A few days before the October 25th screening of the Etheria Film Festival in Montreal, I emailed co-founder Heidi Honeycutt with a pressing question: what is the etymology of the word etheria? What’s the meaning behind the festival’s name?

I’d come to a conclusion during my research, speculating about a combination of the word ether with the Greek suffix -ia, thus creating etheria, the otherworldly feminine. It seemed fitting for a genre film festival dedicated to showcasing films made by women. Honeycutt’s answer is actually much simpler: “The origin of Etheria is actually that I am old and Etheria is the name of She-Ra's home planet,” she writes, poking fun at our age difference and reminding me that I need to get caught up on beloved 1980s cartoons. “She-Ra was awesome.”

It makes me think of the awesome female characters I’d myself come across growing up. Buffy certainly comes to mind, or Scully from the X-Files. Still, neither Buffy nor Scully were created by women. This doesn’t take away from how cool they are, but it raises a new question: where are the women creating genre? On the night of the Etheria screening, I find my answer.

Created in 2014 by Honeycutt, Stacy Pippin Hammon and Kayley Viteo, the festival is a veritable wealth of resources and connections for filmmakers, particularly women filmmakers, passionate about genre. In a special screening organized at Concordia University by Chris Hallock, resident MA student, the festival’s ability to create a space for community is felt despite the miles and months between the Concordia event and the Etheria film night in LA that occurred earlier this year. Though the filmmakers aren’t present, the applause is enthusiastic and the laughs are warm, denoting a true desire to celebrate genre created by women.

Montreal-based filmmaker Maude Michaud opened the night with a heartfelt testimony of her experience navigating festivals, underlining the celebration with a reminder that beyond the wonderful community space created by Etheria, the festival also has a mission: bridging the gap of opportunity between women and men directors of genre. This is done partly through exhibition: beyond the night of the festival and supplementary screenings like the one at Concordia, Etheria’s programming is available every summer on horror-driven streaming platform Shudder, offering the selected short films greater visibility and forging a space for frightening, thought-provoking, and oftentimes hilarious films directed by women. 

Though not apart of the original Etheria programming, Michaud’s aptly titled screening opener The Monster Inside My Head proves horror cinema’s unique metaphorical ability, channeling the director’s lived experience with Tourette’s through the pandemic-crafted visual of an insistent, monstruous hand that sneaks up on the protagonist to hurt her. Her exhaustion is palpable, and the monster’s impatience grows every time she ignores it, leading to a heartbreaking defeat where grotesque hooks under the protagonist’s skin allow her to be controlled by the monster like a puppet. The lack of power and control haunting Michaud’s character ties in to that of many protagonists from the following films as they are often faced with circumstances beyond their control; and yet, the protagonist’s eventual victory also proves a recurring theme, with few exceptions throughout the night showing inevitable defeat.

In Sofie Somoroff’s Ride Baby Ride, the monster isn’t a puppet master but a haunted car, trapping a female mechanic inside and trying to violate her. Reminiscent of Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021) and Stephen King’s Christine, Somoroff’s haunted car embodies the twisted spirits of its original owners, two men who make lewd gestures at the protagonist earlier in the film. Despite her obvious attachment to cars and their machinery, the protagonist can’t escape the oppressive aspects of the predominantly masculine world within which she operates. Her triumphant victory against the car and its ghosts thus feels bigger than the film.

Both The Monster Inside My Head and Ride Baby Ride use a closed space—the former, a small apartment; the latter, the inside of a car—to trap their protagonists in an environment they seemingly cannot escape. In Michaud’s film, this feeling of entrapment is further amplified as the protagonist is getting tortured in her own home, surrounded by her belongings, suggesting that this haunting is somewhat of a common occurrence, a part of her every day life. The resulting anxiety makes way for a great sense of relief when the characters finally free themselves from their shackles—whether they be psychological or more literally, seatbelt shackles—offering a sense of catharsis unique to these two films.

