CONTENT WARNING: now, before i begin this post, i am going to let you know that there is a bit of talk of a few heavy topics including, rape and sexual assault. if you're not into all of that, please stray away from this post. otherwise, read on.

however, what i didn't think about during my class discussion is that regardless of the fact that people may find these acts abhorrent, they still happen. some people refuse to acknowledge that rape is a crime and more than often, rapists are not held accountable for their actions. people know that murder and theft is bad, but you don't see police officers asking survivors of attempted murder about what they were wearing or how much they were drinking during the time of their attack. they're not asking someone who's been robbed why they were out so late. both of which were questions people asked me after i confided in them that i was assaulted.

people know that rape is bad, but it still happens every single day and there are so many real-world people with excuses about why it happens, which is why i began to question my opinion about rape-revenge films after i'd be assaulted. there are no excuses for rapists in rape-revenge films. there is only justice. like in this film. like in last house on the left. like ms.45. like in american mary, revenge or m.f.a, and most importantly, in emerald fennel's promising young woman (all of which were directed by women - yay!). in rape-revenge films there are clear heroes and villains. there are clear crimes and there are clear punishments for those crimes. there's never really a question of what these women are doing as much as it is a question of how far they will go in the name of justice, how many more people will they implicate and if they are taking care as to not get caught. moreover, all of these acts fits into a filmic formula that audiences are familiar with and moreover, can relate to as a forbidden fantasy of sorts due to the fact that things aren't so generally so cut and dried in reality.

but, what if they were? what would we, then, have to say about these kinds of films? and moreover, is there a good way to go about making these kinds of films when there hasn't been a cultural and systematic shift towards our reactions to real world survivors?

in her review of promising young woman, jourdain searles also asks this question to her readers: "if rape is a systemic issue with an entire culture designed to protect it, how fresh can a one-woman-against-the-world narrative actually be?" in the review she talks about how in promising young woman, cassie (carey mulligan) isn't trying to change the system because it had already failed her. it is also my belief, that this is, too, where the genre fails because in a majority of these films, the women are taking the law into their own hands because they, too, know that the system will fail them or maybe it already has, so there is really no point in trying to change it. in m.f.a, like cassie, noelle (francesca eastwood) has a similar reaction when she tries to change the system peacefully by joining coalition of women who use hashtags to advocate for survivors and push universities to give out color-changing nail polish to their female students. noelle goes off on the women in the club, stating:

"what if we're not prepared? what if we have a drink? what if we wear high heels and we didn't learn taekwondo? what if forgot our rape whistle at home or we didn't paint our nails with color-changing nail polish to check if our drink is drugged? then we just get raped?"

to which they tell her, "at least we're doing something” and noelle goes off to become a vigilante. sure, its helpful, but its a noticeable element in rape-revenge films by women that the survivors question the system and ask both themselves and the audience if what the systems present as a solution them is enough. this isn't to say that all rape-revenge films need to be questioning rape as a systemic issue, but i think its largely important to think about why they don't and if that's something to discuss.

in the case of promising young woman, it is a film that attempts to reinvent the genre by tackling the issue of rape culture by as searles states, it falls short by ditching those aspects to stick to elements that fans of the genre would be familiar with - namely by way of its ending. moreover, the kind of ending that revels in the self-imposed and often short lived victories of the main character. while i won't be spoiling the ending of promising young woman, i think the film gives cassie's character more agency than we're accustomed to seeing in these films. the film is preoccupied not with cassie's actions, but in how far she is willing to go and what that will do for her. it clearly states cassie's plan for revenge is not based in blind rage alone and dedicates time to the shift in her identity as she becomes more engaged with her plans for justice. cassies cares about what could happens to her, yet she accepts that things could go poorly and thus, prepares herself for that. whether or not we agree with what happens, its a decision that cassie consiously makes for herself, so we don't need to agree with it as much as we wonder if it was worth what happens to her.

