Metaphor and horror go hand-in-hand, it's like comedy and fart jokes or dramas and an actor making themselves look “ugly” for awards, it's just what works. Gia Elliot clearly understands this, and in her debut Take Back the Night we have what could easily have been an indie monster-movie turn into a very powerful portrait of societies desire to victim blame.
We're introduced to visual artist Jane Doe (Emma Fitzpatrick) enjoying success in her work, and enjoying a heavy night of drinking and in one scene casual sex. It's an interesting set up, making full use of how much the camera loves Fitzpatrick's often intense eyes. After helping a much drunker woman home, she finds herself attacked by a fly swarmed creature, but following this her history, and her night, call into question the validity of her story.
Even from the title, Elliot is making her statement clear, every time a serial killer or sexual assaulter is on the rampage targeting women, it's women who have the onus put on them to stay inside and be safe. Taking back the night becomes a rallying cry for people to not just blame those who are victims, but to actually do something. Here Elliot has Jane take that to it's natural conclusion, starting an online campaign to try and bring this monster to justice.
What is so thoroughly interesting about this work is that Elliot populates the film with women, it's almost as if it's a world devoid of men, and in that space people continue to take the roles we assumed men would take. The sceptical but ultimately hard working detective, a veteran of this genre, here is played by Jennifer Lafleur. Her uneasy looking into the attack, and distrust of Jane is made less about gender, and more about the system of “justice” that rips apart people's trauma by looking outside the event.
Fitzpatrick, Elliot's co-writer, is a strong lead. Much of the film relies on her saying very little but keeping a tough, almost beaten down sense of struggling to contain an anger at the world. As we come to learn of Jane's childhood, and her own brushes with the law we find ourselves somewhat confused as to what is and isn't true. Helped by a strong supporting turn by Angela Gulner as her sister, we see that society is hungry for an easy answer. Is this a monster attacking women or is it that Jane is in the midst of a psychotic episode?
Taking the monster elements out of it, what works best is an on air confrontation between Jane and a reporter (Sibongile Mlambo), the kind of difficult, dirt digging questions you'd expect from certain shock-jock presenters known for attacking women as a kind of sport. What sets this scene so apart from the rest of the film is how it feels so perfectly pulled from any number on car-crash tv interviews where people are ambushed into looking like liars under the promise of a sympathetic light.
The genre mash-up might not work for everyone, but Elliot's film is a strong, confident calling card that leaves many questions for the viewer.