Several films instead take an absurdist approach, tackling their concepts so literally that hilarity inevitably ensues. Make Me a Pizza by Talia Shea Levin uses 1970s softcore pornography aesthetics to ask the age-old question: what if the pizza man knocks on your door and you’ve got no cash on you? In this hilarious and refreshing entry, the solution is for the characters to have sex relentlessly until pizza is literally created out their union. Shots of sticky, melted cheese and lathered tomato sauce on skin take the joke to another level, departing the realm of realism to instead present the couple with a Pizza God that they worship by pleasuring each other. Once the fun is over, we see the female protagonist returning to her sofa, opening her phonebook to call yet another pizza place to repeat the ritual, several pizza parlors crossed off on the worn pages. Here, the protagonist is completely in the know: although the pizza sex appeared to be a result of the delivery man educating her on matters of labor (hilariously intercut with shots from Eisenstein’s Strike) earlier in the film, the previously doe-eyed beauty turns out to be a veritable, genre-aware seductress, repeating the pizza-sex ritual when she so pleases.

This absurdist approach to horror is repeated in Tooth by Jillian Corsie, the four-minute-long Etheria program opener. Here, a woman’s diligent dental hygiene routine is interrupted as her teeth escape her mouth and turn against her. The teeth become animated with cartoon eyes, limbs and weapons drawn onto them to attack the woman with dental toothpick spears, to blind her with toothpaste, and ultimately, to kill her with floss. The concept’s ridiculousness is married with gory visuals as close-ups of injuries and resulting pools of blood are numerous. Much like Make Me a Pizza, the film’s playful comedy proves that elaborate high concepts aren’t always necessary to make a theatre roar with laughter.

Joining this lineup of simple yet clever comedy is 1 in the Chamber. Directed by Annie Girard and Diana Wright, this film presents us with a familiar trope: a fit, leather-clad assassin must “retire” one of her fellow agents. Following the orders of her faceless boss (who is only ever shown from the back, in a shadowed room, playing a first-person shooter game), the agent breaks into her colleague’s house, only to learn that she’s pregnant. Matched for skill, the assassins struggle to land any real blows on each other as the baby proofing in the home prevents them from truly hurting themselves or killing each other. With an ending reflecting on female solidarity, the film takes its viewers for a whacky, unexpected ride.

Although comedy struggles to forge itself a place in the hyper-competitive modern box office, it is evidently alive and well at the Etheria screening. Make Me a Pizza, Tooth and 1 in the Chamber remind us that comedy is a genre, too, and it goes beautifully with the action, fantasy and horror tropes present in the aforementioned films. One of genre’s superpowers is its affective quality, capable of impacting the viewer with reactions that go beyond the intellectual reflection, and the warmth of laughter goes with tense build-ups and the gory and the gross like a fine wine pairing.

A stark contrast against absurdity is Sarah Wiser and Sean Temple’s somber The Thaw, which instead takes a raw approach to horror. Set in 19th century Vermont, the film plunges us into the hardships of a family struggling to ration enough food to survive the winter. This leads to the parents sacrificing themselves for their daughter, ingesting a mysterious sleeping tea supposed to keep them asleep for the duration of the cold season until spring awakens them. The parents are put in coffins and left outside, exposed and vulnerable to the elements, while the daughter tries to survive in the remote, isolated cabin. An unexpected thaw wakes them both up prematurely, leaving the mother ill and the father unrecognizable, aggressive, and famished. The father’s hunger becomes a catalyst for a series of gruesome and disgusting sights that eventually lead to a poisoning plot led by his daughter and wife as he is no longer himself.

As one the longest films of the night and the only one shot in black and white, The Thaw isn’t afraid to reflect on the genre, approaching it earnestly. The resulting horror echoes modern environmental concerns and the hidden violence of patriarchal family structures, though the scariest element is perhaps the isolation. Despite much of the film happening outdoors, the characters appear to us completely alienated from any sort of community or society, seemingly detached from the entire world. Their inability to feed themselves adequately because of financial struggles and environmental challenges is typical of the time period within which the narrative operates, but it’s also strangely reminiscent of contemporary post-apocalyptic films. This made me wonder if post-apocalyptic filmmakers are truly speculating on the future rather than reflecting on the past or the present, as food and financial instabilities are increasing in North American presently.

