Stabbing Back At Bigotry With ‘Bad Girl Boogey’ Director Alice Maio Mackay [Interview]
R.C. Jara
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Bad Girl Boogey is the culmination of outspoken teen angst channeled through the reactive savagery that only slashers can provide. Directed by Alice Maio Mackay, and co-written by Ben Pahl Robinson, the film boasts a fiery young cast on the hunt for a vicious serial killer whose victims are made up entirely of the LGBTQ+ community. This pattern, in the film as in real life, is blatantly ignored by authority figures and allowed to eat through a small-town high school until a close group of friends decides to take matters into their own hands and fight back.
Angel (Lisa Fanto) and her friend Dario (Iris Mcerlean) face mountainous struggles in their attempt to find and kill the killer, but their solidarity is never in question. Nor are the artistic chops of the film’s young director, to whom these actors entrusted their talents to great success. Alice Maio Mackay was only 16 when she made So Vam, another film about misfits powering through a hostile world, and with multiple shorts and three features under her belt, there doesn’t seem to be a monster in sight that can stop her momentum.
Speaking to Dread Central, the young director takes us through her process and how this film came to be in a cinematic landscape that has been compared to the slasher renaissance of the mid-90s.
Dread Central: You and your co-writer Ben Pahl Robinson have worked on three features together. I understand you both live on opposite sides of the globe. How did you come together with your visions for this film?
Alice Maio Mackay: I started writing this with Ben when I was 16. Originally it was going to be a short film after So Vam, but then we just kind of expanded it with lore and characters. We wanted to make something different, still in the horror world, and we took on a bunch of different subgenres from a trans perspective. We’re big fans of Gregg Araki and I love Rob Zombie so I wanted to do a gritty, queer slasher.
DC: How challenging was it to write with someone long-distance?
AMM: Writing, I feel, you can do with anyone. Especially because [Ben and I] have such an understanding of each other’s work and style now it’s just a lot of back and forth. Occasionally the time difference can get tricky but writers don’t really have the best sleep schedules so I guess we respond when we respond.
DC: There was such a deep focus on history in this film that drew on Nazi occultism. Was there anything else in history that was influential to you and how you built the mythology in this film?
AMM: Ben had a big part in creating a lot of the historical side of things. But we didn’t want the bigotry angle to stay surface level. We wanted to touch on generational bigotry and how it’s passed down to people, using the mask as a metaphor.
DC: How did your influences find their way into the writing of this film?
AMM: I wanted to make Bad Girl Boogey character driven. As much as it is a slasher, there are a lot of elements focused on characters just living and breathing. We took visual elements from Araki, especially Nowhere, which is about queer characters who drive the story forward.
DC: Do you tend to gravitate towards more character-driven horror, or do you feel your influences strike a good balance between visually oriented storytelling and character drama?
AMM: I think my stuff has a good mix of both. I like gore but I think the horror elements of my films coincide with how the characters live their lives.
DC: That definitely comes through in the film, specifically in the interactions between Angel and Dario. Both of them feel fully fleshed out. Is there anything in particular from your life that you drew on to color both of these protagonists?
AMM: There are definitely elements of myself in the film. The characters being young and queer themselves, navigating high school and encountering bigotry in that environment is something marginalized people can relate to.
DC: One of my favorite sequences in the film comes after Angel witnesses her best friend’s murder. There’s this lengthy, psychedelic music video that plays on her nightmares about the ordeal. What inspired that sequence and how you edited it?
AMM: That sequence was always a part of the script. When we wrote Bad Girl Boogey, I knew that I wanted a visually colorful film, full stop. As to the music video aspect of it, the nature of that montage specifically comes from wanting to show the passage of time without making it clunky. I wanted it to be visually engaging while showing the repetitiveness that comes after a big trauma or grief. Angel waking up and cutting, the drug use, all these kinds of coping mechanisms stem from her spiraling. I just wanted to show that in a way that explored her repetitive behavior but was still interesting to watch.
DC: That sequence has a hypnotic flare to it. And playing over the visuals, as with others in the film, there’s this vibrant punk rock soundtrack with electronic elements. Can you talk to me about the bands that you worked with and how you connected?
AMM: Sure. The band in that montage is Altar Boy, who has two songs in the film. They’re this queer Australian band, who I love and used in So Vam as well, and make this weird fusion punk/techno kind of music. The band who did our opening and closing credits, Teenage Joans, come from Adelaide and I loved them growing up. I was so honored to work with them. I just love the aesthetic. Very riot grrl, like the style of Bad Girl Boogey.
