Last night, we saw Assassination Nation, a film billed as "Heathers meets The Purge". I got the Purge part, loud and clear. But Heathers? It should have been "Mean Girls with multiple Regina George's and the Purge." In a nutshell, a group of young women from the local high school are being hunted by an entire town who thinks their de Facto leader, Lily, dumped the personal data files of most people in the town- the Mayor, police chief, principal- and just about every male in the small suburb of Salem. All the secrets come out- affairs, nude pics, sex pics, and every personal text they've sent, or porn site they've browsed. The town loses its mind and goes after Lily and her friends because they are sluts and whores and the reason men doe bad stuff. It's women's fault! Women are ruining the town! SO hey, lets round em up and kill them.
WHAT?!?!?!?
Yeah, that's the premise in a nutshell. The film takes about an hour to get to the crazy, but in the meantime, Director Sam Levinson (who also wrote the script) doesn't waste any time letting you know how fucked up it is for women, people of color, queers, and trans folks out here in small town USA. Thanks, white dude, but this is old news to us.
So, Assassination sort of ping pongs from this stylish social commentary to stylish exploitation send up. The men with guns come for the women, but don't expect the women to fight back. But they do- in a sequence that really shifted the movie for me (because i am a sucker for exploitation homages AND women taking revenge on men in graphic style).
When the film finished up, my friend Anna referred to it as "Sexy Blood", which really is a sort of new sub genre of women taking revenge, and/or claiming their place. Assassination Nation, Revenge, and Raw fit in this category, just to name a few. Anna liked Revenge better, btw. But I did like Assassination Nation because while it was doing a lot of "Oh, hey it is so messed up how obsessed people are with their phones and sex and how men treat women." The 4 main characters (played by Odessa Young, Abra, Suki Hall, and Hari Nef) were charming, clever, and so, so good- especially when they got to the revenge part!