Kelsey Bollig’s Inked takes a similar approach to horror. Highly stylized in its own way through the use of red lighting, synths, and sleek visual effects, Inked follows a woman who gets a memorial tattoo using her father’s ashes. As she chats with her friend and tattoo artist, the audience is privy to a news report about an executed murderer, which leads to the protagonist revealing to us that her father was also a convict. Her decision to engrave him permanently on her body speaks to an affection that makes her father’s past incarceration seem insignificant, but the incarceration theme comes back in full swing when we realize her father’s ashes were confused with the aforementioned murderer’s. He manifests himself through her tattoo, causing her great physical pain and unease until he’s able to materialize himself fully in her apartment, attacking her.

Inked doesn’t end on a happy or hopeful note. The protagonist is brutally attacked by the inky apparition of the murderer, powerless against his violence and supernatural presence. Similarly, The Thaw only ends once the now violent father is murdered by his loved ones: though the poisoning plot is clearly a matter of survival, the grief experienced by his wife and daughter is palpable. In both of these films, the father figure is attached to a violence out of his control—in Thaw, the wrongful awakening, and in Inked, the mistaken ashes of a murder. Both films also ask their audiences to work to understand the true source of the violence. What is the true source of the monster’s hunger?

Although narratively and tonally very different, Grace Rex’s The Shadow Wrangler also challenges its audience through a play with realism as the protagonist struggles to distinguish reality from the erotic imaginary world within which she escapes. Even if the two worlds—the pulpy imagined world and the more mundane real world—are strikingly different at first, they start melting into one another as the protagonist’s anxiety and emotional turmoil is heightened. First, the threatening cowboy from her erotic imaginary is heard walking through her apartment; her pets fight each other bloodily; and the woman from her erotica turns out to be her attractive, put-together upstairs neighbor. Much like in Make Me a Pizza, sex is a driving force through the narrative, a means of escape as we see the character struggling to return to her fantasy, skipping through imagined sexual partners like one might skip through TV channels. Despite her best efforts, the attempted escapes into a rich erotic fantasy prove futile against the revealed pains of mourning a miscarriage, the anxiety of isolation, and ultimately, loneliness.

Work appears to be a central theme here too. Though the protagonist gains something personal from the erotica she’s writing, she’s also working for a contract with a deadline. The Shadow Wrangler looks at the challenges of pushing through modern life and all of its challenges as we’re grieving or in pain; it speaks of invisible injuries, matters of the heart, and pains that women must often endure in secret.

Faye Jackson’s Ten of Swords also uses genre to speak about labor, this time exposing the inequalities of unfair working conditions. It asks, what really happens after we die? And answers with a zombie industrial complex (yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like) where living human beings may sell their bodies to be used for labor after they pass. This is done through the promise that after death, the living bodies—zombies—are completely devoid of any sense of identity, any feelings, or any consciousness; they are clueless bodies kept alive by some sort of genetic mutation or disease. The film thus follows a group of zombies who come to terms with the fact that they’ve been lied to, that they’re fully aware of who they are, and that their afterlife is a warehouse where they must prepare packages forever. Although the zombies are very clearly zombies—pale eyes, grunts, rotting skin—the working conditions they operate with are no different than a living human being’s, save for maybe the raw steaks that their handlers dangle in front of them to keep the workers motivated. Ultimately, the zombies revolt, but not without turning against each other first. The narrative here is reminiscent of horror stories emerging from reports on Amazon warehouses, and if it weren’t for the workers being portrayed as zombies, the film would pass as straightforward sociopolitical commentary. The zombies create a lot of comedic moments, and the metaphor further serves the narrative as it reflects how factory and warehouse workers are often treated as subhuman by their superiors; as lesser than.

Taking a more comedic spin on the extremes of late-stage capitalism is MLM, the final film of the night. Directed by Brea Brant, this horror comedy follows a woman enrolled in a nightmarish multi-level-marketing scheme (MLM) disguised as a sisterhood for legging lovers. Buzzwords like girl boss, queen, and boss babe are all utilized interchangeably and manipulatively by the members of the scheme, reflecting how predatory sale approaches capitalize on women’s poor self esteem and lack of community to trap them in pyramid schemes or to promote a culture of wasteful overconsumption. Here though, the concept is pushed to the ridiculous as our protagonist must meet her sales quota to literally save her life after a series of failures have already greatly altered her reality: the first time she misses her quota, her husband’s penis turns into a bird. The second time, every food she loves turns into glitter, forcing her to only eat food she despises. Her final boss is a bloodthirsty legging-clad Ax Man who can only be defeated by a higher-ranking member of the scheme. Thankfully, her sales-savvy best friend manages to save her life, but she remains entrenched in the scheme, unlike the protagonist who runs through the metaphorical exit door as soon as it appears before her. Though a clear comedic set-up, the best friend character remaining loyal to the scheme despite its attempt on her life speaks to the dangers of social media using pseudo-feminist lingo to convince vulnerable women that they’re empowered, that they’ve found community, or that they are “winning at life”.

