Medusa: a Brazilian body horror fuelled by unmitigated feminist rage

Inspired by a local myth about an actress disfigured by a religious fanatic after appearing nude in a film, Mari (Mari Oliveira), Michele (Lara Tremouroux) and their girlfriends (known as ‘The Treasures’) take to the streets after dark to attack women they view as “sluts”, coercing them into promises of virtuousness. But when Mari meets male nurse Lucas, her co-worker at a private clinic for patients in coma, something within her awakens. As her belief system unravels, so too her body starts to rebel – her meticulously straightened hair returning to its natural curls and her limbs twitching grotesquely – until she can no longer contain the feminist rage within.

While it is vaguely dystopian – set in an unnamed city in the near future – the film’s references to far-right, anti-feminist discourses are loud and clear. “Today’s women have lost their Christian values,” one of the Watchmen of Sion (the girls’ male counterparts within their evangelical Christian church) tells Mari: “I think it’s disgusting”. The girls perform conservative pop songs – with sentiments like “I shall be a modest and pretty housewife”, sung to the tune of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ – while Michele creates make-up tutorials for light-skinned women which, it turns out, are actually a way to hide her bruises.

The film is heavily stylised, featuring a neon-soaked colour palette and complex set pieces – notably the Treasures’s musical numbers and some Beau Travail-style workouts per- formed by the Watchmen. This artificiality is heightened by anti-naturalistic dialogue delivery – characters often staring directly into the camera, with some secondary actors feeling more like mouthpieces than developed characters – and a prominent, varied soundtrack that includes R&B, religious rock and 80s pop.

The absence of a clear sociopolitical context for this hyper-stylisation works to create a rich, contained cinematic universe. But some of these choices overwhelm the film, which ultimately seems more interested in the symbolism of a given moment than in advancing the plot or developing underwritten characters. The focus on the female body as both vehicle for and victim of fascist or anti-feminist politics recalls the films of Julia Ducournau (Raw, 2016; Titane, 2021), or Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976). By the end of the film, Mari’s rage – a literal, guttural scream directed to the camera – has infected all of the women in the congregation. We see them running from the church and into the street, howling in unison.

There are missteps: even within the tradition of feminist body-horror the decision to show so much violence against women – notably a long overhead shot of a badly beaten woman’s face – is questionable, given the reality of gender violence in Latin America. Nevertheless, Medusa confirms Anita Rocha da Silveira as an original voice in contemporary Brazilian genre cinema, offering a sharp critique of patriarchal and fascist discourses, and a powerful counterpoint through its celebration of unmitigated feminist rage. 

 ► Medusa is in UK cinemas now and is available to stream on Peccadillo on Demand and other platforms.