.
This lived experience, including that of being a teen born to (Jewish) conservative suburban parents in Queens, while at the same time being instinctively trans (as in transgressive) before they knew why, often informs the lives of Schoenbrun’s marginalised characters.
Now a celebrated filmmaker who has embraced their industry’s anti-Israel pile-on, as has the director’s latest co-star Hannah Einbinder, Schoenbrun has now made their most assured film yet.
As with the filmmaker’s previous works this one wallows pleasingly in 1980s schlock-horror, a genre typified by such franchises as Friday the 13th , a slasher movie that begat no less than 11 sequels and whose taglines always seemed to me to be ripe for Jewish parody: Don’t Count on Making it to Saturday (or Synagogue); Fridays Will Never Be The Same (it’s not just the challah that gets sliced) or You’ll Wish It Were Only A Nightmare (someone’s liver is gonna get chopped).
Schoenbrun has created a backstory centred on a fictional though equally popular horror flick. The beautifully put together opening sequence visually illustrates the cottage industry that grew from the movie’s success right down to press cuttings and merch. This includes a wind-up toy of its serial killer protagonist Little Death, complete with its trademark square head apparently made from a section of ventilation duct, and a white, zip-up hazmat suit, all the better to see the blood stains after he spikes his victims with the barbed lance he holds while emerging from the depths of a lake.
Schoenbrun’s narrative is so meta you half expect the director be sitting next to you in the cinema. It centres on Kris (Einbinder), a rising, queer director who has been commissioned by Hollywood to reboot the franchise.
For research she drives through blizzards to meet the original film’s star Billy. The ageing but well-preserved actor is now a recluse played by Gillian Anderson as half Blanche DuBois and half Norma Desmond. Trapped in her past Billy lives alone in the abandoned rural summer camp where the film was shot.
Ridiculous, yes. However, the weirdly artificial landscape tells you to put aside logic. What counts here is the surreal and the satire. One target is how queer, independent filmmakers such as Kris (and Schoenbrun of course) are exploited by Hollywood to flag its inclusive credentials.
The tension generated is that of a horror but at its heart is an awakening that is not so much about sexuality as sex, something about which Billy might be able to help Kris feel less self-conscious about.
The film is also a love letter to the genre that inspired it. When Kris explains her thoughts about the original film’s gender politics, Billy dismisses the thesis.
“It was just about flesh and fluids,” she says which is a pretty good description of Schoenbrun’s.
Cert 15
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