A Modern Scream Queen Stars In Streaming Thriller That “Subverts expectations early and often”
The term ‘scream queen’ began as what some consider a reductive label, yet the descriptor has slowly become more empowering to many. No longer are women in genre cinema seen as damsels in distress who need a man to save them. Not by a long shot. In fact, some ladies who appear in horror fare with a certain regularity now seem to wear the scream queen label like a badge of honor.
Maika Monroe is one such actor who seems to have embraced her standing as an important player in the horror space. She appears in genre projects on the regular, and from what I can tell, she’s not trying to break out to “bigger and better things.” Monroe sees the freedom that the horror genre provides and uses that to tackle interesting roles that allow her to become someone completely different with each cinematic outing.
I was particularly taken with the way Monroe disappears into her character, Ruth, in the Paramount+ original film Significant Other. I gave the flick four out of five stars in my critique and posited that the film “subverts expectations early and often.”
The summation paragraph from my coverage reads:
“The journey from where Significant Other starts to where it ends is wildly unpredictable. And just when you think you’ve got the narrative figured out, more information is revealed and you’re back to square one. This film is surreal and even utterly strange at times. It frequently subverted my expectations in the best possible way.”
The film follows Ruth and her partner, Harry (Jake Lacy), as they take a hiking trip in the remote Pacific Northwest wilderness, only to encounter something that neither one of them anticipated along the way.
I wrote that synopsis trying to be as deliberately vague and ambiguous as possible because the flick serves up multiple twists along the way, and the less you know about them, the more fun you’re inclined to have.
Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (Novocaine) co-directed this intense effort from a screenplay that they also worked on together. The dynamic duo previously collaborated with Monroe on the 2019 horror film Villains.
Well, that’s just about all that we’ve got for you, for the time being. Be sure to keep an eye out for more streaming recommendations in the near future. Until then, if you fancy the idea of keeping up with me on social media, you can find me on Threads. I am active on the platform as @FunWithHorror.
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