My Animal (2023)

• Year: 2023
• Released: 08 Sep 2023
• Country: Canada
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23572542/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/my_animal
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Horror, Romance
• Runtime: 100 min
• Writer: Jae Matthews
• Director: Jacqueline Castel
• Cast: Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Amandla Stenberg, Heidi von Palleske
• Keywords: teenage girl, lgbt, woman director, lesbian, independent film,

	5.5/10
	75% – Critics

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My Animal Movie Reviews

Ethereal, Sapphic Romance

There are so many good things about this movie, which premiered at Sundance 2023. This is a story of becoming – and there are so many layers to uncover about identity, sexuality, and societal expectations. It’s a sapphic tale directed by a female, for one. And all sensuality is focused on facial expressions and real connections between the characters, not gratuitous scenes for shock value. Not to mention the chemistry between the leads.

The creatures are not in-your-face either; more psychological with transformations demonstrated in visions and colors. As a whole, with a beautiful nostalgic score, ethereal cinematography, superb performances, and a deliberate color palette to demonstrate passion, this is an impressive feature debut from Jacqueline Castel.

Not your standard horror movie, but good film

Some notes:

• If it’s to put everything at risk – whether you’re a man, a woman, or a werewolf – let it be for Amandla Stenberg. Probably, the prettiest person on Earth.

• There’s homophobia among werewolves. There doesn’t seem to be racism, which is already a positive point.

• Romance + Horror is becoming one of my favorite genres. It warms and chills the heart in a short amount of time.

• For a coming-of-age story with seemingly little plot, it’s incredible how much this film addresses thematically.

• These two have chemistry, like really good chemistry. I could watch them for hours. Don’t be perverse. I don’t mean it in sexual terms.

• But, by the way, there is one of the most artistic sex scenes in the history of cinema.

• The score, filled with synthesizers reminiscent of the late ’80s or early ’90s, is magnificent. The colours are fantastic. The direction is very confident.

• In the second act, it meanders a bit, but I won’t complain much because I could get lost in that little world for hours just because.

• An opportunity was missed to have Heather’s mother wet Jonny’s bed, who should learn to follow her feelings.

• We need a sequel where Jonny joins Heather on a road trip, and they meet the cannibals (survivors or not) from the world of Bones & All. Please.

Strong atmosphere, but decent slice-of-life horror romance

Firstly, I appreciate the strong atmosphere and creative take on the horror romance genre as director Jacqueline Castlel does offer strong sense of direction on creating the atmosphere, characters, and narrative. Castel proves she has talents on film directing after creating various music videos for various artists like Zola Jesus, Moon Duo and Jim Jarmusch. Premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival in the Midnight Selection, while ambitious, it was a decent slice-of-life romance horror movie.

Throughout, the production is solid and the camerawork is pretty good on capturing the Canadian landscapes and snowy atmosphere setting. There are some amazing visual presentations as the visuals felt dream-like, strange and colorful which reminded a lot of 80s and giallo horror visuals. Most of the performances were solid as the main leads are pretty good with some decent chemistry between one another.

The narrative and concept about queer lovers and werewolves is pretty awesome as not often LGBTQ themed concepts in horror genres are explored. However, while the narrative does offer some good ideas, the narrative doesn’t feel as strong as it was hoping for. Many concepts that could have been explored wasn’t really fully utilized which made the characters not fully interesting nor connectable.

There are good themes explored about sexuality, identity and societal expectations as the themes were explored but some themes could have used a little work on fully developing the characters. The musical soundtrack is pretty good which brought a good 80s vibe to it. The dialogue is solid while there were a few dialogue moments that felt kind of rough.

Overall, it’s clear the movie has ambition and there are strong direction and good metaphors are explored, yet, needed some improvements. Decent Midnight Flick.