Public Consumption: 10.28.24

what are you so afraid of?

Fear is a funny thing. Sometimes, it builds slowly, other times it appears fully formed. It can originate from something you intimately know, or something you have never before seen. It is a quiet terror. It is an echoing scream. It is the sensation that something is not right. The feeling that inspires two decidedly different choices: fight, or flight.

As the election draws nearer, my fear is a silent, peripheral thing. I see it in the corner of the room, watch its tail disappear under the rug. Forget Halloween, the truly terrifying date comes one week later. I am torn between my fight and my flight. Do I choose fight: read the news, stay glued to every campaign email, respond quickly to every grassroots campaign text message seemingly sent by a drunken ex? Or do I choose flight: disappear (read: disassociate) into other worlds, immerse myself in anywhere but here?

Unfortunately for me, fear is pervasive, and I chose a messy amalgamation of both: scrolling news stories about the MSG rally while watching horror films. My friend Jenna shared this on Instagram today and… yeah:

It did not help my anxiety, but at least I have something to write about this week.

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1. Maxxxine — I’d been looking forward to the third film in the Ti West / Mia Goth trilogy (starting with X, its prequel, Pearl, and now its sequel, Maxxxine) so much so that I almost paid to rent it. Thank god I didn’t, because I would’ve had to spend this space ranting about how I wanted both my time and my money back. Now I can just complain about the hour and forty-four minutes I lost.
   
   Maybe it’s because I just watched all six Scream movies, but this sadistic slasher meets meta B-list horror film fell flat for me. The blood was too chunky and it was missing the tongue-in-cheek self-awareness required for horror film-ception: where a horror film centers on the making of a horror film.
   
   Maxxxine follows Mia Goth’s Maxine Minx who lives in LA and is working hard to make herself a legitimate movie star. Doing her best to leave the adult film scene, we see her cast in the lead role in The Puritan II, a followup to its cult-classic. Oh, and the night stalker is loose, on a killing spree that is amplified by a mysterious leather-gloved man who begins stalking Maxine and picking off her friends one by one. There’s also an undercurrent of religious fanaticism—Christian protesters outside the movie studios, flashbacks to Maxine’s own preacher father.
   
   Giancarlo Esposito is exceptional as Maxine’s shady agent, Kevin Bacon is confusing as a private detective whose accent can only be described as watched Daniel Craig in Knives Out once and thought, sure, I can do that, Halsey is surprisingly competent actress as Tabby, one of Maxine’s coworkers who meets a gruesome end. Elizabeth Debicki is perfection as the vicious horror film director with something to prove, Lily Collins is atrocious as a horror ingenue with the most tragic British accent I’ve ever beheld. Mia Goth is good, not great. The actor who plays her father seems to be auditioning for a community theater production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
   
   This movie bugged me. It wasn’t bad enough to be camp, wasn’t good enough to have a legitimate point of view. It felt like fingertips grasping at the tail end of something meaningful. There was so much it could have said about women, adult entertainment, exploitation, the cult of Christianity and the idea of purity, the impossible terror of men. Instead, it mumbled, relying on shock value, gore, and fairly decent prosthetic versions of Lily Collin’s and Mia Goth’s decapitated heads.

2. Woman of the Hour — (A note & a warning: This movie centers around the sexual assault and murder of multiple women at the hands of a serial killer, but it is one of the most respectfully considered & thoughtfully shot films about violence against women I have ever seen. The directorial vision ensures that there is no gratuitous violence and no shots designed for brutalized shock value. I was profoundly affected, but not hurt by its contents. It is definitive proof that more stories about men’s violence against women should be directed by women.)
   
   I wasn’t expecting much from Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, this based-on-a-true-story of an aspiring actress who crosses paths with a serial killer when they are cast on the same episode of The Dating Game. The true crime genre is oversaturated to bursting, and I’ve definitely already listened to this story on at least one podcast. What, I wondered, could this really add to the conversation?
   
   I am here to publicly state that I could not have been more wrong. This film affected me in a deeply profound way, one I will try my best to articulate here. Forgive me if I am unable to fully capture it.
   
   With a script by Ian McDonald & influenced by Anna Kendrick’s directorial vision¹, Woman of the Hour follows serial killer Rodney Alcala². Although the central focus of the film is Alcala’s stint as a contestant on The Dating Game, which is where Kendrick’s character Cheryl meets and escapes him, we see Alcala move through the world, interacting with victims and bystanders alike, watching him leave violence and destruction in his wake. Scenes of Cheryl’s inability to make a splash in Hollywood are intercut with Rodney’s interactions with his victims. He carries a camera everywhere. We see him taking photos of a woman in Wyoming. Finding a model in a teenaged runaway in California. A tourist in New York City, where a woman asks him to help her move furniture into her apartment.
   
