Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut and J.T. Mollner’s thriller both feature female leads who know how to use horror tropes to their advantage
In the moralistic early years of cinema, female victims in horror and thrillers were often figures deemed worthy of punishment: prostitutes, adulterers, thieves. It was implied that if a woman put herself in dangerous scenarios, she shouldn’t be surprised to meet dangerous ends. Women have held a precarious position within serial killer movies, even from the early days of M (1931), Peeping Tom (1960), and Psycho (1960). I won’t attempt to add much to the pre-existing incisive analysis of the “to be looked at ness” of women in horror and thrillers. The male gaze quite often feels lecherous, but no more so than when that gaze motivates a troubled man into violent action. The lens of objectivity with which these women are viewed already depletes their active power, but to have their power physically jerked away from them and their physical body ultimately abused and discarded takes this to the darkest level of fear.
What I love about Strange Darling and Woman of the Hour (now on Netflix) is how attentively and surprisingly they upend these notions. While they may be easily classified as serial killer thrillers at first glance, both films present a more horrific evil than any supernatural being you can imagine. From a female perspective, the fears manifested in these films are more tangible, grounded, and possible — we unfortunately have a much better chance of crossing paths with a violent man than a vampire — and the particular way the violence is constructed in these films is so raw, visceral, and impactful that the threats feel like literal gut punches through the screen.
Despite both films taking place in the 1970s (Woman of the Hour is based on a 1978 true story and Strange Darling implies a similar era through aesthetic and cinematographic choices), they could only exist this effectively in the post-#MeToo landscape. The women at the center of these films are perhaps still morally “questionable.” We first meet Strange Darling‘s unnamed “Lady” (Willa Fitzgerald) en route to a one-night hookup with a stranger (Kyle Gallner), and several of the women portrayed in Woman of the Hour are hitchhikers or single women voluntarily getting in a car with an unknown-yet-attractive man. Even Cheryl (played by director Anna Kendrick) has opted to go on a televised dating show to meet a partner, surely not the most respectable way a woman could secure a mate!
Yet the women in both these films are not as naive as their old school counterparts — they are aware of the plight that has befallen others in their shoes in the past. In fact, both films seem almost self-referential, as though the women are acting a part based on what they know from films like the ones they are each operating within. The characters know the tropes and utilize their understanding of their “roles” as a means of survival and maybe even as vengeance.
Woman of the Hour is, on its surface, a dramatization of the real life case of serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) who appears on The Dating Game in the middle of a brutal killing spree in Los Angeles. The eponymous “Woman,” Cheryl Bradshaw, chooses Rodney as her suitor and very quickly upon meeting him realizes something isn’t right. Her choices in these vital, vulnerable moments epitomize something so many women know and are now more openly communicating about: playing nice isn’t necessarily a weak choice — often it can be the only way to survive. We have to understand the game we’re in the middle of in order to stand a chance at winning. In reference to many final girls before her, Cheryl uses her presumed innocence, gentleness, and warmth to maintain a non-threatening air and keep Rodney from realizing her growing terror.
Yet Cheryl is not the only woman in the film who has to take on traits that save many final girls. What really augments the horror of Woman of the Hour are Rodney’s previous murders, intercut as flashbacks throughout the dating show narrative. These moments are unflinchingly and brutally captured with a jarring and unforgettable realism. We get to know each of these women as more complete characters, not solely as future victims, which effectively gives more texture and dynamism to their performative choices than perhaps a male director would make room for. The women choose different masks to put on in the face of mortal terror and we watch Rodney’s reactions in real time with bated breath. The most poignant example of this is the final target (and therefore, perhaps, real “final girl” of the story) a young, homeless hitchhiker who realizes the danger of her situation earlier than her predecessors and starts spinning a tale of softness and naivete. At the very moment when many women choose to run, she chooses a kind of perverse camaraderie that could ultimately save her life.
Strange Darling is an even more complex beast. The “Lady” and the “Demon” (unnamed for reasons that become clearer with time) meet for a one-night stand at a shady motel. They agree to contain their kinky interaction with rules that allow for a certain amount of danger and violence but also allow for a safe word, should things go too far. What follows once they enter the motel is something altogether unexpected. But even this briefest of synopses (which really only covers the first 15-20 minutes of the film) make clear the particular gender dynamics at play. The “Lady” is anything but ladylike: she’s assertive, overtly sexual, and clear about her desires. She’s in fact even more traditionally “masculine” in outward personality than the “Demon.” Once it becomes clear that the Demon has no intention of following their agreed-upon rules, The Lady changes her approach. Every choice she makes from that moment on is carefully calculated to seem stereotypically feminine, yet masterfully still in charge. She knows exactly what a woman in her position should look and act like and artfully uses this knowledge to maneuver through a tense and twisted cat-and-mouse game.
So are these films horror films? Absolutely. In both cases, if the women involved were given the now-viral choice between encountering a man or a bear, they would choose the bear without hesitation. Because it is only men who’ve established their specific assumptions of gendered dominance and submission that forces women to play roles for their likability and — in the worst case scenario — survival. With a bear, we’d all be free to show our true colors right away: no games, no masks, only the powerful rage of a woman trying to live whatever kind of life she wants without fear.
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