I Blame Society

Gillian Wal­lace Horvat’s 2015 short film Kiss Kiss Fin­ger­bang, a Grand Jury Award win­ner at SXSW, was the kind of dis­tinc­tive­ly dark call­ing card that might ordi­nar­i­ly lead to ample direct­ing offers. At least, going by the suc­cess sto­ries of so many genre-inclined film­mak­ers (most of them men), that’s what should have happened.

Judg­ing from inter­views sup­port­ing the release of I Blame Soci­ety, the micro-bud­get film that has end­ed up being Horvat’s debut fea­ture, this is not what hap­pened – and her pitch black, meta­tex­tu­al mock­u­men­tary cer­tain­ly feels like a response to this. Cru­cial­ly, it’s not a case of a film­mak­er demand­ing that we wor­ship the artis­tic genius that The Man failed to recog­nise, through the medi­um of a didac­tic fea­ture-length per­for­mance art-crit­i­cism hybrid.

What it does do is explore the var­i­ous microag­gres­sions that are ram­pant with­in Amer­i­can film pro­duc­tion, on both the inde­pen­dent and stu­dio sides, that can lead to mar­gin­alised voic­es being denied the same seat at the table as their (pre­dom­i­nant­ly) white male peers, despite the sup­posed efforts of those already at the table to be more inclu­sive. Oh, and I Blame Soci­ety is also a ser­i­al killer movie.

Hor­vat plays a delight­ful­ly dead­pan, fic­tion­alised ver­sion of her­self, a strug­gling film­mak­er slow­ly tin­ker­ing away at a doc­u­men­tary she start­ed years ear­li­er. The doc­u­men­tary was inspired by a com­pli­ment from a friend that she would make a good mur­der­er, and you can see how qual­i­ties like resource­ful­ness, prob­lem-solv­ing and con­ti­nu­ity aware­ness are present in both direc­tors and homi­ci­dal maniacs.

Gillian’s doc has already sab­o­taged one friend­ship, after she pitched a scene detail­ing how she would hypo­thet­i­cal­ly mur­der her friend’s part­ner, and it now risks wreck­ing her rela­tion­ship with her edi­tor boyfriend Kei­th (Kei­th Poul­son). Resum­ing her film with a new angle, Gillian begins doc­u­ment­ing how she pulls off a series of esca­lat­ing crimes, as research sug­gests killers build up to mur­der as the cul­mi­na­tion of a pro­gres­sion of thrill-seeking.

This coin­cides with her being called to meet with two male pro­duc­ers – but not, it turns out, to pitch projects of her own. Epit­o­mis­ing the idea of per­for­ma­tive ally­ship, these pro­duc­ers – one of whom con­fus­es inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty with inter­sex­u­al­i­ty – already have script­ed ​“diver­si­ty” nar­ra­tives they want to tell ​“with strong female leads” and ​“under­rep­re­sent­ed voic­es”, and just want Gillian to sub­mit a look book for investors.

What they’ll even­tu­al­ly receive instead is Gillian’s film­ing of a care­ful­ly coor­di­nat­ed series of mur­ders, framed as sui­cides with notes so con­vinc­ing in rep­re­sent­ing the voic­es of her cho­sen vic­tims that there’s doubt that an actu­al ser­i­al killer is respon­si­ble. She’s so good at what she does that she strug­gles to get the cred­it for it.

While a few of the slay­ings are played for telegraphed laughs, some of the slaugh­ter is gen­uine­ly dis­turb­ing as visu­al­ly framed, par­tic­u­lar­ly a sur­pris­ing­ly graph­ic organ removal. Although right­eous indig­na­tion drove the film’s incep­tion, Hor­vat is care­ful to not make I Blame Soci­ety the kind of vio­lent-but-sym­pa­thet­ic ​‘girl­boss’ nar­ra­tive, where the pro­tag­o­nist lacks cul­pa­bil­i­ty, that those pro­duc­ers would like­ly love.

I Blame Soci­ety is released 19 April via Blue Finch Films.