- Director: Scooter McCrae
- Writer: Scooter McCrae
- Stars: Damian Maffei, Yvonne Emilie Thälker, Marc Romeo, Scott Fowler
REVIEW
Down on his luck, Derek (Maffei) meets up with an old acquaintance Gil (Romeo) at their friend Alan’s (Fowler) funeral. Gil tells him about the job that Alan was doing (something the audience already knows from the strong, cold open with Fowler and Thälker, which sets the tone for what is to come) before he died and that there is now a job opening. The job is testing a new futuristic sex doll that Gil’s company built. The difference is that this sex doll is designed to take physical abuse. It can bruise, welt, and looks and feels way too human. As Derek begins to test the doll, he begins to question what his humanity is.
Black Eyed Susan (playing at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival) is a strong film, especially thematically. To paraphrase the character Gil – getting to hit someone with impunity – seems to be the conceit of Black Eyed Susan – that all men have a dark side when pushed and violence is never more than a snap decision away. Running concurrent to that thought is – violence equals power and that power creates arousal. The doll, who is named Susan (Thälker), is there purely for hitting or fucking. The programming in the doll, has it goading the men into punishing it, sure it can mimic love and caring but its ultimate directive is neither of those things.
Maffei and Thälker give one hundred percent to their characters and both roles required them to be fearless and give a bit of themselves to their roles. Thälker is unbelievably good here, naked almost the entire film and having to react as an AI bot would takes some control, especially in the more intense scenes. They honestly feel like they could be an actual Al bot and not just a great performance. Whilst Maffei gives Derek an almost unyielding sensitivity that plays into the latter scenes. He is the ‘best’ man in the film (it’s not a high bar to be honest) despite having a domestically violent past history.
The score from Italian Fabio Frizzi is great, setting the right tone and mood from the get-go. Shooting the sci-fi film in 16mm (a first time for director Scooter McCrae), lends the film more intimacy. Instead of being very regimented and despite being matter of fact, the older looking images make the film more realistic despite the heavy futuristic tone.
To create discussion and ask some ugly questions is part of the reason Black Eyed Susan exists. However, the questions or the point that writer/director McCrae is asking or making isn’t exactly clear. Positing that many men have a violent streak towards women is a fair stretch, to push it even further is to say that a lot of men require violence to get hard. Susan is supposed to be the embodiment of the slutty fuck doll but with the added twist of being an AI bot that is programmed to want to be physically abused. Is this saying that apart from being attractive, being submissive and wanting to be abused, makes you the ultimate sexual partner, the more extreme, the hotter you are? Director McCrae has said the film is mainly about toxic masculinity, and that’s fair because it does live in that area but then it asks questions like if sexual behaviour has to become more and more extreme to give the same feeling, where does it stop? I understand some of the points being made but at the same time the other ideas are not formed enough and perhaps don’t dig deep enough to really get to the meat of it.
The third act reveal, and subsequent climax will polarise as well, some will see it as shocking whilst others will see it as see as a bit too easy and predictable considering all the possibilities that the film could have taken. Not as shocking as it could’ve been and certainly far more restrained than you would think, Black Eyed Susan is beautifully shot on 16mm, well-acted and well directed. It could be a challenging or triggering film for some but for me, the film is ambiguous as to what it wants to say, leaving the audience to find their own answers… maybe that is point.
Ryan Morrissey-Smith
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