Bystanders
Directed by Mary Beth McAndrews
Written by Jamie Alvey
Starring Brandi Botkin, Bob Wilcox, Jamie Alvey, Garrett Murphy 
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour and 22 minutes 
Available on VOD 21 January 

by Jill Vranken, Staff Writer

CW: sexual assault

“Take a breath, I need you to take a breath, okay?”

Even as an avowed horror fan, there are still some parts of the genre that I am afraid to touch. The rape-revenge subgenre is one of those parts, mainly because in the current landscape of the world, it feels like I’d be touching a very raw nerve. But I am nothing if not a vocal subscriber to the theory that horror can provide a safe space to work through your own fears and, perhaps, come to some sort of catharsis. And Bystanders, the directorial debut of Dread Central’s editor-in-chief Mary Beth McAndrews, delivers you catharsis in spades.

A teenage girl runs through the dark woods at night. She’s frightened, desperate. From a distance we can hear braying frat boys shouting gruesome, vile things. The girl reaches the side of the road. Panicked, she flags down a car, which mercifully stops.

Eighteen hours earlier. We meet Clare (Jamie Alvey, who also wrote the script) and Gray (Garrett Murphy), two very loved up average millennials who are due to head to a wedding later that day. We also meet Abby (Brandi Botkin), a shy, sweet teen who is getting ready to go to a party with her friends Brie (Callie Kirk) and Ellie (played by director Mary Beth McAndrews). Having been promised some time with her crush, an entitled rich frat boy named Cody (Bob Wilcox), Abby and her friends make their way to the cabin in the woods where Cody and his friends are waiting.

But Cody’s plans for the party are distinctly more sinister than he has let on, and when Abby comes too after having blacked out, she quickly realises the horrifying truth: she and her friends have been drugged and brutally sexually assaulted. They are taken outside, where Cody and his snivelling friends reveal that they plan to hunt the girls into the woods. Abby, already having lost Brie and Ellie along the way, runs for her life. It is then that we come back to the opening of the movie–it is Abby who flags down the car, and it is Clare and Gray, on the way back from the wedding (with Clare having just revealed that she thinks she’s pregnant) who are behind the wheel. What follows is the forming of an unlikely alliance between the three, as the couple vow to protect her…and take revenge.

Alvey first got the idea for Bystanders in 2016, following the highly publicised People V. Brock Turner case. She finished the first draft of the script in 2017 and spent the next few years diligently working on it, improving it, influenced by her own experiences with PTSD and her rage concerning rape culture and toxic masculinity. Watching her, in character as Clare, tear both verbal and physical strips off of the evil gang of frat boys, was nothing short of a revelation. Her chemistry with Murphy’s Gray (who, yes, I will be making a shrine to, what a dude) is one of tenderness and fierce love, and Clare’s immediate determination to help Abby, in a strange way, made me feel safe as a viewer. 

The gang of frat boys, led by the repellant Cody, feel at once over the top and frightfully real. Wilcox as Cody particularly has one brief moment where he’s in full charmer mode to Abby, complimenting her, being sweet with her, and offering her a drink (which, unbeknownst to her, he has roofied only moments before). Once Abby has woken up from the resulting black-out, he is fully a mask-off monster, and it’s chilling to hear someone speak the way he speaks to Abby. 

Botkin is also seriously impressive as Abby, especially later in the movie when she’s running on adrenaline, rage, and the kind of horrendous agony of a body that’s processing intense trauma. It’s an intense physical performance; she shivers, she seethes, and, once she knows she is in safe hands, is determined to take revenge. You want her to get that revenge, but you also desperately want her to be okay. 

McAndrews, herself a survivor of assault, has said that making Bystanders–while not easy, as it made her confront her own experiences head-on–was cathartic and healing for her and that she hopes the movie can maybe help at least one person to feel seen and understood. That intention is interwoven throughout the movie, and my hope for you is that if you decide to watch Bystanders (which, you absolutely should, it is a banger), that you feel like you are in safe hands, hands that will give you a kind of gory, glorious catharsis. 

Need more convincing? Three words: Chekov’s Bathtub Cocktail. I’ll leave you to discover what exactly I mean by that.

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