i'm still juggling this myself, but i do also, again, wonder whether there's a better answer for this when we're also still actively fighting to end rape culture. take law and order:svu, for example. if you think about it, the show functions a bit like a rape-revenge film in terms of its ethics. there are, again, clear heroes and villians in terms of the crimes presented in them. survivors are still the hereos and are met (for the most part) with compassion and validity. rapists are the villians and met with (again, for the most part) condemnation. instead of the survivor taking justice into their own hands, we follow them as they attempt to work their way through the criminal justic system, which acts as a friend to them until the final verdict. sometimes sentences are granted and sometimes they are not, which, unlike the fantasy of rape-revenge films, is the aspect that actually reflect the current state of our culture. 

on the newest episode of the show titled "the long arm of the witness", the court proceedings went quite differently that i expected. typically, you can tell whether or not the rapist is going to jail. in this case, i truly believed the man was going to get off easy because they made it a point to emphasize that the key witnesses were refusing to tesify and that without them, he would be found not guilty. as usual though, things turn around and he ends up taking a plea deal. however, in the last few minutes of the episode, the judge asks if the defense was satisfied with that. the survivors and their atternoy state that they are, but the judge states that she isn't and actually sentences him to jail, which, of course, delighted everyone, including me. however, as with the ending of these rape-revenge films, its a short lived celebration because that one decision does very little to change the entire culture. while we can hope that case can act as an example for the kinds of changes that need to happen, the key word in that statement is: hope. the reason you don't see many films about people seeking justice through the criminal justice system is because it is unlikely to happen as rape is unfortantely an easy crime to get away with. for now, as a society, the only comfort for many suvivors, like myself, is being able to watch films like m.f.a, promising young woman and even i spit on your grave, because it allows us to exist in a world where people are actually held accountable for their crimes and for that, its what makes these films worth discussing.

in 2015, i vividly remember going to see unfriended at midnight when it came out. i had just gotten off a very late shift at [redacted], so I drove furiously down the street to the theater, slammed my credit card down on the AMC ticket counter, and huffed and puffed my way into my seat. (middle row, dead-center, period). i remember sweating profusely as i unwrapped my scarf and threw my coat into the seat next to me and propped my feet up. unbeknownst to me, before i almost committed vehicular manslaughter to get there on time, there were possibly only 5 other people seeing the film. the aforementioned huffing and puffing occurred because i thought that i was seeing a masterpiece and wanted to get there early to get a good seat. even though i frequently went found myself in catastrophically empty theaters to see b-movie horror classics like cabin in the woods, you're next, the possession, and shark night, i really thought that unfriended was going to be different. 

why? because it was found footage.

now i love found footage horror. i will continue to love found footage horror for the rest of my life because trust me, its evolving. it will come back and i am not talking about with some unfriended sequel....(unless?) however, i saw a video where someone mentioned that found footage horror in the 2000-2010s had the impact that slashers did in the 80-90s and i think this is an impeccable point to be made.

when you think about the 80s and 90s horror, most of the films that come to mind are probably slashers. sleepaway camp, the burning, prom night, house on sorority row, april fool's day, happy birthday to me, scream, i know what you did last summer. these were all very popular movies of the time and even though they all kind of bleed into one another (hahaha, get it?), the genre kept them coming out in different shapes and forms almost to an excess. seriously, most slashers of that time generally have the same murderous-revenge plot and the same paper-thin characters, but there's something about sticking to a formula that the anal retentiveness in me has to appreciate. there's also something in the "yes queen, give me nothing" energy that these films give off by literally doing the same thing with a different setting that i also just HAVE to appreciate. and that was all fine and dandy until the early 2000s-to-mid-2010s when we got a taste of different kind of horror: found footage horror.