DC: So these are mostly local bands. I really admire the kinds of horror films that are made in the filmmakers’ own hoods. I got that feeling from both this and So Vam and I think Bad Girl Boogey incorporates the ambiance of its locations well. What was the process for you and your production team for choosing where to shoot these scenes?
AMM: Location is always the trickiest part, especially living and shooting in a small town and not having a lot of money. We just looked at the script and thought: “How can we make this look as real and lived in as possible?”
A lot of places, like the shitty house, were real places. There was some production design involved there but it was already pretty messed up. The club was tricky because the shoot was intense and also the stage doesn’t normally look very “clubby”, but I hope we made it look alright on screen. We just did the best with what we had and our DP (Aaron Schuppan) shot locations in a way that fit my vision but also made them look cooler than they are.
DC: It shows. Was the cast mostly local as well?
AMM: Yeah I think most of the cast is Adelaide based. Some of them split their time between Sydney and Melbourne.
DC: So you have multiple shorts and two features, with one pending release. I’m wondering, how does your process of making this film compare to your other films?
AMM: Bad Girl Boogey is my second film and a lot of the same team worked on it so I think we had a better grip on working together and understanding each other and how we work best. It was definitely an easier process. Still intense, still stressful to shoot within a small time frame. But definitely harder than T Blockers which has been the easiest shoot so far. We know what we want now, we know our visual references and we all understood each other very well. I think that every time we make a film, having a good group of people has allowed us to work with constraints.
DC: It is truly a labor of love. One thing I love about indie horror is how gnarly it can get. Bad Girl Boogey is totally audacious in how it portrays these killings and the impact they have on the lives of these kids. Can you talk to me about what it was like to see the SFX come alive on set?
AMM: It was pretty amazing. I’m a big fan of gore and all of my stuff is gory so watching that on set is always fun. Adele (Shearwin) who did some last-minute work on one of my shorts, and just did A24’s Talk To Me, she’s well-versed in gore effects. Having her on board just making these fucked up things come to life was amazing. Watching her work, particularly during the scene in the car where the gay couple gets killed, she was seated right outside of the car. She just knew how to make things look gross and how to make this vision come to life.
DC: There’s a real consideration for a young horror audience in this film. Do you have your generation and younger generations in mind when you make your films?
AMM: Well, So Vam was very much influenced by The Craft: Legacy and Black Christmas (2019) in an attempt to get a young audience to watch a more fucked up film than they’re used to. So Vam was rated R and I definitely wouldn’t have been able to see it in the cinema. I made it so profane and rude so I don’t know. I think regardless of generation the experience of being in school and being on the outskirts and dealing with substance abuse, relationship issues is something all audiences can relate to. Anyone can get catharsis from this and relate to what the characters are going through.
DC: This being an explicitly queer, trans horror film in a world where there is so much hostility towards us, how do you envision the future of horror and film in general for trans and gender non-conforming people?
AMM: As you mentioned it’s not a great environment right now for trans people but there are some great queer, trans creators. Seeing that become more mainstream, not just in a tokenized way, but seeing artists get the budgets they want and getting to tell their full stories with support from the industry is something that is really important. I know it doesn’t seem realistic right now but I hope it happens soon.
DC: Do you feel like horror as a genre fits what you want to do in film the best? Do you ever want to branch out?
AMM: It’s definitely a happy place for me now. I don’t want to rule anything out because I love a lot of things that aren’t horror. I’ll be happy as long as I get to do character-driven stuff in a style that matches what I want to do visually. I want to tell stories that are authentic and important to me.
DC: Is there a horror subgenre that you have yet to touch on that you’d love to work in?
AMM: Hmm. Maybe something erotic and/or borderline satirical like Basic Instinct. Something in the vein of thriller/horror. I think that could be fun.
DC: Lastly, what are some of your current favorite horror films and what films would you recommend to your audience to get to know your taste?
AMM: I love The Scary of Sixty-First and Assassination Nation. I really love Tammy and the T-Rex, that’s very campy. Anything by Rob Zombie. Two Hands is a good Australian film from back in the day.
As far as films to get to know me? Doom Generation and Smiley Face by Araki, Everybody Wants Some!!! and Habit by Janell Shirtcliff are my favorites.
Bad Girl Boogey is available to stream currently on Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube courtesy of Dark Star Pictures.
Categorized:Interviews News
