THE REBRAND (2024) is an ultra-queer, ultra-smart, darkly hilarious horror mockumentary that will have you screaming in more ways than one. Director Kaye Adelaide’s first feature, co-written with Nancy Webb, is the kind of low-budget in-world-camera miracle that could have sabotaged itself a million different ways in lesser hands. Luckily for us, Adelaide’s meticulously crafted, thoughtful approach and distinctly feminine focus breathe new life into a predominantly hetero and often masculine-centered subgenre. After winning Best Feature at the Queer Fear Film Festival, the film recently screened at the Unnamed Footage Festival Vol. 8 in San Francisco.
The film’s premise is deliciously campy and absurd. Big-deal lesbian lifestyle influencers Thistle and Blair (Nancy Webb and Andi E. McQueen) have been canceled (or as Thistle says, “called in by their community”) for making unforgivable comments on one of their near-constant livestreams. In hopes of a rebrand, the couple hires Nicole (Naomi Silver-Vezina), a conveniently eight months pregnant videographer fresh out of a bad relationship, to film a “redemption documentary” about the new chapter of their lives. Unfortunately for Nicole, there really is a gay agenda just this once, and shit is about to get fucked up.
“This place is really isolated… Do you not get cell signal, or…?”
As Nicole soon discovers upon reaching the couple’s remote cabin, everything revolves around tyrannical high femme Thistle. Thistle’s makeup is absolute perfection for an influencer who’s always on: her contour and lashes could be seen from space, which really pops with 3D lighting and a filter but looks jarring IRL. Digitally rendered appearance is everything to Thistle. The incursion of reality into the carefully-curated boho chic moodboard of her dream life is intolerable to her, and she’ll do anything to maintain her image. Unfortunately for her adorably earnest, doting masc partner Blair, Thistle is a controlling, emotionally abusive nightmare — weaponized victim-complex concentrate ready to explode at the slightest provocation.
Despite the increasingly ridiculous unfolding drama, the strength and nuance of all three leads’ performances create real emotional stakes for the audience throughout. Even before things get really wild, Nancy Webb as Thistle plays threateningly cloying passive aggressiveness to a tee, something unhinged seething just beneath the surface. Though Blair and Thistle’s unhealthy dynamic is played to absurdity, there’s a painful undercurrent of emotional truth in Thistle’s narcissistic guilt-trips and manipulation of her partner. Andi E. McQueen as Blair is an incredibly convincing codependent, tiptoeing around Thistle’s many minefields but endearingly managing to carve out little joys for herself how she can (like in the basement where she paints in exile because colors don’t go with Thistle’s aesthetic). My heart kept breaking for Blair even in my fits of laughter. Naomi Silver-Vezina is so likeable and convincing as Nicole, who brings a much-needed even keel to the mix.
Adelaide uses the fluidity of in-world-camera format to the max, and her delight in the manipulation of form and framing is infectious. I’m a sucker for screenlife verisimilitude, and Adelaide’s parallel YouTube universe is an absolute feast. Reproductions of online spaces and culture are easy to fumble, but this film’s satire is steeped in the real ephemera of the Very Online. We start off in screen-life, searching for and pressing play on a video on the (fake) Crime Queens YouTube Channel, complete with its own neon pink true-crime-girly-aesthetic intro (which we don’t skip, though the option is there). The fabulous Tranna Wintour serves hysterical deadpan cunt as the Crime Queens host introducing the “doomed documentary” that is the bulk of the film, and I was instantly charmed. The film also has one of the best end-credits sequences I’ve ever seen, so be sure to stick around for that.
Although I’m a die-hard found footage fan, found footage horror comedies are generally a hard sell for me (though of course there are some excellent examples). For me, good found footage needs a hard kernel of truth (a true-to-life feeling or dynamic) to coalesce around, and many subgenre comedies in particular lack that substantive core of simulated authenticity. Limp attempts at humor in the subgenre, of which there are many, sometimes serve as cheap filler in lieu of a more robust point of view. Adelaide, on the other hand, wields nuanced observational humor, camp, and self-conscious trope with surgical precision to bring us something fresh. I haven’t seen anything this funny since I BLAME SOCIETY (2020), which plays upon a similar flavor of the deranged imperative to girlboss at any cost.
THE REBRAND is a masterclass of self-aware tongue-in-cheek that amplifies the real-life absurdities of living for the image in our actually unhinged digital ecosystem. Adelaide’s careful calibration of tone never falters, and the film portrays a descent into chaos without coming apart at the seams — a testament to attention to detail and nuanced understanding of the cultures and genres that form her playground. A new indie queer classic is born, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for everyone involved in this phenomenal labor of love.
Tags: Andi E. McQueen, Kaye Adelaide, Nancy Webb, Naomi Silver-Vezina, San Francisco, Unnamed Footage Festival, Violet Burns
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