i know that when you began this post, your mind probably went to the blair witch project rather than unfriended. now i can sit and talk to you about how prolific of a film the blair witch project was (because it was), but i won't. i will, however, tell you why they work. as a known mumblecore fanatic, my fascination with the found footage genre doesn't just stem from its shaky camera aesthetics and naturalistic dialogue, it stems from the fact that anyone can do it. now, i won't say that anyone can make a "good" found footage film, but pretty much anyone can pick up their phone and make a movie like this. there's something so wonderfully, unnerving about a film where you don't know where the evil is coming from and you don't know who's doing what because its all coming from the perspective of a crappy camera, phone, tablet or computer screen and so, we're just as limited with our scope as the characters in the film are.

the reason these films work is because there is this sort of forced intimacy and voyeuristic appeal that found footage films have because we, as the audience, such this limited perspective and in order to figure out what's going on, we have to find it for ourselves. we're constantly looking for clues alongside the characters. we're constantly on-edge because there's not really a linear or coherent story to be told and its our job to sort of piece together what's been left by these people, which in turn, makes us empathize with them. unfriended is filmed entirely from a laptop, so my nosy ass was snooping all around her desktop as much as i could between takes to learn more about the main character. i was looking at her spotify, her emails, and notifications just as much as i was watching the actual action of the film because that's how you have watch a found footage film. it's essentially learning through investigation and that is innovative.

moreover, i think i personally am also really a sucker for these films because as a kid because they really had me wondering if they were, in fact, "based on a true story." now, i will, again, admit i am a bit of a sucker overall. i believe most people when they tell me things. a friend of mine told me they saw 2015's the walk, a dramatized version of the man who walked between the twin towers on a tight rope, and told me the film ended with him starting his walk and the film fading to black and cueing up a title card that read: september 11, 2001.

AND I BELIEVED THEM.

WITH MY WHOLE CHEST.

so, of course, when 15 year-old me sees a film like paranormal activity and it says it is "based off a true story", i'm going to believe it. however, like with the slew of slashers in the 80s-and-90s, once blair witch hit if off in 1999 and paranormal activity blew up in 2007, it was only normal that these kinds of found footage horror beats hit the scene. and i'm not just talking about the paranormal activity sequels either. i'm talking about unfriended, cloverfield, the sacrament, creep, grave encounters, devil's due, the gallows, silent house, the devil inside, the last exorcism- type films. and if we're going even further, we can also talk about films like (while not exactly supernatural in nature, but are still prevalent of the time) V/H/S and the den. and while i don't think these films are the best things ever made, i think they do tap into something quite unique that was really ahead of its time when they came out.

when the blair witch project was released, society was just getting used to the internet and with the rise of the internet, came the rise of obscure snuff films and home-movies that people were uploading onto the internet. and with that came this fear that not only could these people gain access to your online presence and thus, your irl presence, as a result, but that the whole world could with the click of a button. the blair witch project marketed itself on that fear and executed it with the technique rooted in reality (found footage) and its what these other films are trying to emulate and some of which, do quite well.  

V/H/S does this by way of actual home-movies that prey on the sort of fear one got from watching the slenderman marbles hornet tapes that were also quite popular at the time. the den does this by way of exploring our fear of the unknown on the world wide web, or, moreover, the dark web and who's lurking on there. i guess, i will also bring up megan is missing, which is gaining momentum right now on the internet for some strange reason, which also served as a sort of scary warning against talking to strangers online. i saw that film in 2011 and was barely a teenager, and it scared me  because i very much so frequented random chat rooms and was known as the one and only girl who would show their face on omegle at slumber parties.

like i said, these films were ahead of their time. and i think it would be a waste to not  mention how found footage filmmaking has extended itself towards other films like chronicle,end of watch, searching and project x, three films that i find revolutionary in terms of filmmaking because they took this concept (i refuse to call it a gimmick) and sort of flipped it on its head and did something different and just, cool. one of the strong suits of found footage filmmaking is how adaptable it is. a lot of people will say that is due to its profitability, which is probably true. these films are dirt cheap to make and churn out, but that does not lessen their quality.

