Article: Thirst Trap left me parched.

Thematically, Thirst Trap is the kind of film that’s right up my alley. Dedicated to the “lost souls of Hollywood”, the film is a low-key thriller in which a failing actress, now a cam-girl, finds herself the target of a sinister stalker who has designs to murder her once the two finally meet. In terms of execution, however, Thirst Trap is a film that says the right things about the trappings of modern-day sex work but is so blunt in its message that it lacks any penetration. Film critic Stephanie Malone’s positive review of the film states that there aren’t enough films that refuse to demonise sex workers, and that films which tackle the world of online sex workers are rare. While it’s true that there isn’t a truckload of such films, the ones that concern online sex work, or have tangential themes, are executed far more substantially. 

Thirst Trap begins like a character piece. Grace Gordon plays Riley Ann, who addresses the audience head-on, breaking the fourth wall, detailing how she operates. Due to her struggles finding acting work, Riley Ann turns to camming to pay bills. She happily obtains the honest bucks from her male followers and fans. Riley's efforts to find acting jobs are highlighted in scenes with dismissive female movie executives.  Her fight to maintain a sense of balance in her work life gets lost as the film breaks off into a more conventional thriller with Riley trying to expose her anonymous stalker who watches her every move. 

While films with online sex work as the focus are perhaps not of the highest volume, that’s not to say there haven’t been entries. Numa Perrier’s Jezebel (2019) covers much of the same ground Thirst Trap touches on. However, Perrier's film uses themes of race and class to give its narrative more sensitivity. Jezebel may not be a genre piece, but it utilises the same subject matter with more earnestness, providing a richer viewing experience than Thirst Trap. King Kelly (2012) has a fame hungry teen Kelly webcamming and filming the extreme events of her life to earn c, while the chaos of her choices explodes around her. King Kelly is not a film for everyone; however, Andrew Neel's film becomes a poignant character piece once it cuts through its anarchy. However, its frantic, filmed-on-a-phone style is the perfect foil for Kelly’s fourth-wall breaking. The chaos the film inhabits quickly ensnares a viewer while also highlighting its protagonist’s troubled friendship and family dynamics. 2020s’ Sweat may not be explicitly about sex work; it accurately nails down the performative nature of social media as well as its under-researched dangers. The psychological thriller Cam (2018), mentioned by Malone in her Thirst Trap piece, is perhaps the feature which gets to grips with the issue of identity and consent around sex work. Isa Mazzei's tac-sharp script and Madeline Brewer’s kinetic performance work well in showing female intimacy and identity being dismantled via big tech and social media.  It also highlights the grind of today’s sex work: a relentless world of hyper-competitiveness and continuous one-upmanship, which gambles high reward on a fragile foundation. 

Thirst Trap wishes to be as effective as other films that have women confined within the world of modern sex work. However, director Chantal Massuh only skims the surface of the industry. While the film should be commended for its grassroots budget (with a chunk of the finance stemming from Massuh’s own cam girl work), Thirst Trap would benefit from a stronger screenplay and deeper characterisation. Massuh is smart enough not to leave Gordon’s Riley hanging out to dry as a piece of female titillation for male viewers to gorp at. Even when Riley parades around in lingerie and swimsuits, there's enough distance between audience and lead to never feel leery or exploitative. 

That said, Thirst Trap never feels strong enough in its conviction. It’s a film that name-checks the male gaze in the same way many on social media have picked up therapy speak. While the film never centres men, Massuh never really gets to grips with anything challenging to say about their supposed omnipresence. A short outdoor sequence has Riley observing a sex worker being abused by her pimp. However, the fact that the aggressor is a woman feels counterintuitive and lacks the contrast to modern cam girls who can often work independently from such men. A later scene has Renee, a stripper friend of Riley's, stay over to escape her current man troubles. The interaction between the two before Riley swiftly convinces Renee into a duo cam role is annoyingly rote. They sigh, tut and eye roll about men, but what is about the problematic men they encounter provides no real provocation. One could see both scenes mentioned being far more effective in other features, with a director like Sean Baker springing to mind. Massuh hints at a more provocative picture, with scenes of Riley fighting the validation that online clout brings, yet it never hits as hard as in the likes of Sweat or Cam. It doesn’t help that the film’s antagonist, as despicable as he soon becomes, isn’t particularly scary. The film never makes him the suffocating personification of the men Riley works to turn on.  

