From the moment Emma Benestan’s Animale begins, it is apparent that this is no ordinary fantasy horror movie. The film follows Nejma (Oulaya Amamra), a woman training for a bull racing competition. The sport is heavily male-dominated, so she is confronting the usual amount of sexism. She eventually perseveres and believes she is gaining the respect of the men on her team. She lets her guard down, and they get her drunk and take her to the middle of nowhere. Nejma blacks out and awakens with unexplainable wounds and bruises. The men she trusted make excuses, and she tries to shake off whatever transpired. However, the body keeps score. More importantly, not everything should be forgotten or forgiven. As Nejma begins to change and her memory of that night’s events starts to return, a string of gruesome murders begins to plague her town.

Animale really drives home how inhumanely bulls are treated in these sports and connects that thought to how men abuse women. However, it takes this thought further than we could have ever dreamed and gives us a werebull exacting revenge on rapists. This is such a wildly stunning take on something so traumatic that it elicits a whole wheelhouse of emotions as an audience member. Am I team werebull and happy we have a movie about femme rage? Absolutely. Do I think this is a powerful story? Of course. Am I tired of women characters getting assaulted in most of the media we get? One hundred percent. 

Emma Benestan and Julie Debiton’s script takes care not to glamorize assault and does not conflate rape with sex, which is where so many male filmmakers fail this assignment. The way the abuse is shot is not gratuitous and never lingers. I think Animale and Blink Twice are two of the best recent movies to deal with rape culture because they take care of the audience. They also understand people will pick up what has transpired without fifteen minutes of women being brutalized. Both films have faith in their actors and their scripts to convey a message free of the layer of film bro sleaze that we are typically subjected to when we watch rape-revenge films.

Oulaya Amamra’s performance as Nejma is endearing and heartbreaking. Nejma is looking for a place in the world as she seemingly has no family. Like many of us, she is in a male-dominated field and used to a certain level of misogyny, but is still trying to coexist with men who disrespect her because of her gender. So much so that she spends most of the movie trying to hold the truth about what happened to her at arms-length. Watching her figure out what the audience knew from the second the guys took her to a second location is reminiscent of Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You. It feels like being punched in the gut for the second time when she finally pieces it together. When the men who violated and gaslit her start dying grisly deaths, it is hard not to clap.

As the town begins to wonder what kind of animal is tearing apart their supposedly upstanding men, we get the surprise werebull. I love this werebull and am happy that some part of Nejma was able to exact revenge while the rest of her was still processing her trauma. This also ties together the mistreatment of animals and the mistreatment of women thread the movie has from the beginning. The majestic creatures, who she wanted to race alongside the men she thought were her friends, become the family she is in search of. They take her in as one of their own and protect her from those who would further harm her. Again, it feels weird to call this film beautiful, but it is too poignant to be called anything else.

Animale knows its audience well enough and eventually stops hinting at the werebull. The film gives us a full-on transformation as Nejma goes after the last man standing. This is terrifyingly effective and gives us just enough body horror to force us to lean even further in our seats. It is hard to not feel the bloodlust and root for her to tear him apart much like he did her. This is good for her horror at its most primal and feverish. The empathetic lens is ripped away as our plagued victim becomes a survivor and a full participant in making sure her rapist never harms anyone else. Where many movies claim they are celebrating feminine rage, Animale relishes in it. 

It cannot be stressed enough that Animale is possibly one of the best films to come out of this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. As a professionally petty person, I wish we had more movies that let women be angry without sexual assault being the trigger. However, Animale is one of the few to understand the assignment, so it is hard to be too mad at it. Plus, it gives us a werebull doing the good work, so it will forever live in my heart. 

Animale had its East Coast Premiere at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 19th, 2024.

Many horror films have tried to emulate the charismatic atmosphere of Wake In Fright (1971), but nearly all have failed. Crafting a horror film with rich atmosphere and letting its story exist as a vehicle for the vibe is hard…maybe even impossible. Between the pacing, direction, acting, set, and all other aspects, Wake In Fright set in motion (basically) its own subgenre (Wake In Fright-esque). That’s not to say films like it hadn’t existed before, but something about Wake In Fright checks the boxes for the overwhelming majority of film viewers. The first film I had the opportunity to see for the Ninth Annual Brooklyn Horror Film Festival this year was a film that wore its Wake In Fright inspiration on its sleeve.

Birdeater follows a group of Australian friends who embark on a weekend getaway for Louie’s (Mackenzie Fearnley) bachelor party. Louie’s girlfriend Irene (Shabana Azeez) is invited along for the trip, which seems out of the ordinary on the surface. As the weekend progresses, ugly truths spill and relationships become irreparably strained. Drugs, booze, and lies fuel this nearly two-hour descent into Aussie madness.

Writer/directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir set out on their directorial feature debut(s) with this highly ambitious homage. Birdeater has the bones of a great film but that’s unfortunately all it has. Rather than being a breakdown of toxic masculinity and commenting on itself, it ends up a frustrating mess of self-righteousness. When speaking with someone post-screening, they said this film was akin to someone watching Midsommar and thinking Dani (Florence Pugh) was a bitch and Christian (Jack Reynor) got the short end of the stick. It’s impossible to say why that description is apt without spoiling much of the story, but it’s impossible not to think of that conversation when thinking of this film.

If you can get past Birdeater’s shallow story, there are quite a few interesting visual elements that help it stand out from just another Wake in Fright clone. The first half of the film has an overly naturalistic look to it. Clark and Weir, as well as cinematographer Roger Stonehouse, do a compelling job of lulling the viewer into a state of constant unease. Toward the middle half of the two-hour runtime, the filmmakers start to take chances visually. Whether these chances work for the average viewer will be incredibly subjective. It’s clear this film was conceived by men. I’m not trying to virtue signal or trying to overinterpret something that isn’t there, but even a shallow watch of this film left me feeling uncomfortable. (And not in a that’s-what-was-intended way.)

When I watch a film that doesn’t sit right with me, I still try and find the positives. Visually, Birdeater was entertaining to watch. It starts slow and subtly takes the viewer on a fascinating trip through the male psyche; what’s right, wrong, and morally questionable. Besides a few interesting visuals, Birdeater ends up being a frustrating attempt at exploring the masculine mind with zero self-awareness. If that was the point, then it was lost on me (and nearly every critic that was at the screening).

The film’s overly ambiguous ending will be used as a cop-out when criticized as misogynistic. “That’s the point!” People will say. But that’s not the point. When zero of your female characters have agency beyond how their actions affect the men, it’s clear what you’re trying to say. A single pass by a female writer would have ironed out the flat female characters, and this film could have been quite enjoyable for all. Unfortunately, Birdeater may be doomed to decompose on the side of the highway.