FrightFest review – Our Effed Up World
Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay has been delivering feature-length projects in that crossover space between psychotronic video store nostalgia and LGBTQIA+ indie hangout drama since 2021, with the majority of her work scheduled at FrightFest. She has checked off a clutch of horror-SF sub-genres but developed her own distinctive style with So Vam, T-Blockers, Satranic Panic, Carnage for Christmas and The Serpent’s Skin. Our Effed Up World is sort of an alien invasion/body snatcher movie, with a couple of fresh science fiction ideas which go a little undeveloped in the brief running time (it says 67 minutes, but credits start rolling an hour in) even as the character business about effed up protaogonist Sheri (Sara Thompson) catches fire.
Mackay’s films give the impression – like early John Waters or Kevin Smith – of being made with friend groups onscreen who aren’t necessarily actors, though they’s generally well-acted. It’s a slight change here that the cast runs to veterans of Australian film and soap opera. Kerry Armstrong (The Getting of Wisdom, 44 episodes of Prisoner) and Scott Major (1167 episodes of Neighbours) as Sheri’s photojournalist gran and astronomer father bring a kind of nuance to their performances which is new in Mackay’s world – generally, Mackay’s films rely on dialogue but Armstrong and Major are good in the quiet pauses, bringing an older generation warmth and caution which sounds different notes from the younger characters. Sheri works long dull hours in a supermarket and seems to be in a limbo – still grieving for her grandmother, she resists moving on or making her mind up … she breaks up with her handsome but shallow boyfriend Harry (Joradn Dulieu) in order to spend more time with her gal/nonbinary pals, co-worker Poppy (Annapurna Sriram), video rental store proprietor Finn (Jess McLeod) and counter girl Ash (Karis Oka). She watches a meteor shower with her father – remembering her grandmother’s reminiscences of how he was enthused by the stars as a child, but unable to connect with his enthusiasms because the universe kind of freaks her out.
There’s enough here for a movie, but we also get a green meteor which affects Harry – taking him over as part of an alien species’ impersonal plan to eliminate threats on other planets, though it turns out (as in quite a few films – I Married a Monster From Outer Space, Unearthly Stranger, Under the Skin, etc) that humanity has some good and bad qualities scarce in the universe and they infect or pervert the alien’s mission. This is also good stuff for a movie, but falls a bit by the wayside. Maybe the point is that Sheri is so wrapped up in her own anomie that she doesn’t really care about the end of the world (cf: Melancholia) but that doesn’t quite jibe with how the film plays. A major element, as in most Mackay films, is z-movie cinephilia, with Finn’s inherited video store – a failing, rotting anachronism which still seems like an oasis of a hangout spot stuffed with gems like Space Rabies – as the true battleground of civilisation. If we don’t care whether Australia or Earth is overrun, it’s still terrifying to contemplate an inferno destroying that comprehensive collection of genre cinema on tape and disc … yes, even that DVD of Gothika.
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