spoilers for cockoo and why it is one of the best movies of the last 15 years.
disclaimer: im cis and the main actress hunter is trans, also tw sexual violence definitely/kinda??
this movie is sooo fucking good technically, writing wise, good looking, emotional, ethically complex and both personally and socially meaningful. not a misstep to be found. if you can handle spooky scary movies i definitely recommend it.
I'm not going into great detail, but the thing i like about it the most is that it is a total marriage of feminist anxiety and queer (especially trans) anxiety.
my favorite thing that I haven't seen anyone talk about is that while hunter is a trans woman, the character she plays is (in my mind) kept ambiguously queer. she might be a trans woman, trans man, non-binary, or a cis lesbian. all we know is that she is some form of queer, attracted to woman and is treated like a woman who has failed at womanhood. the setting is the 80s which is brilliant because it side steps all the formal conversations around pronouns and respecting identity, it implies there are no hormone therapies to get or operations or any way that gretchen can earn womanhood or manhood with her outer appearance/gender performance. what's left is the single implication that in some way Gretchen has failed at womanhood. it makes it clear that Gretchen might be any letter of the alphabet but regardless of which one she IS being pushed out of her own home for being the wrong type of woman, not even just for being lgbt. she's in survival mode, in a foreign country, totally isolated and continually attacked for/from finding anyone like her, dealing with grief/the loss of her emotional family, not there by choice, not there because she did anything wrong, and not afraid of being proactive to fix that situation.
the cockoo is the perfect monster for her. It's the type of femininity that looms over her as well as all woman (even her hyper feminine step mom.) it non-consentually impregnates the right type of woman, in a non-sexual procedure. It's heterosexual and performing femininity well, and controls who has children with whom like a male institution but it is a biologically female animal. it implants it's eggs, not sperm, it dresses and looks like a traditional (even antiquated) version of a woman. it's the grandma 1950s pre-feminist femininity that haunts us. so it acts as both a symbol of patriarchy like it's acting in lock step with conservative heterosexual men's values and as the specter of conservative femininity that could be terf or could just be conservative femininity generally. it even covers it's hair (in a non religious way) and wears demure cloths, solely focused on other woman's reproduction, while being ungodly powerful yet controlled by patronizing men. even it's monster power is to repeat time, literally stop people progressing by force, a literal power that conservatives want to go back in time and freeze us all there. It's so fucking smart!!
the resolution is EVEN MORE SMART!
the film points out how fucking weird all this shit is, and then makes an actual active choice to say, "fuck it, solidarity against all this violent and nonsensical philosophical bullshit!" it takes the deeply humanistic option of "i'm a freak that didn't ask to be born this way, you're a freak that didn't ask to be born this way, all these systems and gender roles are fucking you as much as me lets band together and figure out what the fuck we can do to change all this!" they only escape by using each other as shields. the girl born of hyperconservativity who doesn't want to live that life, protects gretchen against conservative patriarchy/violence while gretchen's atypical but humanistic femininity protects alma's typical girlhood femininity against ultra leftist/violent deconstruction of femininity. and then they run off with a hot lesbian who has a car. perfect!
the movie is so wonderful because it is the first film that i've seen which communicates not just the pragmatism of focusing on all woman's (any kind of woman: straight and any type of LGBTQIA+) shared interests so we can all work together to build each other up, protect each other, get each other to some place safe, but also how much more sane that is. put the violence on the horrible ideas and not vengeance against the people who uphold them, because while the ideas seem impossible to defeat, part of defeating them is facing them without becoming overwhelmed and just not listening! because they are fucking weird and self defeating, again brilliant!
there's a million more things to say but you have to see it. it's as close to perfect as any movie I've seen. i love it.
please please see it. even if you don't want to think it's a fucking fun popcorn movie and an incredibly thrilling ride.
