T-BLOCKERS movie | ©2024 Dark Sky Pictures

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Lauren Last, Lewi Dawson, Toshiro Glenn, Lisa Fanto, Stanley Browning, Steven Thai Hoa, Brendan Cooney, Etcetera Etcetera
Writers: Alice Maio Mackay & Ben Pahl Robinson
Director: Alice Maio Mackay
Distributor: Dark Star Pictures
Release Date: March 5, 2024 (VOD, Digital)

In terms of ambition and sheer craziness, one has to give it up to T-BLOCKERS. It’s kinda/sorta like this or that, but it’s also pretty much its own thing.

Billed at the opening as “A transgender & queer film by Alice Maio Mackay” – Mackay directed and co-wrote the script with Ben Pahl Robinson – and made in Australia, T-BLOCKERS is set in a medium-sized town …

Scratch that. T-BLOCKERS is so meta that it’s set in black-and-white television land, where our hostess Cryptessa (Etcetera Etcetera), a being somewhere between Elvira Mistress of the Dark and Frank N.Furter, introduces us to young transgender filmmaker Sophie (Lauren Last). who is working on a screenplay about a young transgender filmmaker, also named Sophie (also played by Last). Got all that?

The Sophie of the film-within-the-film lives with her nonbinary bestie Spencer (Lewi Dawson) in an Australian town too small to be a city, but big enough to have what appears to be a thriving LGBTQ+ scene.

Australia, and this town in particular, has a problem with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and overall bigotry. Then there’s an earthquake that disgorges wormlike parasites that attach themselves to the weak-minded, i.e., bigots, turning them into cannibalistic murderers.

Sophie finds that she has the power to detect where the worms are and who is infected by them. Fueled by survival necessity and also general outrage, Sophie, Spencer and their friends set about exterminating those who have been body-snatched by the bugs from below. They also find a movie from the ‘90s made by a trans filmmaker named Betty who documented a previous worm invasion.

Part of T-BLOCKERS is naturalistic, dealing with the hopes and frustrations of being young and working-class, with the added specificity of this particular queer community. The other part of T-BLOCKERS is an enthusiastic zombie movie. The two fit together easily here.

Last and Dawson are charming and have great platonic chemistry as the best friends who find themselves responsible for saving their patch – and perhaps all of Australia – from this otherworldly menace. Stanley Browning is very good as a fellow who starts out appealing and becomes progressively awful, Lisa Fanto projects fierce strength as a helpful bartender, and Toshiro Glenn is sweet as one of Sophie’s suitors.

Mackay makes it (presumably deliberately) difficult to suss out if all of this film-within-a-film-within-a-film meta-ness is just playful, is meant to represent the trans experience, is meant to reduce the impact of queer folks mashing their tormentors with no ramifications, or all or none of the above.

Apart from the cannibalism, the story of T-BLOCKERS would work without the meta and sci-fi aspects, but then it wouldn’t be horror, and then the movie would have to get into the messy issues of what’s justifiable self-defense and what’s overkill. Likewise, the homicidal parasite narrative doesn’t need the social justice angle, but then it’s just another homicidal parasite narrative (nothing wrong with that, but it’s a pretty substantial subgenre).

Etcetera Etcetera is intriguing to watch as a performer, but they are given some on-the-nose dialogue, as are the rest of the cast when it comes to the political aspects of what we’re seeing. Then again, it’s not as if we’re inundated with movies that are made by and about young trans people. To make sure we understand who’s who (and also so that people writing about the movie use the correct terminology), the end credits add everyone’s pronouns.

T-BLOCKERS has a great sense of joy and camaraderie to it. As a bonus, it actually has a couple of jump scares. It’s didactic in places, but it’s also fun throughout.

Related: Movie Review: DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS
Related: Movie Review: CELLPHONE
Related: Movie Review: NO WAY UP
Related: Movie Review: LISA FRANKENSTEIN
Related: Movie Review: OUT OF DARKNESS
Related: Movie Review: ARGYLLE
Related: Movie Review: DEPARTING SENIORS
Related: Movie Review:MILLER’S GIRL
Related: Movie Review: CULT KILLER
Related: Movie Review: THANKSGIVING
Related: Movie Review: HELLHOUNDS
Related: Movie Review: SUNRISE
Related: Movie Review: MEAN GIRLS
Related: Movie Review: NIGHT SWIM
Related: Movie Review: MAESTRO

Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Movie Review: T-BLOCKERS

Related Posts: