I’ve seen a lot of movies about repressive communities and the resulting urge to break free, but I’ve haven’t seen many like Medusa. I’ve heard it been described as a horror movie, and while I can sort of understand that, I find the label a tad questionable. However, it’s also one of the scariest films I’ve seen in recent memory, not the least because the film’s setting, an overtly-Christian community in Brazil, seems particularly resonant in today’s times. Yet, this is far from your average social issue movie, combining slick aesthetics with magical-realist, genre-film thrills.
Mariana has just moved to a new place, with the new school and friends that accompany it. We aren’t told much about where she’s from, but it was apparently a “dumpster”, unlike like her new school, where the girls are taught to uphold Christian moral values and to resist temptation. Mariana’s new circle of friends uphold these values by donning simple white masks and going around assaulting any woman they consider promiscuous and filming their atonement, while the men have a full-on vigilante squad who appear to go unchallenged. That’s not to say they can’t have any fun, of course. The young women also have a group singing catchy pop songs about the apocalypse and making videos on how to create the perfect Christian selfie (too low is a Hell view, too high is God’s domain).
The film works best in its treatment of the setting. It’s shot with stylish, often neon colors, and when combined with the film’s often brutal, darkly satirical tone, it strikes a good balance of exaggeration and surrealism with the concerning themes within. It’s made clear these people’s actions are borne not just out of religious devotion, but reactionary politics, and it’s not hard to imagine this being relevant outside of the country in which it was made.
That’s not to say this is entirely a political movie, however. As the story begins to unfold, the surreal and genre-bending aspects of the story start to become more apparent. It seems that the reason the clique wear masks is in tribute to a mysterious woman who set a local promiscuous celebrity in the town on fire. She survived, but became disfigured in the process. Mariana becomes interested in the story, and that’s really all I’ll say. The nature in which the plot of the film proceeds is one that’s best left experienced by the viewer.
The story is told through a slow burn. A very slow burn at times, in fact. This does a great job of making the viewer really feel the tension faced by the lead. It also works from a plot perspective as well, and keeps the viewer guessing as to where the story is going. However, the slow pacing is also the film’s biggest flaw. While the story merits it, the runtime doesn’t. The film is over two hours long, and while I remained intrigued, there simply isn’t enough plot to warrant that much time. There were moments where I started to become disengaged from the story simply because not much was happening for too long at a time. I definitely feel this could’ve been cleaned up.
While the pacing and length issues are a major problem, however, I’m still glad I watched this. Medusa is a fierce, angry, and sometimes even darkly funny film that I recommend to genre film fans. When the film’s main reveal occurs, the metaphor is one I could definitely relate to, and I hope others do as well. It’s a great example of how the fantastical can comment on the very, very real.
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