Shudder Saturday: T Blockers (2023)

This is the third or fourth film that I've seen from trans film-maker Alice Maio Mackay. I wish I had nicer things to say about it, and I wish I had nicer things to say about her career. Unfortunately, Mackay doesn't seem to have developed much in her first few years or film-making, although she has the advantage of youth on her side, having helmed her first feature when she was only 16 years old.

T Blockers is a film about Sophie (Lauren Last) and her friend, Spencer (Lewis Dawson), trying to survive when a parasite starts infecting local men, turning them even more dangerous than usual. There are parallels between the unfolding events and an old (lost) film directed by another trans film-maker that Sophie has been researching. 

While there are a number of interesting ideas mixed in here (trans rights, of course, but also toxic masculinity being pushed to a deadly extreme, different forms of abuse, and the value of artistic pioneers speaking to those who don't often see themselves properly viewed and represented), Mackay doesn't have the budget, nor the savvy, to make use of them as well as she should. There's inherent value in this being a trans film that speaks to the trans experience, undoubtedly, but nothing else really works. That's a real shame, because Mackay has positioned herself as someone with a very valuable platform, and I'd love to see her do something to fulfil her potential. Maybe it's already happened in one of her other features, and I guess that being able to keep making movies is the only way she can keep hold of that chance to improve until delivering something truly worthwhile.

Last and Dawson are fine in the lead roles, working hard to overcome the many obvious limitations around them, and Toshiro Glenn does well as one of the very few decent men shown onscreen. Stanley Browning is an entertaining POS, and there are a number of cool scenes showing off an artist named Etcetera Etcetera speaking directly to camera in the role of Cryptessa.

It's a real shame that almost nothing else about the film works. The standard genre elements are mishandled, bordering on incompetent at times. The blending of the story strands is clumsy, at best. Even the commentary on the trans experience, and the prejudices of those who cannot empathise with people of different sexes or genders, is disappointingly weak. The only moments I enjoyed revolved around the exploration of the "film within a film", and even that could have been improved by putting even more focus on it. 

I'll keep watching the movies made by Mackay, and I'll keep being optimistic, but I'll keep wanting more from her until she tries harder to make the most of the opportunities that seem to have been afforded to her. 

3/10

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Shudder Saturday: Carnage For Christmas (2024)

Australian writer-director Alice Maio Mackay (working here once again with co-writer Benjamin Pahl Robinson) is a ridiculously young and prolific film-maker. She's also transgender, which helps to inform and layer her filmography. It's just a shame that her talent doesn't yet equal her enthusiasm, BUT Carnage For Christmas shows how far she has come since her debut feature, So Vam. There continues to be something to be said, however, in favour of the past times when young aspiring film-makers would have more time to learn the craft as they struggled and hustled to find the funds and resources to get their films made. The worst elements of Carnage For Christmas are the ones that feel as if Mackay took the quickest and cheapest option when a bit of time and care might have reaped greater reward.

Jeremy Moinea plays Lola, a true-crime podcaster who heads home for the Christmas holiday. Heading home at that time of year can be stressful, even more so when you're a trans woman, and things get worse when someone starts a killing spree, endangering those in the present, many of them also being aware of similar killings that happened some time in the past.

It's very frustrating to see how Mackay seems content to churn out features that don't feel properly finished. The acting, the special effects, and even the plotting and dialogue all feel wildly varying in quality and half-assed. She has improved in a number of ways, mainly in the strength of the main ideas being explored, but has remained disappointingly stuck in other ways. 

Moineau is a decent lead, which helps the movie immensely. She's not the best at the actual acting, but her presence and attitude more than makes up for that, and she's someone worth rooting for as she wades into increasingly dangerous waters. Dominique Booth isn't bad, playing Lola's sister, Zarif does enough to make his few scenes work, and Tumelo Nthupi and Joe Romeo manage to stand out from a surprisingly crowded supporting cast.

It's a shame that there isn't a bit more done here to comment on the very popular true-crime podcasting bubble, although other films have already made good headway through that fertile ground, but at least Mackay uses some of the brief runtime (this clocks in at just about 70 minutes) to explore another side of the trans experience. I won't detail any more here, I don't want to spoil anything that majorly contributes to the plotting, but Mackay feels like a stronger voice when depicting specific issues that surely come from a place of personal experience.

I still have a few other features helmed by Mackay to watch, but I'm not optimistic about any of them feeling fully-formed and fully worth my time. The slight upward trajectory of her abilities have helped me become just a little bit more enthusiastic though. I'll keep supporting her for a while yet, and I'll be absolutely delighted if she one day realises that she can help herself immensely by learning to walk more steadily before trying to run.

4/10

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Shudder Saturday: So Vam (2022)

Let's rip the band-aid off straight away, quickly and with the aim to minimise any pain. So Vam was co-written and directed by Alice Maio Mackay, who seems to have made the film when she was 16. It absolutely feels like a clumsy and technically-incompetent movie that was made by a 16-year-old. That's a shame, because I really enjoyed her short from a couple of years ago, Tooth 4 Tooth (which I am now realising she must have made when only about 14, which is crazy).

I don't want to be vicious or rude to anyone involved with this film, despite the paragraph I have just written, so I will try to mention some positives in amongst the many negatives here. It's difficult though. So Vam is REALLY bad.

The main premise concerns Kurt (Xai), a young gay man who finds his life changed forever when he is attacked by a vampire. On the downside, he's a vampire. On the upside, he gains new friends, new confidence, the ability to deal with those who have been bullying him, and the powers that come with being a vampire. It's a pretty great deal, and the vampires creating their own "family unit", helping one another and accepting their "other" status, really works well as an obvious metaphor for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community finding other individuals coming to terms with their sexuality and gender views.

That's the best part of this movie, and feel free to just repeatedly read the previous sentence. The script, co-written by Mackay and Benjamin Pahl Robinson, doesn't work well when it comes to the actual dialogue, but the use of vampirism as a positive, the way vampires can be used to show any "outsider" having their chance to finally figure out just where they want to be, is excellent.

Sadly, the praise must end here. The movie then seems to do what it can to spoil the appeal of that central idea. Even at such a short runtime (it's about 70 minutes, but almost 10 minutes of that is spent showing some stage performances), it overstays its welcome. There's a lack of decent gore, the humour throughout never quite works, and the interactions between many of the characters are awful, not helped at all by a cast who deliver the most consistently dire performances I have seen in anything outwith a primary school stage play.

As they are the lead, Xai can be singled out as a prime example of the poor acting on display. The fact that I'm not going to list everyone else in the cast is down to a) me not wanting to be overly rude to the people involved, and b) me not wanting to expend extra energy on writing out a list of names of people I suspect are unlikely to carve out memorable careers in the movie industry (I could be wrong though, it wouldn't be the first time). You probably think I am exaggerating, the film can't possibly be void of ANY decent acting. I'm not exaggerating, sorry to say, and Mackay isn't savvy enough to come up with any tricks to distract viewers from her cast.

It gets one bonus point for the central idea, but that's it. I'd love to have found more reasons to praise this, (being a horror film made by, and featuring, many from the LGBTQ+ community doesn't mean that it can serve up any half-baked and amateurish nonsense) but there aren't any. I can only hope that Mackay, who has already created such great opportunities for herself at such a young age, takes some time to hone her craft a lot more before eventually working on a film that can explore an idea with much more care and polish.

2/10

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