The rape revenge genre is a somewhat difficult one to innovate. Its generally formulaic nature can sometimes feel like there is not much room for new approaches to such heavy subject matter without treading into exploitative territory. Yet, when done well, revenge films with new angles are not just new. They’re also refreshing, and often hold immense potential behind them. No revenge film is going to work for everyone all of the time, but every fresh tactic is the chance to give voice to someone else’s experience. This potential is part of what makes it one of my personal favorite subgenres, even when it can get hard to watch, and why films like Tara Thorne’s directorial debut, COMPULSUS, are so exciting.
Fresh off its Montreal premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, COMPULSUS tells the story of Wally (Lesley Smith), a queer spoken-word poet fed up with the way men have been able to get away with harassing and abusing women without fear of retaliation of justice. Following a spur of the moment act, she soon begins searching for men who are known to be abusers and attacking them, in an effort to strike fear into their hearts and protect her community. What unfolds is a complex, nuanced, angry inversion of revenge film expectations.
There are many things COMPULSUS is interested in centering and interrogating that fly directly in the face of our usual expectations of not just revenge films, but all films the focus their plot drive on rage. Where women are usually driven to their vengeance by an act committed on them, Wally is driven by a fuel outside herself. She has never had a bad experience, but she has heard stories. Lots of stories. From friends and strangers alike. And that is enough to push her. To compel her to act in a way the justice system routinely fails victims and emboldens perpetrators. Where women are inserted as little more than props to push the story and motivations of its male characters forward, COMPULSUS all but removes men, favoring instead to give them the same, faceless, visual identity and center the individual perspectives of the women Wally knows. Where most films would choose to revel in the violence of both the act and the vengeance, Thorne chooses to remove it almost entirely. We never see anyone attacked, victim or perpetrator. The violent act is not the focus nor the most important thing. The act is a compulsion, The motivation is what matters.
Men do it because they know they can. Women seek vengeance because they know no one else will help them. So what happens when you stop letting them off without punishment?
COMPULSUS is, certainly, a fantasy fueled by collective rage that has built up across years of experience to combust in the form of inspirational vigilantism. Wally states on more than one occasion that women from all over are reaching out with the desire not just to report the men who’ve attacked them to someone who seems intent on actually doing something about it, but that they want to help. The acts one emboldening the drive of many to stand up for themselves and cease allowing the power structure to continue as it has for generations. Wally, through her poetry and her night journeys, gives voice to the rage that simmers under the surface of so many victims.
COMPULSUS is refreshing in its rage and motivation without the need to depict its physical violence, but it is also unafraid to criticize the methods of its ambitious main character. While they are invigorated that the nameless vigilante of the night is taking action against men who are open secrets of violent behavior around whom entire whisper networks are constructed, Wally’s friends are not without their concerns. One of the most surprising, in a film so deeply steeped in collective anger, is its consideration of what happens if it turns out that not everyone being reported is actually responsible? What if the anonymous Bad Man tipline itself is being abused to seek another twisted kind of revenge on the part of the reporter? Is Wally’s belief in every victims story actually doing her more damage than good?
We do not spend much time in this realm of consideration—each of Wally’s nighttime victims are unequivocally responsible for their crimes, judging by the evidence we are given prior to her walks—but it is one of a few important considerations in the possibility that, though her actions and intentions are rooted in something noble, Wally might have bitten off more than she can chew alone. But then, the point COMPULSUS is making is being made expressly through the same tools and approaches that men use to seek their own victims. Following at night when they’re alone, cornering them and using the element of surprise to execute a traumatic attack, all steps normally taken by sexual predators, inverted here in the pursuit of revenge. The allowance for Wally to be imperfect—perhaps even a bit toxic—in her need to keep fighting these men, in her self professed compulsion, is just as important as the giddy feelings her friends get realizing someone out there is helping them to feel the power shift that comes with a wider area of safety than they’re used to.
Wally is consumed with the intensity of her feelings when she sees someone she knows to be an assaulter, and lightly emboldened by the women backing her up with support. She is loud, and messy, and unapologetic in her actions. Never once portrayed as traumatized by committing her crimes or even paying much heed to her girlfriend’s insistence that her actions are still assault. She is an imperfect and idealized embodiment of societal rage at unpunished, open secret sexual assault perpetrators, and she will not be silenced.
Tags: Compulsus, Fantasia Film Festival 2022, Film Festivals, Hilary Adams, Kathleen Dorian, Lesley Smith, LGBT+ Horror, LGBTQIA+ horror, Queer Horror, Revenge Films, Tara Thorne
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