St Vin­cent has direct­ed a hor­ror movie

Whichev­er way you slice it, there’s has been a tra­di­tion­al dearth of female direc­tors work­ing in the gris­ly world of hor­ror film­mak­ing. In a genre built around the broad notion of men mur­der­ing women, it’s a trend that can per­haps be expect­ed. And yet, in recent years it seems that the gen­der curse is start­ing, very grad­u­al­ly, to be lift­ed, with direc­tors such as Jen­nifer Kent (The Babadook), Ana Lily Amir­pour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) and Julia Ducour­nau (Raw) now at the van­guard of a swelling wave of female-front­ed movie nasties.

And 2017 sees that good work being con­tin­ued, as the trail­er for new anthol­o­gy hor­ror film enti­tled XX has been dropped ahead of its world pre­mière at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val. It boasts a host of female tal­ent behind and in front of the cam­era, with the likes of Annie Clark (aka St Vin­cent) mak­ing her high­ly antic­i­pat­ed direc­to­r­i­al debut along­side such vet­er­ans as Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invi­ta­tion), Jen­nifer Lynch (Chained) and Jovan­ka Vuck­ovic (The Cap­tured Bird).

This film’s mis­sion state­ment is as a con­scious fem­i­nine reclaim­ing of the hor­ror genre, from the trag­ic, sex­u­alised vic­tims to the insti­ga­tor of ​‘Four Dead­ly Tales by Four Killer Women’. Despite being Clark’s first time behind the cam­era, her music has always amply con­veyed her orig­i­nal, female-focused, avant-garde sen­si­bil­i­ties, and so there’s rea­son to be very excit­ed about what she pro­duces. And this first trail­er gives some nice lit­tle snip­pets of what blood-flecked delights we should expect come the mid­night hour.

LWLies 107: The Sin­ners issue – Out now!