I Blame Society: Terrific and messy movie-industry satire
Review: Gillian Wallace Horvat stars in a self-referential and sassy skewering of post-MeToo Hollywood
Film Title: I Blame Society
Director: Gillian Wallace Horvat
Genre: Horror
Is it mere coincidence that this broad, messy – and mostly terrific – movie-industry satire arrives to stream less than a week after Promising Young Woman? Nobody fresh from that all-conquering release will fail to register parallels when the protagonist here, after luring some irritating dope into her lair, reveals a stripe of vengeful bloodlust.
“Is that okay? Are you
scared of me?” Gillian Wallace Horvat (played by Gillian Wallace Horvat) says in the month’s signature tone.
, now on digital and VOD)
“I had a censored childhood, so my first truly disturbing horror experience happened embarrassingly late. I was well into my college years when I was forced to watch David Cronenberg’s
Videodrome [1983] for a class. I hated the film when I first saw it. I found the bizarre body horror irredeemably disturbing, and I couldn’t get the image of a pulsating VHS tape being inserted into James Woods’ gaping stomach out of my head. But I came crawling back a few months later and worked my way through all of Cronenberg’s ’80s/’90s canon. He’s truly a master of burning disgusting images onto your retinas for life – the exploding head in
Film-making a murderer: Gillian Wallace Horvat in I Blame Society
âIâve been trying to get a feature made since my short film Kiss Kiss Fingerbang won at South by Southwest in 2015,â says Wallace Horvat. âI would say maybe even before that, but not with many realistic expectations. I did think that after that win there was going to be more of a clear path. As in: âOh, she won at South by Southwest; maybe we should look at her stuff the way that we look at stuff from some guy that hasnât done anything yet.â I was surprised when things didnât quite happen that way.â
Promising Young Woman is a cautionary tale – feminist vigilantes don’t make the world a better place
Emerald Fennell’s divisive thriller asks of itself: can revenge ever be righteous? Let s hope some feminists don’t get the wrong idea
Vigilante: Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman
Credit: Focus Features
One of the great advantages of fiction compared to real life is that you don’t have to be fair or play nice. All of the most extreme feelings harboured by a culture can be enacted on the stage, the page or the big screen and – hopefully – received as entertainment. Indeed, fantasy is a far better place than reality to explore unpleasant sentiments and desires, the better that they are exercised (or exorcised) in a realm without consequences – apart from, that is, potential offence taken by whichever type of person is being mocked (or murdered).
The title
“Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time” (Greenwich/Kino Lorber) suggests life during the pandemic, but this haunting love story Hungary’s Oscar entry follows a surgeon who leaves the United States and returns to Bucharest, where she plans to reunite with a physician she met and fell in love with during a medical conference. That he claims not to remember her when she shows up in Hungary is but the first twist in this riveting tale from director Lili Horvát.
Also available: The acclaimed
“Acasa, My Home” (Zeitgiest/Kino Lorber) follows a Romanian family forced into city life after generations spent living off the land; that’s no typo: