There are plenty of coming-of-age stories, but there's something especially riveting and oftentimes beautiful about a horror coming-of-age story. In fact, queer horror coming of age stories might just be one of my top five genres. The Serpent's Skin, the sixth feature film from Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, is all of that and more, putting a deep, unending love at its very center against a hazy, neon backdrop that feels like early '90s Greg Araki meets 2016's Neon Demon.
The Serpent's Skin follows Anna (Alexandra McVicker), as she leaves her transphobic parents behind and goes off to live in the city with her sister. It's there that she gets a cool job at a record store, hangs out with impossibly hot tattooed alt girls, and finds her soulmate Gen (Avalon Fast)... all while learning she has eye-ball popping powers akin to Cronenberg's Scanners (that her new lady has, too).
Where have you been all my life?
In the face of a supernatural danger that begins to destroy their lives, Anna and Gen manage to remain sweet, quiet, and very much in love. I won't spoil anything for you, but Mackay isn't interested in the tragedy trope that often comes along with queer love stories.
"It was about revealing the depth, strength, and conviction of a new, but enduring love," Mackay tells GamesRadar+. "It was about being allowed in to 'see' the complexity of their relationship in an increasingly daunting, unknown world. And while they found solace and strength to combat the unknown together, they also never lost sight of who they were as individuals."
Anna and Gen only want each other, but everyone wants a piece of Danny (Jordan Dulieu), who is impossibly '90s bad boy-coded and would probably be pals with Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While Anna and Gen's friends are chasing lust, the two are figuring out not only how to control and develop their powers, but how to love each other in the best way possible. Even as they figure out how to stop an evil entity that has taken over the body of one of their friends and is quite literally sucking the souls out of everyone around them, there is patience and understanding and reasurance. When they sit opposite each other, their faces are lit with a specifically soft glow, quietly signifying joy.
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In the mood for love
There's a moodiness here reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, a 2013 vampire horror that depicted Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton as quite possibly the most miserable vampires in the world, the former of which is a washed-up rockstar (Mackay says she was listening to a lot of Meatloaf while writing the script with Benjamin Pahl Robinson). Some critics have compared the film to The Craft, which Mackay admits was definitely in the back of her mind, but she was also thinking about Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
"I kind of wanted to create something that felt akin to watching network '90s and 2000s shows but with my own spin and from a trans perspective," Mackay tells us.
This is more or less Mackay's signature style, as even her 2024 holiday horror Carnage for Christmas is styled in a way that feels like Wong Kar-wai directed a sequel to Silent Night, Deadly Night. Mackay uses neon, not in the loud (albeit dreamy) way Nicolas Winding Refn uses it, but to almost create a sense of calm. The world is more or less ending around them but I still wouldn't mind camping out there, having a cigarette, and listening to some vinyl. Even when Anna's eyes glow a kind of black light purple before she makes blood spurt from a terrible man's eyes, it's still somehow quiet and dreamy.
The Serpent's Skin is a beautiful, at times quietly devastating, love story about finding yourself and who you're meant to be, and when you lean into this, the person you're meant to be with comes along, too. My biggest gripe with the film has to do with its runtime, which is just one hour 23 minutes. I could've watched at least another hour of Anna and Gen, and even now I'm sitting in my room, listening to some indie rock and wondering what they're up to.
The Serpent's Skin is in theaters now. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
