With its world premiere screening at this year’s FANTASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Lucía Forner Segarra’s Berta seeks to explore where very few rape revenge thrillers tread.
After patronising a female tow truck driver who has impounded his car, a man gets into the cab of her truck with the assumption that she will drive him to the impound lot to retrieve his car. He soon realises it is an elaborate ruse, and after being drugged, wakes to find himself bound and at the mercy of a woman who has undertaken a journey of revenge against the man who sexually assaulted her.
Whereas many rape-revenge movies depict the assaulted woman as becoming an emotionless avenging action star with credits rolling before audiences can get any sense of a psychological aftermath, Berta portrays the vengeful woman as not only cunning and determined, but also as anxious, unsure and realistically traumatised from her past. Nerea Barros is relatable as the epitome of every woman who has ever been harassed and assaulted by a man who can barely remember the name of his victim. And with one of the most satisfying endings to occur in this subgenre of horror-thriller, Berta is truly an authentic “good for her” portrayal of vengeance.
5 screams out of 5
Having also had its world premiere at FANTASIA 2024 , Dirty Bad Wrong directed by Eric Orofino stars Michaele Kurimsky as Sid, a sex worker who, due to promising her son a superhero birthday party, must take on and perform for a client with a particular fetish.
As the short opens, viewers are introduced to both Sid and her young son as she takes him along to a job. Protecting her son’s innocence with headphones, Sid engages with the client who, despite his initial hesitancy about the presence of her child, soon attempts to persuade her to take part in something with the promise of extra money. This scene alone shows the difficulty many working women (whether in the sex industry or otherwise) face as single mothers who for one reason or another do not have access to child care.
As Sid comes into money problems, and with the ever looming birthday party that she has promised to her child, she must take up her client’s offer. Whilst the audience are never completely privy to the act itself, by the presenting of Sid’s scars post-act, we can only assume it involves some sort of act of anthropophagy, in turn representing the consumption of female bodies, in particular that of sex workers by men. Whilst not entirely necessary, a little bit more of a focus on the act itself would have had more of a visual impact, in turn emphasising just how much Sid loves her son and the extent to which she would go for him.
Dirty Bad Wrong is a tense look at the life of a sex worker, yet avoids the judgemental stereotype of workers within the sex industry, and rather portrays them as women from all walks of life, with individual reasons for doing what they do.
3.5 Screams out of 5
Directed by Blake Simon, Faces, which had its world premiere at FANTASIA 2024, is an uncanny take on identity and the terror it can elicit as individuals navigate this world attempting to discover not only who they themselves are, but also the identity of those around them.
A creature is making its way through a group of college acquaintances, killing them, stealing their skin and assuming their identity. Through practising its mannerisms and vocal presentation, the entity attempts to fit in and find some sort of comfort in the social groups it finds itself in.
The subject of identity is a hot topic currently, particularly in the sphere of social media. Faces explores how people present themselves with an almost completely different identity depending on the situation and environment they are in. With the ever developing and changing landscape of social media sites, users are feeling more pressure to appear a certain way, sometimes as a completely different person to who they actually are, causing the world around them to question who is the actual person underneath the superficial skin that is presented to society.
Faces presents the longing an individual may feel to just belong, with gory kills and even a slight nod to gender identity and expression, and is a short which could easily be turned into a interesting feature film.
4 Screams out of 5
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