Well, it’s a no brainer that I would love this. Bring together horror films and women kicking ass and Australian film critic, writer and legend Alex Heller-Nicholas and you’ve got a winner.

This documentary by Canadian Donna Davies is based on Heller-Nicholas‘s book of the same name. It was made during the pandemic, where so many of the movers and shakers of horror films were suddenly available to be interviewed. It takes a fairly conventional talking heads and and film clip approach but it is so jam-packed with great films and different views and fascinating women that I was completely engrossed from start to end.

 I was buoyed up by the crowd at this world premiere screening. The director and writer were both there and I was surrounded on all sides by people who obviously worked in the industry. There was a delightful Scottish man behind me (IYKYK) who whooped so loudly every time someone he knew in the industry was mentioned and laughed out loud at all the funny bits in the film. It was a delight. No really – it was that kind of joyful film watching experience.

A bit like when I finished watching Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, it has given me a huge list of films that I want to watch. There were many that I knew, but so many that I have never seen.

The movie is separated into segments based on age, from children to teenagers to adults to pregnancy and motherhood to old age. Heller-Nicholas and the many people who speak talk about many different aspects of horror film-making and the depiction and agency of women, sometimes with great candour and vulnerability.

What we see are mainly European and North American and a little bit of Australian horror films, but there are some films from other countries – Japan, Mexico stand out – and some mentions of queer horror film-making and actors, writers, directors and characters of colour.

As Heller-Nicholas said in the Q&A afterwards, the one period of life they didn’t represent was menopause and that’s because they struggled to find any representations of it in horror films. What an interesting premise for a horror film! I wonder how many of the female characters, like the witches in Suspiria, are actually a representation of post-menopausal women?

Heller-Nicholas paid particular tribute to Lee Gambin, an influential Melbourne film critic and mentor who is talked about with great respect and love from everyone who knew him. He passed away last year and has obviously left a huge gap in the community.

And if any of my children are reading this, I would like the book for Christmas please.  Hardback.