honestly, i am ready for a found footage rom-com (one of which, i may have to make myself).

warning: i'm going to talk about a film that absolutely no one saw or gives a damn about. last year, around january, there was a film that snuck past everyone called escape room. now, there was not a single person who say this film  and thought that it was doing something special (myself included), because it was one of those horror films that comes out during  "dumb month" season. this "dump month" consists of really terrible horror that most studios have little-to-no hope for in terms of profit. whether it be weather, the lack of spending due to the holidays or the distractions of the Oscars, Golden Globes and the Superbowl, people just don't seem to go out to the movies as much in january and feburary, so to fill up slots, theaters fill up with low budget, b-horror, dump films like escape room.  however, again, while absolutely no one had anything to say about this film, i am here to tell you today, that was a lie. 

it was all a lie. i have things to say!

escape room is a film about a group of people who meet in order complete an escape room and win $10,000. once they're in the room, they realize that the room is, in fact, more complicated than they thought and they have to work together to solve the puzzles or they will die. and while i don't really care about the plot or a majority of the characters, it was engaging enough to keep me interested while completely sober. moreover, the specifics of one character kept me interested and that is the one Black girl in the film. a Black girl who survives till the very end, i might add!

thus, enter, zoe (taylor russell). zoe is a bright-eyed and overly anxious physics student. she, like the many others, was invited to the escape room for the chance to win $10,000. she, also like the others, was brought there because she survived a disaster and the nasty individuals that brought them together decided it would be fun to see these lucky survivors duke it out for some coin. in the end, *spoiler*  she makes it out alive! and while this shouldn't surprise me, it does. the history of horror has a bad track record in keeping its Black characters alive. this track record especially extends itself towards Black women who act as side characters that barely get enough screen time to warn the main characters of whatever impending doom that is coming their way. however, what interests me most about zoe is not only is she Black and lives, but that zoe is the "final girl" of escape room because she uses her wits and smarts to get her out of the sticky situation she's in.

traditionally in horror, there is usually one character left to face off against the villain of the film. whether it be a single person, a group of people or even a monster of some sort, after everyone has been picked off by the villian(s), there's usually one person left to defeat the evil, and more than often, they're a woman. this concept was coined in 1992 by carol j. clover in her book men, women, and chainsaws: gender in the modern horror film and its a phenomenon that's stood the test of time. in the book, clover describes the "final girl" as sexually unavailable or virginal. she avoids drinking and drug usage as well, which are behaviors that help her stay alive throughout the film. while her friends are off doing drugs and drinking and having sex, the "final girl" is alert and aware of her surroundings and the impending evil coming after her. clover also writes that this is how the "final girl" operates as the "investigative consciousness" of the film. 

we, the audience, follow the film through the eyes of this intelligent and curious person and as she moves forward, so does the plot of the film. one of clover's theories behind why this trope exists is voyeurism through audience identification. the horror genre is very male-oriented and, thus, forcing male audience members relate to and empathize with female characters seemingly puts women at the forefront of a genre they've both been exploited by and denied access to. horror, on the surface level, is often a genre that actually glorfies violence against women for the sake of entertainment. the "final girl" subverts that by making the viewer (namely men) view violence from the perspective of a victimized women and thus, making them empathize with her agaisnt the killer .however, while the trope does seemingly stand as a symbol of female empowerment, it does raise several questions about what kinds of women are allowed to be "final girls" in the first place??

now, i'm not going to talk about the phallic argument to talk about how women in horror are constantly being penetrated by objects by the killer to talk about how sexist this is.so, i've sat through enough lectures on horror to understand that man holding knife + conservative, virginal woman = sex through violence. so, we're not going to do that, but i will say that while the genre is built around fomulae and symbolism like this. in wes craven's scream, (an OG horror classic) our favorite film buff, randy (jamie kennedy) breaks down the rules as following:

   1.  sex = death (meaning, if you have sex, you are distracted and thus, you will die. however, this idea comes also from a very conservative mindset in order to deter women from having premarital sex.)