   Each interaction with these women starts softly. He views them from behind the lens, gently closing the distance between them. At first, the women feel seen. Special. Then they realize there is no escape. He beats them. Rapes them. Binds them. Leaves them for dead. Develops his photos. Alcala, played intentionally and nearly innocuously by Daniel Zovatto, makes women uneasy, but not immediately alarmed. There’s a hesitation there, a maybe I’m overreacting you can see on every woman’s face just before he strikes. It’s so perfectly insidious, the way he moves confidently through the world. Every woman has known a man like him, one that makes her uncomfortable but not immediately scared. One that you would never want to be left alone with in an empty room, just in case.
   
   When Cheryl is cast on The Dating Game, Bachelor Three, Alcala, is the only man onstage who doesn’t seem like a total tool. Yet that sly confidence he exudes causes a woman in the audience to recognize him—Nicolette Robinson’s character Laura has seen Alcala before, at the beach with a friend who was later found murdered. She reported him to the police. Nothing happened. Now, he’s going to be on TV.
   
   Laura has to leave the studio. Wants to report him to the producers of the show. No one helps her, not the security guard, not her boyfriend, who thinks she’s overreacting. There’s no way he’d be cast on a TV show if he had a criminal record, right?
   
   There is a striking, unsettling resemblance to current controversy surrounding dating shows like The Bachelor and Love is Blind, where producers are casting men with disreputable—and sometimes even criminal—behavior on these dating shows, putting women in direct danger. Just a reminder that this film is set in 1970. It’s 2024.
   
   Cheryl chooses bachelor number three. Alcala finds her after filming and they go to bar. They talk. Cheryl is unsettled. They walk back to the now-abandoned studio parking lot. It’s dark. A switch flips in Rodney. It is only due to a group of passersby who emerge from a soundstage that Cheryl manages to escape unscathed. She leaves LA soon after.
   
   Laura’s boyfriend apologizes. He takes her to the police station to file a report. Nothing happens. No one takes her seriously.
   
   The ending of this film is a stunning effort of storytelling, poignant cinematography, and an extraordinary performance by Autumn Best. Best plays a teenaged runaway who survives Alcala’s strangulation attempts. When she wakes to find him weeping, she carefully coaxes him to untie her by placing the blame of her assault on herself, spinning his cruelties into something shameful she has done. She speaks to him like a frightened animal, ready to bolt at any moment. She casts her own fear, pain, and terror aside in order to survive. She does the careful dance of womanhood, takes care not to nick the ego, not to incite anger or embarrassment or shame. She absolves Alcala of blame, carries it all herself. Only then, can she escape.
   
   The final frame of this film reduced me to tears. It was first and foremost a testament to the actor Autumn Best is, but it was also the relief of seeing a consequence, of the end of this tense, tiptoe-across-a-tightrope quality the film managed to achieve.
   
   I have never felt so seen, in a film about the violence against women. I have never seen the reality of our fear reflected in such a sincere and stark way. Directed and dictated through the lens of a woman who knows what fear is like, there was nothing romanticized or justified about Rodney Alcala and his behavior. Only the clear proof that he was able to continue terrorizing women because no one around him said anything, no one tried to stop him.
   
   The emotion I felt at the end sprang forward, fully formed, in a way I did not expect. It is rare that I let myself feel the weight of ever-present fear, of the constant calculations and glances over a shoulder once the sun goes down, the consideration of strangers, of lone figures, of ride-share drivers, the constant threat of a threat. It was almost nice, to have an opportunity to loosen the valve and release some of the pressure. It was terrible, too, to know that terror lives inside me at all times. That the well will never be fully empty.
   
   I watched Woman of the Hour the night after I watched Maxxxine. It was almost comical, the way they shared so much, and how starkly one failed while the other succeeded. A testament to women. A testament to Anna Kendrick behind the camera. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

3. Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan & Sara — I have complicated feelings relating to the idea of “fandom.” I like myriad things, yet I would very rarely classify myself a “fan” of something. Even rarer would I declare myself a fan of someone. I don’t believe it’s truly possible to separate the art from the artist³, since art is intrinsically sprung from, influenced by, and relative to its creator, derived from their life experiences, prejudices, biases, and surroundings. Yet I don’t want to know everything about a person who creates art I admire. I don’t even want to know them, parasocially or otherwise. I don’t want to know their favorite color, or where they like to vacation, or the car they drive. I want to know their work and how their experiences specifically contributed to its creation. Nothing more.
   
