By David Dent
At a mere 22 years old, Alice Maio Mackay has, in the last ten years, directed fifteen shorts, features and items for TV; maths fans will have worked out that her CV amounts to one or two projects a year.
Mackay’s films often feature great ensemble playing with a focus on gender issues, usually framed within a horror setup. And Our Effed Up World is no exception. Sheri (Shara Thompson) lives with the ongoing grief caused by the death by suicide of her cancer-ridden grandmother Grace (Kerry Armstrong), a surrogate mother in that Sheri’s own mum was not around for her growing up.
Sheri’s dad Hank (Scott Major) is a keen astronomer, moving the family out to a remote location to pursue his passion. He’s a practical sort, at one point explaining to his meteor-fearing daughter that the green brightness she sees is only the effect of magnesium and nickel combining; but he’s also indecisive, not something his daughter needs.
Sheri’s own life is uneventful, balancing school and a dead-end job, her only social connection being the local video shop. Well, it’s sort of a shop, having been bequeathed to its young owner, Finn (Jess MacLeod, also this year to be seen in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma) by an uncle, but it’s mainly a place for her, Sheri and her workmate Poppy (Annapurna Sriramheri). Sheri’s wise enough to know that her relationship with loser boyfriend Henry (Jordan Dulieu) is going nowhere, preferring the company of her female friends.
Into this amiable slacker setup, a meteor lands near home and disgorges an alien creature, which has the power to impersonate those whom it consumes, starting with Henry. Mackay uses the alien as just one more problematic bloke (it’s male in appearance) with whom she has to deal, and which ruins the quality time she wants with her besties.
The creature itself, which seems to have strayed in from a cheesy 1980s sci-fi pic, fits in with the video shop environment in which the girls hang out. Sheri’s grandmother, whose life was spent in activism, recognises a similar fire in the eyes of her granddaughter and, sure enough, it’s that resourcefulness which comes in useful; although not without sacrifice.
Others have commented that the ‘fantastic’ elements introduced into Mackay’s films feel forced, but I’d disagree; Our Effed Up World, from its great title onwards, sees everything, terrestrial or otherwise, as a massive pain in the arse, just something else for the characters to overcome in their aimless lives.
Bloody Flicks 