   2. drinking (or drug) = death (same difference. if you do these things, you're distracting yourself)

  3. never say "i'll be right back" (you won't)

of course, half the people that randy is explaining these rules to are drunk and therefore, are written away or will pass away throughout the movie. however, its important to note that even though randy states that these are the rules, these are rules that are forever being reinvented as horror becomes more modern.

not only does the "final girl' of scream actually have sex and live to tell the tale, but in 2014's it follows and 2015's the witch, our "final girls" use their sexuality to their advantage in order to defeat the evil oppressing them. moreover, in scream, sidney (neve campbell) talks about how unlike the typical "final girl" she is. i mean, most of them are bookish and quiet and sidney is that to an extent, but she does fully punch a bitch in the face. hell, sidney even fully shoots the killer again after they're on the group because she fears they may come back. moreover, in 2019's ready or not and 2011's you're next, we have two women who are actively hunting the people after them. this is, again, unlike the women of before who are simply just trying to get away. in 2019's midsommar, dani (florence pugh) is the only one that questions the behavior of the cult and moreover, ends up falling in align with them and murdering her fuckboy boyfriend. 

good for them, right? but where does that leave Black women?

and so, this is why zoe is so important to me. zoe is Black. therefore, she is not the traditional "final girl." while we're getting better in terms of making the final girl less like the perfect, preppy, little white girl we've seen time-and-time again in horror, it is evident we still have a bit of a ways to go. Black characters are typically written off and typecast as "strong" and "funny", but in horror they are usually the first to go. this is because they're typically seen as disposable and violence against them isn't treated with the same urgency and intensity of that of white characters.  this reflects real world issues of violence against Black women and how violence against Black women is met with memes, jokes and mistrust (i.e: what happened with megan thee stallion when she was shot). Black women in horror are more likely to be used as an lesson for the actual "final girl" rather than actually getting to survive the horrors alongside her. 

and then we have 2019's us. in us, we have adelaide (lupita nyong'o), a dark skinned Black woman as the final girl. the film has a lot to say about race, class and the intersections between them, but it does so in a way, that, like the "final girl" trope as a whole, we question where our loyalties lie. SPOILER ALERT. (AS IN I AM ABOUT TO SPOIL ALL OF THE 2019 FILM US, SO IF YOU DIDN'T SEE IT, GO AWAY AND WATCH IT OR GET SPOILED):

the film is about adelaide and her family being hunted by a family that looks exactly them. while we are obviously rooting for them to survive, the twist of the film reveals that the adelaide doppelganger is actually the real adelaide and that the women we follow throughout the film is an actual member of the murderous family. the family is revealed to be a group of government clones called the tethered and they live underground. the adelaide we follow in us initially lured the fake one into the tethered underground as a child and trapped her there and took her spot. there, she made her way in the world and found success and happiness in a nice suburban neighborhood or what she deemed to be the epitome of success in america (which she's not wrong even though the american dream is mad wack). but this life was not one that could have been afforded to her underground, so she instead took it and she's not entirely in the wrong for this. she saw something was unfair and she fixed it. although it was at the extent of young adelaide's childhood, you can see where she's coming from in simply wanting a chance to survive. much like the real adelaide is simply trying to right that wrong by coming out of the underground and take back the life that she had stolen from her in the first place.

the very ending of the film, instead of having her just get away, instead of us wanting to hate her, instead of rooting entirely for her, challenges us to consider both adelaides' motives, making her both villain and victim, which is much more complex than many of the white final girls have been in the past. as for escape room, zoe gets away and unlike the other final girls, she' excited and ready to continue the fight. she's been changed by the wild events of the film and she's not going back, but the transformation is impeccable to see because most Black girls, final or not, aren't giving the chance to be vulnerable and anxious to begin with.

 however, i mean, while i'm not going to the theatres anytime soon, but i may have to rent escape room 2 on amc on demand because....it kind of hit and i'm all here for Black characters getting to finally make the sequel for once.

