Content warning: the following review and film assets contain graphic depictions of abuse and nudity.
I steeled myself a little before watching Scooter McCrae’s new movie Black Eyed Susan. Presented as one of the most transgressive movies in the Fantasia lineup, I tried to ready myself mentally. I’m certainly used to all sorts of disturbing content, being a horror fan, but not being that familiar with McCrae’s work – this is his first feature in 21 years – other than by reputation I didn’t really know what to expect.
Derek (Damian Maffei), a down-on-his-luck Uber driver who’s reduced to dumpster diving and living out of his car takes on a job working for his old scientist friend Gilbert (Marc Romeo) who needs a beta tester for a new product. This product is an AI driven cyborg (the eponymous Susan, played by Yvonne Emilie Thälker) that can be peddled to men with a particular kink for harming women. It can’t walk, but is strikingly realistic with skin, hair, and a personality of sorts. Susan can egg on it’s ‘master’ to both vanilla sensual experiences and more extreme, violent ones, both with startling fidelity. It can even show bruising and lasting damage when struck, and feels (both in the context of the film and while watching it) just a little too close for comfort. So discomforting, in fact, that the last guy in Derek’s job met a violent end. When Derek himself starts to have misgivings, perhaps after finding out some difficult truths about himself, it becomes clear that Susan is only the beginning.
Black Eyed Susan’s closest neighbor is Franklin Ritch’s The Artifice Girl, in which an AI is trained to bait child predators online using the image and voice of a young girl. Both films force us to confront the harsh question of what makes something obscene or abusive, and whether that can truly be applied to what is effectively a sophisticated object that isn’t ‘real’. Especially in 2024, the idea of where artificial ends and intelligence begins is a compelling one, and one which is made even more critical in an extreme ‘what if’ scenario like Black Eyed Susan. The abuse of Susan, even if we resign ourselves to the idea that they are a machine, is a difficult concept to even think about, much less see depicted when the victim, if it can be called that, takes the form of a realistic human. Each time you see Derek violently lash out at Susan for sexual gratification is agony, but McCrae goes there and, in the second half of the film, takes the concept even further. At the exact moment you begin to accept or feel comfortable with the film’s conceit, it goes to another, even more extreme level. The reveal is not exactly unexpected, as it’s a question you’ll probably be pondering at some point during Black Eyed Susan’s runtime. Basically, if Susan exists and becomes popular, then what next?
Unfortunately, the budget (or lack thereof) behind Black Eyed Susan shows through in nearly every scene. I was warned that the film was minimalist in production so I wasn’t expecting an MCU or Christopher Nolan outing here, but I feel that the execution fell even short of those expectations for me. The acting from the male leads is just okay, bolstered mainly by a very good performance from Thälker that buoys everyone with whom they share a scene. But the combination of the often wooden acting, stilted dialogue, and the sexually explicit language and imagery shot on Super 16mm is giving 90’s Cinemax when the powerful ideas behind Black Eyed Susan deserve more.
There is a lot of potential in the ideas brought forth in Black Eyed Susan. It furthers the conversation about artificial intelligence and identity in a tantalizingly provocative way. As much as I was warned about the extreme content in the film ahead of time, I was unfortunately preoccupied for much of it (basically whenever Thälker wasn’t onscreen) thinking that the project could be so much more. Perhaps it’s not polish it needs, especially given Black Eyed Susan‘s salacious tone, but some sense of style or a particular aesthetic. That’s not a decision in my hands, but it feels consistently missing a visual or tonal element that would elevate the entire production and it’s visionary concept. But what’s there is certainly thought-provoking, and may in fact reveal something worrisome within ourselves and our readiness to embrace technologies like this, no matter how altruistic the reason.
Black Eyed Susan had it’s Fantasia premiere on August 2. Stay tuned for release information from Vinegar Syndrome, and check out all our Fantasia coverage here.
