Yo the fact that most of mainstream society's understanding of trans and gender non-conforming identities has literally not progressed at all past the ideas communicated in this film about "transvestism" from the early 50s, uhhhhhhh, makes me really fucking sad.

The thing is this is, for its time, theoretically a sympathetic portrayal (and the fact that it's based at least in part on Ed Wood's own experience leads me to think this is Wood expressing some of his own feelings…

Maybe the real freaks were the cis het able-bodied white man and woman we thwarted along the way 🥰

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Sometimes the framework of horror and cinema's historic dismissal of it as a low genre allows filmmakers to make bold, powerful choices without as much censorship or restriction; represent ideas and identities in a way that feels far ahead of their time when looking back. Of course horror also often walks a thin line between representation and exploitation, but I…

So obviously this is just barely within the realms of the subtextual and is almost literally a film about being a lesbian.... But it's also INCREDIBLY GENDER. This is gonna be a bitsy review because I'm sleepy but essentially here's a list of all the shit here that can read just as much as Gender as it can Lesbians.

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The inability to be intimate with your partner for fear they will discover your Dark Secret. The need to isolate…

Okay I'm literally fully Normapilled. hundo p Norma Bates is trans, okay, she's trans, none of that "split personality" mommy issues shit the psychologist says, no Buffalo Bill copouts, this is a tragic tale about a closeted trans woman who gets taken down for being too much of a girlboss, YOU THINK I'M JOKING I'M BARELY FUCKING JOKING #GASLIGHT GATEKEEP GIRLBATES

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"We're all in our private traps... and none of us can ever get out. ... I was born…

(watched for Untitled Trans Horror Project)

I mean Mzzz Handel Fane was truly serving cunt in that trapeze leotard!! She gave everything, true fish slay the house down boots mama~

This was an interesting watch as I begin my journey through the history of trans representation in horror. Really it's far more dated in its views on race than on gender, but the way the "deception" of gender performativity is used to both perpetrate the crime and obfuscate the case…

I take no pleasure in informing you all that this movie is trans, actually, and as such belongs to me :)

I was surprised by how much I found to like in this, because it's set up like every other woods-based and/or survivalist ~elevated~ indie horror of the last five years and I was absolutely expecting to get something like The Ritual. And honestly, outside of Maika Monroe's consistently excellent acting, the first act isn't particularly compelling on its own.…

Yeah this really is a "queer" ""Gen Z"" """horror""" film written by a cis gay Gen X-er (whose one even horror-adjacent film credit is fucking Alien: Covenant), based on the one gay conversion therapy documentary he watched and the belief that Glee is still an accurate representation of what queer youth like.

It fails to be a satisfying or campy slasher because it's too busy being a tepid anti-homophobia PSA and taking itself too seriously, but it also fails to…