"we’re afraid that we will never escape our past. we’re afraid of what the future will bring. we’re afraid we won’t be loved, we won’t be liked. and we won’t succeed."

starring: saoirse ronan, laurie metcalf, timothée chalamet
written by: greta gerwig
directed by: greta gerwig
release date: november 3, 2017

there's a lot to get behind in greta gerwig's directorial debut, lady bird. from the hedonism that derives from the film's sunny sacramento setting to the feelings of uncomfortability that arises from seeing the monster that is adolescence take yet another victim, it's obvious that gerwig has penned a deeply personal film.

lady bird is largely an introspection to love, life, family, and california living. when we meet our titular lead, lady bird (saorise ronan), she is in her final year of high school. she wants to leave sacramento and move to far away to new york or new hampshire, "where writers live in the woods." although she presents herself as strong-willed, tough and certain about her environment, her future and the people she surrounds herself with, we know that this is all a facade. though she does not realize it, in all of the encounters that she has, most importantly those involving her mother, she's unconsciously becoming a different person in every scene. the lady bird we meet at the beginning of the film is significantly different from the lady bird in the middle of the film and ultimately, the same goes same for the newest version of herself that appears at the end of the film. "my name is lady bird", she demands from her nagging mother, played by laurie metcalf, "call me Lady Bird like you said you would." her mother ignores these pleas and lady bird throws herself from the car. however, this act of defiance is completely different from the reaction that we see from the end of the film when she calls her mother to apologize from new york. the childish, impulsivity of throwing herself from a moving car also differs vastly from her actions in the middle of the film that involve her her passive-aggressively telling her mother that she would pay her back all the money it cost to raise her and leave her alone. 

but while so many people like condemn lady bird for her behavior, we have to remember, she's a teenager. she's naive, thoughtless and, selfish, but who wasn't this way when they were her age? we, as viewers, can roll our eyes and laugh as she relentlessly pursues kyle, the neighborhood fuckboy who refers to cell phones as tracking devices. we do the same as she contiguously tries to impress a popular girl in her grade by lying about where she lives. however, these events, while they may not have exactly happened to us, have a certain element of truth to them and in turn, they resonate with us because we were once teenagers, too. we just happen to know better now. however, as life tends to do, shit happens and the very thing that we were chuckling at, now has us holding back tears. there's sadness and disappointment that follow lady bird's eventual relationship with kyle. we feel the same tinge of sadness as the popular girl ultimately ditches lady bird when she finds out about her deception. but these instances move past us as quickly as they came and we're left to follow lady bird continue on her journey to rid herself of her sacramento roots. 

but while lady bird's identity is seemingly built around knowing who she is and what she wants, she still has a long way to go before she is fully able to understand the world around her. her biggest struggle is not in her desire to leave sacramento, but in how she fails to realize just how much the people around her have touched her life and vice versa. "do you like me," she asks her mother during a thrift store shopping excursion. "Of course, I love you," her mother retorts frankly. "no, but do you like me?" lady bird continues. The scene ends without her mother answering her question and it's honestly the most dynamic moment of the film, which is a tragic contrast against the fact that they were bonding over a dress just moments earlier. of course, lady bird's mother loves her, but she never admits this.their back-and-forth dynamic is a major catalyst for the changes that lady bird goes through as she unconsciously tries to please her mother, who doesn't want her to go, and save herself growing comfortable and becoming just like her. In the end, she's given the space to step out of her mother's shadow to fully find herself, but the film suddenly ends before we can see what this process will look like. it's a bittersweet moment, but it is also one that makes us question the progress she's supposedly made. does lady bird really know who she is at the end of the film? perhaps that just what she wants us to believe and perhaps it's what we want to believe about ourselves as well.