GIRL SQUAD
Feminism and friendship are front and centre in new action film Assassination Nation
After watching the trailer for the new film Assassination Nation, you’d be forgiven for writing the film off as yet another teen-driven flick featuring seedy sex, debauchery and an unhealthy dose of deadly violence.
That’s exactly what the roughly two-minute, 34-second trailer promises. What you get is, admittedly, all that — but a whole lot more, too.
The film, written and directed by Sam Levinson of The Wizard of Lies and Another Happy Day, is a thriller that tells the story of a town that loses its collective mind after private — and often pervy — online interactions are leaked online.
Think: porn-viewing history, private text messages, details of scandalous liaisons and the like.
At the centre of the film is a foursome of friends — Lily (Odessa Young ), Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), Bex (Hari Nef ) and Em (Abra) — who love gossip, guys and getting drunk. Oh, and sharing it all on social media, of course.
When private data begins leaking to the public, a systemic breakdown of the town’s sanity unfolds, with unlucky Lily and her crew at the epicentre of it all.
But, while the film provides the aforementioned sexual innuendoes, “bad” behaviour and a copious amount of gun violence, in addition to serving up a sobering reminder that privacy isn’t really a “thing ” anymore — it also has the potential to give viewers so much more than that.
That is, of course, if they’re listening. During a media day at the Toronto International Film Festival, I recounted to two of the film’s stars, Nef and Abra, that, after attending a press screening in Vancouver, I overheard an older, male reviewer asking, “What exactly was that film supposed to be about?”
Nef’s response was raucous laughter, which in many ways was a fitting response to such a query. Because, in addition to the aforementioned themes of sex, violence and social media, the film is about so much more.
“It’s about righteousness,” Nef says. “It is about this idea that when people believe, one hundred per cent, that they are in the right, and another person or another group is in the wrong, that is the recipe for a horror film. For a thriller.
“Because, there is nothing scarier than that.”
Nef, a model and actor, points to feminism and friendship as two other major themes of the film. Friendship, and an unquestioning bond, is portrayed strongly in Assassination Nation. Despite intense drama in the plot, it never parlays into the characters turning on one another.
“I really love that they never question her,” Abra says of the support the four teens have for one another in the film, despite facing death as a consequence. “They just take to the streets.”
“The only thing that escapes this film intact is their friendship,” Nef adds with a laugh.
“And I think that’s a really beautiful thing.”
It’s these themes that likely left that reviewer feeling so confused, Nef says.
“He sat there, in the dark, while Lily is giving that speech, which as on-the-nose as it is, tells you exactly what’s going on. And what the emotional reality really is. Talking about being a woman, the righteousness and fighting back against all the double standards,” she says.
“And for him to have to sit there, feeling all those things, and then have the film go dark and for him to think, ‘Actually, no. What was that about?’ He couldn’t process that — and he was trying to regain control.”
But that scratch-your-head after effect is a major reason why singersongwriter Abra initially signed on to the project.
“Because it was crazy,” Abra says with a laugh. “And I knew it was important, culturally, regardless of whether or not we pulled it off or not. Which I think we did. It’s important.”
She hopes the film makes people look inward to examine not only how they would react if confronted with a similar situation, but also how they vilify and criticize others — oftentimes from behind the safety of their screens.
“All I wanted to do was be a part of something that made people question themselves,” Abra continues. Whether they agree with my character in the movie, or whatever message they take away from it, I just want people to question their perspective and take a second before they react and say something harsh or rigid. Because I’m not a rigid person.”
The only thing that escapes this film intact is their friendship. And I think that’s a really beautiful thing.
Last year, The Circle presented a modern morality tale about how far things could go south if everyone shared all their data all the time. It was mildly thoughtful and rather dull.
Assassination Nation is The Circle on crack. It opens with a shotgun blast of “trigger warnings” — guns, bullying, abuse, blood, drinking, death, drug use, sexual content, toxic masculinity, kidnapping, murder, swearing, torture, weapons, violence, gore, homophobia, transphobia, classism, nationalism, racism, sexism and the male gaze. And it spends the next 100 minutes making good on that list. Or, depending on how strong your stomach is, making bad on it.
Writer/director Sam Levinson’s sophomore (and somewhat sophomoric), feature is set in a small town called Salem — it
doesn’t specify which one, but we’re meant to recall the witchy one. The teenage population is normal, which is to say oversexed, over-sharing and Krazy Glued to their phones.
Lily Colson (Odessa Young), will act as narrator and voice of reason through the mayhem to follow, though she’s hardly a paragon: Although she’s dating Mark (Bill Skarsgård), she’s also carrying on via text message with an older guy who is listed in her contacts as “Daddy.” Yuck.
Small-town civility cracks like an egg when a hacker releases information that the mayor, who, though in public is no friend of the non-cis community, is in private a part of it. The populace calls for blood, and soon gets it.
Next, Principal Turrell (Colman Domingo), is outed on the more dubious charge of having taken “pornographic” pictures of his six-year-old daughter in the bath. (Lily reminds her parents that they have a nude photo of her, aged two, on their mantel.) The crowd turns its ire on the principal, the message being that once a mob is calling to lock someone up, it’s relatively easy to set them on a new target.
Lily and her best friends (Suki Waterhouse, newcomer Abra and transgender actress Hari Nef ), are at first spectators on the sidelines. As a week passes, more personal details are leaked and the town begins to resemble The Purge as remade by Quentin Tarantino.
But when Lily is falsely accused of being the source of the hack, she and her pals are forced to take arms against a sea of troubles, at which point the film sets aside its moral compass and becomes a full-on revenge drama. It’s a self-aware one at that, as the protagonists discuss their lives in terms of movies, including why no one has remade Straw Dogs with Dustin Hoffman as the rape victim.
Oddly, this is where the film’s shooting style (I’m talking cameras, not guns), settles down a little. Early scenes play like a sizzle reel of editing tricks, full of slow motion, split screens and sick beats. Contrast that to the scene later in the film where a home invasion is shot in a single take from the windows outside the home in question. It’s a deliriously well-made segment.
That said, Assassination Nation manages to wear out its welcome, its over-the-top violence flirting with becoming a parody of its own best intentions. Though that didn’t stop it taking third place for People’s Choice at the recent Toronto festival’s Midnight Madness program, albeit from only 10 entries.
There’s a message here about the evils of social media and the tendency of modern society to polarize faster than a pair of 3D glasses. But I would have preferred if the movie had included fewer triggers and more warnings.