“I always feel disposable in this town”, an angst-ridden Riley explains, and while an obvious statement, it’s a very truthful one. The online world is a cruel and merciless beast, and Thirst Trap shows the grimness of the web melding with real life a couple of times. However, the sense of conviction seen in other examples never comes to fruition. The churn of online sex work is never truly established, with Thirst Trap never really highlighting the toll that such a line of work can take. Massuh knows the uncompromising nature of this life. The low budget has Thirst Trap constrained to one apartment block. Whether consciously or not, this is a strong decision, as it exposes one of the biggest symptoms of working from home: the inability to unplug. But despite this, Thirst Trap never really becomes the struggle that it suggests. Massuh does well not to glamourise a difficult and often misunderstood job, but she never makes it as acutely unsettling as the few other examples in its wheelhouse either. 

Thirst Trap is available to via Prime Video and Tubi

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Article: Procedural - Longlegs (2024)

I was rewatching Longlegs, and I once again found myself repeating the same two sentences: “Is Nicolas Cage in the wrong film? I think he may be in the wrong film.” I’m not a Nic Cage hater. Francis Ford's nephew is one of the only bankable movie stars still around who is allowed to make big choices in his Hollywood performances. When his performances land, they do so exceedingly well.  However, his distracting performance in Longlegs feels like one of stunt casting. A strange, bonkers performance that feels out of place in the admittedly short amount of screentime that he appears in. Despite this, when my recent viewing of Longlegs finished, I asked myself, “Who else would you put in there? Who would do such a character justice?”

Cage plays the titular Longlegs: a suspected serial killer with a disturbing M.O: The ability to have all members of the families he chooses to be grisly murdered, yet leaving no trace of involvement at the scene of the crime. The FBI are baffled at how a multitude of gruesome killings, spanning over decades, have occurred with not a hint of a solid lead coming their way. Enter Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), a dedicated yet knowingly disturbed agent who is recruited on the case due to being “highly intuitive”. This becomes a substitute for being somewhat psychically clairvoyant. Harker’s apparent gift allows the FBI to start making headway into the case. But as Harker delves deeper into the case, a connection between the killer and the agent is slowly discovered.

That dollop of synopsis may feel like too much of this police procedural is revealed. There’s more than good heft of the film’s plot found there. Yet Longlegs is a horror crime thriller that manages to be rather straightforward, yet bizarrely obscure at the same time. The film, a box-office hit when released in 2024, polarised audiences, to say the least. Nonsensical to some, yet chillingly atmospheric to others. It’s easy to dismiss, because the film seems uninterested in stitching the narrative fabric into something with more grounded logic. At the same time, Longlegs is compelling because it’s an American thriller that feels closest to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (1997); a film where rhyme and reason are at odds with its stiflingly claustrophobic mood. If the film’s oppressive ambience feels cosy enough for the viewer, they may not be too bothered with how everything is knitted together. 

I’m still unsure if the wool is still over my eyes. Director Osgood Perkins brand of horror is alluring because he has such a tight grip on the film’s environment. For a film which shoots only in wide-angle and medium shots, why do you feel so boxed in? Are the red-eyed film photographs of unfortunate family members a subtle indication of the supernatural bleeding to the surface? Maika Monroe is fascinating as Harker, an FBI agent who is the opposite of Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling. Unlike the diligent, confident Starling, Harker can barely keep things together throughout. The psychological strain is wedded onto her face so tightly that she seems to be humming with anxiety. As the narrative slowly sinks into its themes of Devil worship, sinful mothers and possession, you can sense the FBI agent pulse with tension with every ongoing moment. With Lee Harker, Perkins has added another compellingly troubled yet vulnerable female protagonist to his steadily growing list. Watching Monroe deduce, detect and wander through each meticulously composed frame is as engrossing as it is eerie.

But then there’s the Nic Cage of it all. 

