Review of Assassination Nation (2018) by Hal S — 22 Sep 2018

This film is Heathers meets The Craft meets Kill Bill, with of-the-moment visual and political references that, even if extremely camp, are visceral enough to snap viewers out of their apathetic reverie for at least its two hour duration.

I see critics saying that the movie takes on too much too cattily, but I think that the horror aspects of this movie perfectly lean into how white men easily tip over the line into monstrosity and how teenage girls are subjected to terrifying social controls and violence on a regular basis.

The end of the movie is both edge-of-your-seat suspenseful and extremely scary, but the characters at the movie's heart don't die. Hari Nef rules and is a genius and her character is a shining and exciting example of a trans girl in popular fiction who understands herself and is brimming with confidence and finds strength in her friends.

Just as with the other girl characters, is threatened w death but don't die and they all kill some evil men. The camera does linger inappropriately on violence against women subjects in a way that reminds me of fire walk with me but the writing and the acting are super super strong and the girls talk to each other in a way that's like , extremely realistic and how teens actually talk, and it's over the top camp and sexualized and apocalyptic while still being really on the nose in terms of the current political atmosphere in the u.

S / the way men and boys are evil and consistently harm the teenage girls they claim to desire to protect.