Directed by Alice Maio Mackay
Written by Alice Maio Mackay and Benjamin Pahl Robinson
Starring: Laura Last, Lewi Dawson, Etcetera Etcetera
Unrated
75 minutes
Available on VOD March 5th

by Jo Rempel, Staff Writer

Australia, the 21st century. The not-too-distant future. While undeniably contemporary, T Blockers–Alice Maio Mackay’s latest low-budget queer slasher–feels apocalyptic. The population is left to divide itself into two camps: trans or incel. Chuds and chasers go viral: infected by a “worm” and feeding on human flesh. T Blockers is an unsubtle picture for sure: blood-spurting, head-snapping, unsparing about the spiral into patriarchal fascism. Who needs nuance in times like these?

Screen newcomer Laura Last stars as Sophie, theatre worker and struggling writer/director (not struggling in a tortured artist sort of way, just in the way that all art is a struggle). She’s trans, not an incel, and like any young urban queer, she keeps a tight circle: roommate Spencer (Lewi Dawson); bartender Storm (Lisa Fanto); and her tight-knit cast and crew. There are inklings of the outside world, always translated into the insider dialect. A radio newscaster announces new anti-trans legislation with unequivocal contempt. At the bar, drag queen Crystal (Thai Hoe Steven Nguyen) declares she’s working on a new Harry Potter-themed act, titled “JK Rowling is a Cunt.” Life oscillates between shared “chosen family” joy and numbing hedonism. Flyers for an anti-trans rally keep showing up in the bathrooms, but at least they’re treated as the invasive force they are.

Problems begin to emerge early on when Sophie goes on a date with a straight man—an outsider. A montage of small talk over the restaurant’s orange glow turns sour when Adam (Stanley Browning), the man in question, posts on chaser app “chicks with dicks” from the bathroom. Sophie has notifications in a Sun Tzu “friends close/enemies closer” sort of way. Counterplans must be made in order to avoid people who treat you as an object. Sophie and Spencer binge the heartbreak away together; meanwhile, Adam is initiated into a more sinister solidarity. A silky-voiced man takes him aside, reassuring that “she had no right to treat you that way.” Worms enter his brain, a consensual infection. Men really are a disease!

After the encounter with Adam, Sophie begins to develop a Spider-sense around the worms. It’s another necessity for living, as well as the most literal instance of T Blockers’ theme, the construction of a “knowing audience.” You’ll pick up the queer signifiers from minute one, when drag star Etcetera Etcetera functions as a cackling Ed Wood-ish Greek Chorus, setting us up for a spine-chilling tale that’s “realer than you think.” The first we see of Sophie, she’s working on a semi-autobiographical coming out story that describes that lead’s brother as an “early 20s Araki type.” Decorations for Sophie and Spencer’s apartment include a print of James Dean making a Looney Tunes face. Oh, and did I mention that the lead is a trans woman named Sophie? Signifiers are very real things. Like in-jokes and spending most of your downtime at the same bar, they are how we build recognition, hopefully community, among a crowd full of hostiles and strangers.

The film’s writer and director, Mackay shot this, her third feature, two years ago at 17, and T Blockers wears amateurishness like a badge of honour. This will certainly turn some away—I myself had apprehensions over some draggy dialogue and aggressive pastel colour grading. It was only when Adam gets slimed in green/orange chiaroscuro that I was well and truly in. I’ve seen multiple reviewers invoke giallo with regards to Mackay’s use of lighting. Personally, I was reminded of Dario Argento’s late period, especially Dracula 3D, which whittles catgut-thin the Surpiria director’s tales of sex and power. Both Dracula 3D and T Blockers, while visually resplendent in their own ways, abstain from suspense or visual trickery. Both are delightfully crass, yet in completely divergent ways: one, a masterwork in “perverted old man cinema”; the other, earnestly young and trans and ready to literally go to bat against worm-infested straight perverts.

Key to T Blockers’ urgency is the notion that no matter how much vigilante justice happens in the moment, this apocalypse has happened before and will happen again. Etcetera, who frequently pops up to thematically exposit, is actually the MC of an older local film Sophie and Spencer just found a copy of. Like Sophie, the filmmaker is a trans woman fighting a plague of worms: this film is her warning. It should come as no surprise that the last project we see Sophie work on is a reenactment of T Blockers’ events. Forgoing subtlety, Mackay transforms 21st century drudgery into pulp mythicism, urging the (knowingly queer) viewer to consider the sheer weight of the forces they fight against. What I wanted was trans-centric goop and gore, and sometimes, that’s enough. Where T Blockers surprises is in the urgency it gives such small joys.