Cage’s performance is so unhinged it destabilises the film's mood. He’s bellowing out T-Rex songs, but the rest of the film doesn’t seem to be harmonising with him. One bizarre scene has Cage’s Longlegs interact with a young shopgirl in a way that’s somewhat amusing yet feels more akin to Perkins’ own The Monkey (2025). Cage’s outlandishness can often be a good fit in off-kilter material. While it’s easy to laugh at the likes of Vampire’s Kiss (1988), Cage’s manic energy is a perfect foil for that film’s tone. The deranged display that inhabits films like Mandy (2018) is another great example of how to utilise Cage rage. But with Longlegs? It’s difficult to see what other casting choices could be slotted in for replacement. However, this Cage performance is like that of his ill-fated turn in The Wicker Man (2006), when you wonder what could happen if someone dialled down his love of scenery chomping. Maybe something more akin to Alicia Witt’s performance as Harker’s mother. It’s startling to see Witt, the once fresh-faced final girl of Urban Legend (1997), slowly move towards unhinged final boss, channelling Carrie White’s mom vibes. But it’s an enjoyable surprise.  

What’s more debatable is the film’s condensed finale. For some, the film's final third is the moment narrative logic cascades in on itself. A film that was steadily unravelling at the tactful pace of all Perkins' movies suddenly unscrambles in a way that feels as if the film doesn’t want you to think too much about the reasoning behind what’s occurring. Basic questions could have been answered, but Perkins is uninterested in spoonfeeding. So, Longlegs ends with a muted, uncomfortable and ambiguous climax that refuses to give typical closure, but in doing so delivers the kind of uneasy tension that horror fans such as myself are often clambering for.  In a film which markedly features images of two American Presidents, both noted for lying to the American people, the final moments of a deranged maniac cackling Heil Satan while our fragile protagonist watches despondently at a violent aftermath that she has seemingly no power to stop, it’s an illogical yet disturbing finish that rings the right note for America’s current despondent and isolated status in the world.  

Longlegs is available to buy on Amazon Video. 

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Review: Bleeding Love

Year: 2023

Director: Emma Westenberg

Screenplay: Ruby Caster, Clara McGregor and Vera Bulder

Starring: Clara McGregor, Ewan McGregor

Synopsis is here

 

Bleeding Love opens with something that’s become a familiar pattern in today’s fractured media landscape. Like many independent features of its kind, the film begins with a multitude of different film production idents. Most of them are unheard of. Such openings have become a clear example of how difficult it is to get certain movies off the ground. It certainly makes this production feel more determined.

Ironically, the dogged nature of the barrage of production labels feels correct for Bleeding Love. It is a film about drug addiction and estranged family ties. To gain a solid footing on such themes in real life tenacity is often a key component. For lead actress Clara McGregor, who also has producer, story and singer credits on the film, it’s clear that she's dying to say something in this film. And is looking for as many ways to express that.

It possibly helps that having a famous father helps. Clara co-stars alongside her dad Ewan in this good-natured and well-intentioned tale of a father who is covertly taking his daughter to rehab hours after she’s overdosed. Their fractious relationship gets quickly established in the film's opening scene where Clara’s daughter character asks her dad to pull over on the roadside so she can relive herself. It’s an excuse to flee as the girl sprints off with her father struggling to keep the pace. It’s a funny moment. Bleeding Love effectively sets up the relationship between the couple and the tone finds its footing quickly.

There’s some intriguing stuff to chew on here. Ewan McGregor is well known for his breakthrough role as Scottish heroin addict Renton in the 90s’ phenomenon Trainspotting (1996). There is a dry sense of humour in seeing McGregor come full circle. His features are now only slightly gone to seed. He finds himself in the role of a father who feels he knows better. In Bleeding Love, his role as dad comes with a keen knowledge of where substance abuse can take you. In this story, it soon becomes apparent that this parental figure has had his share of demons but is trying his best to steer that around. This road trip with his daughter becomes a chance for him to bury some of his skeletons while keeping his daughter from creating her own.

Clara McGregor as the unnamed daughter has some entertaining moments throughout the film. Her substance-addicted character is not too overzealous. However, she is perhaps too fresh-faced and striking to seem as in trouble as the film suggests. The chemistry between father and daughter is solid enough. They bounce off each other as one would expect from real-life family members.

But while both McGregors are appealing to watch, the film never gains the emotional tug that would alleviate it above anything seen before. Director Emma Westenberg is confident in terms of form. Her use of wide-angle lenses to portray flashback scenes and drug use is well utilised, and the pop aesthetic and moments of humour are enjoyable. It’s also welcoming that many women occupy roles behind the camera to produce a film that appears different from what could have been expected.  But despite Bleeding Love’s focus on its father-daughter relationship and small flights of fancy, the film is often too safe to linger in the mind for very long.  

Bleeding Love is available on Digital Platforms from 22nd July 2024

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