I often get the sense when watching a new Alice Maio Mackay movie that I’ll be seeing it in a documentary about the director in the not-so-distant future. The Serpent’s Skin, which marks the 6th feature film of the now 21-year-old Mackay, feels like the end of the first chapter, signaling the beginning of a new, even more accomplished era of her already prolific filmmaking career.
The Serpent’s Skin Continues Mackay’s Efforts to Center Transness With Empathy and Joy
Mackay opens all her films with credits informing the audience that we’re watching “A Transgender Film” (or some variation thereof), and The Serpent’s Skin is no exception. The film stars Alexandra McVicker as Anna, an endearingly shy and awkward trans woman who leaves her abusive home to live with her sister in the big city. There, she quickly hooks up with the hot neighbor, Danny (Jordan Dulieu), before meeting and falling head over heels for tattoo artist Gen (Avalon Fast, whose film Camp also played at the festival this year).
Horror movies with trans characters (especially ones played by trans actors) are rare enough already. Mackay’s superpower is bringing these characters to life with not only empathy and dignity, but also empowerment and a healthy dose of humor. Her films are infused with small details about trans life that will be largely familiar to a queer audience, always treated in a way that ensures they will come across as entirely ordinary to any cishet viewers who have somehow found themselves here. With queerness and transness comfortably established as the norm, she then shines a spotlight on trans anxieties before creating space for trans euphoria and joy.
Queer Joy Vibrates Through Every Frame of The Serpent’s Skin
This begins with Anna interrupting a hot-and-heavy moment with Danny to nervously tell him that she’s trans. Danny’s nonchalant response and Anna’s visible relief is refreshing to watch, leading to the first of several sensual sex scenes in the film, all amplified by Alexander Taylor and Eduardo Daniel Victoria’s dreamy score and the layered editing of Vera Drew.
But the most notable element of queer empowerment in The Serpent’s Skin is in the introduction of Anna’s psychic abilities. These first emerge on screen as she runs out the would-be thief holding up the record store where she’s working, leaving him bleeding from the eyes. This attracts the attention of Gen, who reveals that she possesses similar powers. They proceed to use their abilities for (mostly) good, torching a transphobic flyer with their minds and saving a woman from an attacker, before Gen inadvertently conjures a monster through a tattoo.
Mackay and co-writer Benjamin Pahl Robinson’s script has shades of Scanners, Carrie, and other psychic-phenomena films, which makes sense: this subgenre uniquely resonates with queer folks for its portrayal of people who are othered and the wish-fulfillment aspect of their powers. Like The Craft (another clear influence) before it, The Serpent’s Skin portrays these abilities with both joy and gravitas, using them as a vehicle to explore Gen’s troubled inner world. Dressed predominantly in black, she could easily be mistaken for the devil on white-clad Anna’s shoulder. But where another film might conclude that Gen is a bad influence on the quiet Anna (the Nancy to The Craft’s good-girl Sarah), Mackay offers this couple up as two incomplete halves that make a beautiful whole.
Mackay Is Just Getting Started, and The Serpent’s Skin Suggests She’s Going Somewhere Great
It’s all very wholesome, the kind of work designed to leave a queer audience smiling, and we need more of that. From a “Fuck Trump” tattoo on a cute boy’s arm to an offhand reference to Alice Cooper’s recent transphobic remarks, The Serpent’s Skin is littered with reminders of the frightening position queer and especially trans people are in right now—but, critically, it doesn’t dwell on them.
What we’re left with is a sweet and steamy sapphic romance that feels like an episode of a ’90s monster-of-the-week show shelved for being too queer. It’s also Mackay’s most accomplished work yet in terms of pacing, atmosphere, and technical prowess, but she’s clearly working up to something even bigger and better. As she continues to grow in skill and confidence, audiences in the know are in for a treat. It’s time to get in on the ground floor with Mackay because this is only the first chapter, and the next one is going to be huge.