Medusa review – body fascists on the loose in heady satire on Brazil’s police state | Film

With its squishy synth soundtrack, candy-coloured teen environs and role-playing girl-gang violence, this second feature from Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira feels like a time-warped precursor to Heathers, Clueless and The Neon Demon. It’s a satirical nightmare inspired by the giallo of Dario Argento, fired by the rise of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s reactionary populism and campily refracted through the televangelising aesthetic of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Having racked up a string of international festival prizes (Miami, Tromsø, Sitges, San Sebastián) since premiering at Cannes in 2021, Medusa builds on the promise of Da Silveira’s genre-subverting 2015 feature debut, Kill Me Please, confirming its creator as a killer talent to watch.

We open with a video of spider-walking strangeness; a writhing dance watched on a phone by a black-fingernailed figure who is promptly set upon by masked female assailants. “Jezebel! We’ll nail you to the cross,” they cry, before beating their victim into promising to “accept Jesus… [and] become a devoted, virtuous woman”, then posting her bloodied submission online. These are the “Treasures”, a cheesy evangelical vocal group with a sideline in biblical violence, whose male counterparts the “Watchmen” train for morality-police duties with peacocking capoeira routines. While news reports about blackouts and rationing burble away in the background, these soldiers of God (who echo real-life Brazilian vigilantes, male and female) fight the good fight against progressive society with a twisted fervour reminiscent of the frothing QAnon insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January in 2021.

Behind the Treasures’ assaults is the quasi-mythical story of Melissa, a free spirit who “tainted our town” by doing a nude scene in a movie, and whose face was subsequently set on fire by an anonymous avenging angel. Permanently scarred, Melissa disappeared from view. Now Mariana (Mari Oliveira) vows to track her down – an endeavour in which she is encouraged by queen bee Michele (Lara Tremouroux), who posts online tutorials on burning issues such as “how to take a perfect Christian selfie”. Agreeing that a snapshot of Melissa’s melted face would be a warning to sinners everywhere, Mariana goes undercover, infiltrating a home for coma patients. But once inside the institution’s cloistered corridors, she discovers (like the heroine of Suspiria before her) more than she bargained for.

Da Silveira has described the body-fascist protagonists of her film, one of whom loses her beauty-industry job because “looks are everything”, as having been indoctrinated with “a form of control” – a desperate attempt to master their desires that “starts through their own bodies and extends to the bodies of others”. It’s a neat metaphor for the suffocating zealousness that orders these disordered lives – an obsessive need to smother carnal urges and temptations beneath a veneer of steely sanctity. No wonder everyone’s smile teeters on the brink of a scream, just as horror skirts the edges of satire.

From the masks of Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face) to the mass hysteria of Ken Russell’s The Devils and the strutting street violence of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Da Silveira fills the screen with nods to a cine-literate heritage of cult classics, updated for the Instagram age. Demonstrating a keen ear for a twisted pop tune (Wishing on a Star is weirdly weaponised; Baby It’s You is painted black) and a sharp eye for piercingly orchestrated visuals (plaudits to director of photography João Atala), she deftly conjures a 21st-century parable about misogyny, hypocrisy and political chicanery, all dressed in the enjoyably outre clothing of Lynchian dream-logic horror.

Yet for all its multitudinous reference points, this remains very much Da Silveira’s movie – as distinct and pointed as Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Julia Ducournau’s Raw­ – a genre film with something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.

With its squishy synth soundtrack, candy-coloured teen environs and role-playing girl-gang violence, this second feature from Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira feels like a time-warped precursor to Heathers, Clueless and The Neon Demon. It’s a satirical nightmare inspired by the giallo of Dario Argento, fired by the rise of former president Jair Bolsonaro’s reactionary populism and campily refracted through the televangelising aesthetic of The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Having racked up a string of international festival prizes (Miami, Tromsø, Sitges, San Sebastián) since premiering at Cannes in 2021, Medusa builds on the promise of Da Silveira’s genre-subverting 2015 feature debut, Kill Me Please, confirming its creator as a killer talent to watch.

We open with a video of spider-walking strangeness; a writhing dance watched on a phone by a black-fingernailed figure who is promptly set upon by masked female assailants. “Jezebel! We’ll nail you to the cross,” they cry, before beating their victim into promising to “accept Jesus… [and] become a devoted, virtuous woman”, then posting her bloodied submission online. These are the “Treasures”, a cheesy evangelical vocal group with a sideline in biblical violence, whose male counterparts the “Watchmen” train for morality-police duties with peacocking capoeira routines. While news reports about blackouts and rationing burble away in the background, these soldiers of God (who echo real-life Brazilian vigilantes, male and female) fight the good fight against progressive society with a twisted fervour reminiscent of the frothing QAnon insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January in 2021.

Behind the Treasures’ assaults is the quasi-mythical story of Melissa, a free spirit who “tainted our town” by doing a nude scene in a movie, and whose face was subsequently set on fire by an anonymous avenging angel. Permanently scarred, Melissa disappeared from view. Now Mariana (Mari Oliveira) vows to track her down – an endeavour in which she is encouraged by queen bee Michele (Lara Tremouroux), who posts online tutorials on burning issues such as “how to take a perfect Christian selfie”. Agreeing that a snapshot of Melissa’s melted face would be a warning to sinners everywhere, Mariana goes undercover, infiltrating a home for coma patients. But once inside the institution’s cloistered corridors, she discovers (like the heroine of Suspiria before her) more than she bargained for.

Da Silveira has described the body-fascist protagonists of her film, one of whom loses her beauty-industry job because “looks are everything”, as having been indoctrinated with “a form of control” – a desperate attempt to master their desires that “starts through their own bodies and extends to the bodies of others”. It’s a neat metaphor for the suffocating zealousness that orders these disordered lives – an obsessive need to smother carnal urges and temptations beneath a veneer of steely sanctity. No wonder everyone’s smile teeters on the brink of a scream, just as horror skirts the edges of satire.

From the masks of Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face) to the mass hysteria of Ken Russell’s The Devils and the strutting street violence of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Da Silveira fills the screen with nods to a cine-literate heritage of cult classics, updated for the Instagram age. Demonstrating a keen ear for a twisted pop tune (Wishing on a Star is weirdly weaponised; Baby It’s You is painted black) and a sharp eye for piercingly orchestrated visuals (plaudits to director of photography João Atala), she deftly conjures a 21st-century parable about misogyny, hypocrisy and political chicanery, all dressed in the enjoyably outre clothing of Lynchian dream-logic horror.

Yet for all its multitudinous reference points, this remains very much Da Silveira’s movie – as distinct and pointed as Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Julia Ducournau’s Raw­ – a genre film with something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.