Like many of the films in this year’s Etheria selection, MLM uses playful exaggeration to point the finger at what is nonetheless a very real contemporary issue. Although Etheria film submissions are limited to self-identifying women directors, the breadth of topics in this year’s films tackle women’s issues and non-gendered issues with cinematic prowess. MLM also ties into the program’s opener, Tooth, through its comedy, a noticeable trend throughout the selected works.

Genre is known for creating metaphorizing the real, transforming it into what appears to us as surreal. Etheria doesn’t shy away from the real: the films of this year’s edition speak on capitalist dread, harassment, escapist fantasies, dysfunctional family structures, grief, and climate anxieties through a variety of tones and approaches. Mediations and reflections are facilitated, and important topics are brought to light; but by curating its selection with a number of hilarious films, Etheria also provides relief that goes beyond the catharsis that one might feel when seeing the allegorical form of their anguish getting destroyed on-screen. They say laughter is the best medicine, after all, but for that to be true, one must also be sick, one must need medicine. This metaphorical sickness is perhaps best represented by Etheria’s more somber or darker titles, like The Thaw, Ride Baby Ride, or Inked, as well as Maude Michaud’s The Monster Inside My Head; similarly, The Shadow Wrangler and Ten of Swords walk the line of horror and comedy to offer some laughs while also dealing with what is difficult subject matter. In contrast, the absurd Make Me a Pizza, MLM, Tooth, and 1 in the Chamber offer the medicine: full-bellied, laugh-out-lout laughs. The curation behind Etheria’s films thus acknowledges the hardships of modern life while also offering a solution: laughing at your struggles in a room full of now friendly strangers laughing alongside you.

Regardless of tone or approach, the protagonists in this year’s Etheria films are, more than anything, intimately familiar with who they are: and we recognize them just as easily. They are ordinary, everyday women and men who are made spectacular and fantastical by their fight against powers bigger than their own, and they are often in on the joke. The affective quality of the selected films speaks to genre cinema’s community-building ability: the attendees of Concordia’s Etheria screening shared not only a moment in time sitting in a darkened theatre, but also laughter, moments of dread and tension, and sympathetic hums. Like much of film viewing, it is a shared experience, but perhaps one that genre fans are most acquainted with as genre often pushes its audience to the limits. This year’s (2024) Etheria films challenged realistic depictions of everyday experiences often absurdist, at times raw, always stylized approaches to classic tropes, playing on the audience’s expectations to create a series of pleasing and horrifying surprises, each one just as satisfying as the last. 

If you find yourself in Los Angeles next summer, do seek out the Etheria film festival and its thrills. You may just find yourself amazed with the numerous ways in which genre can still be reimagined, and awed with the talent of women directors who have found a home for themselves, with the help of Etheria, in genre cinema.

FILMOGRAPHY

Inked, directed by Kelsey Bolling. USA. 2024

Make Me a Pizza, directed by Talia Shea Levin. USA. 2024

MLM, directed by Brea Grant. USA. 2024

Ride Baby Ride, directed by Sofie Somoroff. USA. 2023

Ten of Swords, directed by Faye Jackson. UK. 2023

Tooth, directed by Jillian Corsie. USA. 2023

The Monster Inside My Head, directed by Maude Michaud. Canada. 2023

The Shadow Wrangler, directed by Grace Rex. USA. 2024

The Thaw, directed by Sarah Wisner and Sean Temple. USA. 2023

1 in the Chamber, directed by Annie Girard and Diana Wright. USA. 2024

Volume 28, Issue 11-12 / December 2024 Festival Reports   comedy   etheria   feminism   horror   women's film