   I know not everyone is like that. Fandom can be an identifier, a way to connect with others who love the same story/show/music/movie that you do. A way to craft, expand, and solidify an identity. But there’s a line between fandom and fanaticism, one that, when crossed, takes passion forged from a place of love and turns it into something much darker.
   
   That’s what happened to Tegan & Sara, twin sisters from Canada well known for their indie pop music and the fact that they are both lesbians. Their queerness made them a safe space for fans, giving a sense of community that didn’t exist everywhere in the early 2000s. Because Tegan and Sara were so accessible (coming out to the lines, working the merch tables, running meet and greets after their sets), it didn’t seem so weird when Tegan herself started connecting with fans online.
   
   But it wasn’t actually Tegan. That’s right, there was a catfish, connecting with fans via official sounding channels, sharing demos, photos, and personal information only available if, say, a computer had been hacked. This took over the band’s life for years, and this documentary sets out to try and find the culprit.
   
   Spoiler alert: they don’t find them, at least not definitively. The documentary does dig into the experience of the fans who were deceived by Fegan (Fake Tegan), detailing the betrayal, shock, confusion, and anger they felt upon learning they were taken advantage of. Too, we get Tegan and Sara’s perspective, the fear, discomfort, unsettling creepiness of being stalked and having your identity stolen. But from a narrative arc perspective, the ending of this documentary fell flat. In the end, when there was no one specific that could be definitively declared as the culprit, it felt a bit like the filmmaker and even Tegan and Sara themselves sort of just threw up their hands and shrugged, saying “it could be anyone. Aren’t we all sort of potentially culpable? We all could be Fegan.”
   
   Which, no.
   
   I’m not saying that we needed to have a perpetrator in order to make a satisfying film, but it feels as though at the end, the apportioned blame fell nowhere, teetering into misplaced anger. Some of the people taken advantage of by the Fegan character seem genuinely furious at the real Tegan for… something she had no control over. With no clear cut resolution, I would have liked more investigation into the phenomenon of rabid fanaticism, the root of loneliness or desperation to belong that changes brain chemistry enough to say "hey, let me impersonate this person that i love,” and, on the other side of that coin “hey I’m such a fan of this person that I would enter into an online correspondence and relationship with them and assume it is real because I want so desperately to be known by them.”
   
   In the end, this documentary felt like the equivalent of “this meeting could have been an email.” A news article would have been more than enough.

4. High Potential — No one does charmingly messy characters like Kaitlin Olsen. First came Dee from It’s Always Sunny, then Mackenzie from The Mick, then DJ in Hacks, and now, the crown jewel of them all: Morgan in High Potential.
   
   Based on a French show of the same name, High Potential follows Morgan, a broke single mom of three who has “High Intellectual Potential” which sounds made up but works great for the premise of this show which is that due to her highly powerful brain she can notice things other people don’t, so naturally one day while cleaning up a police precinct she solves a case and then is hired on as a consultant to help a by-the-book detective do his jobs.
   
   I know that 99% of these procedural dramas are essentially just copaganda, but this one is different because it’s essentially saying hey, cops can’t do their job unless a civilian woman helps them, which, yeah.
   
   Developed for TV by Drew Goddard, who co-wrote and directed Cabin in the Woods (one of my favorite meta horror films), this feels a lot like Psych (complimentary). It’s quippy, self-aware, silly, and heartfelt. There’s diversity! Each episode wraps up neatly with a little bow! Morgan and her detective parter, the guy who played the designer James Holt in The Devil Wears Prada, have just enough chemistry that we can play the will they/won’t they game! Morgan dresses like it’s 2008! There are lovely tender moments about parenting!
   
   This show feels like its been running for a few seasons. It’s really settled in itself, which, as a viewer offers a level of comfort you don’t often get while a new series finds its legs. I’m excited to see how it continues to unfurl. This one has staying power.

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1. According to this article

2. According to Wikipedia: Alcala was an American serial killer and convicted sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979. He also pleaded guilty and received a sentence of 25 years to life for two further murders committed in New York. He was also indicted for a murder in Wyoming, although the charges filed there were dropped.While Alcala has been conclusively linked to eight murders, the true number of victims remains unknown and could be as high as 130.

3. Hence why, despite once being fully obsessed with a particular wizarding world franchise, I now have essentially Eternal Sunshined it from my mind due to its creators bad behavior.