If there are any women in horror making bold moves, it’s Jen and Sylvia Soska, as well as Katharine Isabelle who’s willing to take on Soska-developed female characters who are strong and break conventions. So it was a huge pleasure to see these strong women of horror on panel discussing their film American Mary. If you haven’t seen this, get off your ass and do so right now.
These women really have no filter, and I say that with the utmost respect and admiration. It’s one thing to say the things that they do, but it’s quite another to say them and have the intelligence, vision, and drive to back it up. These ladies, all three of them, have it in spades. But the children, the poor children in the audience… oh well, welcome to horror kids.
I’m biased, but I really feel like Jen & Sylvia are among the great female directors and scriptwriters or our time. Really, who can mentor under Eli Roth, tell him that you have a script about body modification when you don’t, and then write said script and have it turn out to be a masterpiece with an insanely unconventional female lead? The Soska sisters, that’s bloody well who! And that’s exactly what happened.
And these ladies also understand the importance of character when the script is not their own. As Jen explained on the panel, while reviewing the script for WWE’s See No Evil 2 (I think that was the film she was talking about) she noticed that a female character had no lines after a certain point, but only served to be covered in blood with great boobs and to give a blowjob. Well, needless to say, things changed and I for one can’t wait to see the results.
It also came up that they’ve been criticized as being the worst kind of feminists. I don’t want to get into the politics of that, but I will ask, what’s a bad feminist? These women are strong and independent, create bold and strong women characters in horror, and break conventional norms within the horror/thriller genre; just tell me what the fuck they’re doing wrong.
I’ve said it a million times, if you’re not familiar with the Soska sisters, do so now. They are going to go down in history as cult legends.
Rock Hard \m/
