Alice Maio Mackay has firmly established herself as a staple of independent horror unapologetically made by and for the LGBT community. Her first feature, So Vam, was added to Shudder last year, and her second film Bad Girl Boogey debuted shortly after. Her rapidly growing repertoire now includes T-Blockers — her first venture into the more sci-fi realm — which premieres at Salem Horror Festival next month. As with her previous films Mackay and co-writer Ben Pahl Robinson explore dark themes inherent to the queer experience but still highlight the beauty of community and incites an always relevant call to action to fight back against our oppressors.
Sophie (Lauren Last) is a young trans filmmaker trying to balance a minimum-wage theater job, a film shoot plagued with technical difficulties and budget constraints, and navigating dating after starting her transition. Each stressor brings difficulties, but the one that takes a huge toll on Sophie and her friends is the rising frequency and severity of alt-right hate groups targeting their vastly outnumbered community. When things start looking up for Sophie in the form of an awkward meeting with cover band keyboardist Kriss (Toshiro Glenn) and a donor looking to finance her ongoing project, the dormant hate in her community begins to skyrocket. This issue seems to worsen after a particularly violent earthquake unleashes a dormant parasite that infects those approaching it with the urge to kill and consume. Sophie is the only one that can sense their evil presence. With the help of her long-time best friend Spencer (Lewi Dawson), bartender Storm (Lisa Fanto), and Kriss, Sophie must overpower the parasite and its hosts to keep her and her friends out of harm’s way.
With each new release, Mackay dives into a new horror subgenre to highlight increasingly pressing issues facing our community. So Vam had vampires to emphasize the monstrous “otherness” queer people are made to feel and potentially reclaim. Bad Girl Boogey used the supernatural slasher subgenre to highlight how homophobia and transphobia are learned and passed down through generations. T-Blockers delves into science fiction horror with its underground parasites.
However, these parasites don’t replace their hosts or turn them into monsters; they highlight the monster lying within. The characters that get infected by the parasite, like Sophie’s unfortunate chaser date Adam (Stan Browning), are already harboring the seeds of hatred towards trans and gender non-conforming people. Those with the parasite lure those like them with minimal effort and infect them swiftly. Without any allies (except Kriss) to curb the spreading parasite or stop the hosts from violently killing those in the community, Sophie takes on a Roddy Piper They Live role as the leader of vigilante justice.
The parasite is an incredibly effective metaphor for how transphobia continues to spread; transphobes just use some coded language and bigoted talking points to lure people into their “cause.” It’s easy to find real-life evidence of this. Look at the people supporting various drag and trans healthcare bans across multiple states. Much like their previous works, Mackay and Pahl handle this with the depth it deserves. Sophie goes through the highs and lows of experiencing the isolation and despair inherent to seeing the material results of bigotry without meaningful opposition; even if the parasites in their small community are dead and gone, much bigger parasites with much more power remain. However, hope is never truly dead, and there is always an opportunity to make our voices known loudly and proudly.
T-Blockers isn’t a depressing film by any means. It returns to fun and campy goodness. The framing, as mentioned earlier, is a device of the Elvira-esque film host (played to perfection by Drag Race Down Under contestant Etcetera Etcetera), is incredibly creative, and enhances the themes with cryptic, perfectly-timed introductions. The camera work, lighting, and direction have also upped in quality despite less than a year between Mackay’s releases — her prowess in the director’s chair just keeps improving rapidly.
The cast is obviously having fun, particularly during the fight montages. It’s great to see several returning cast members like Iris McErlean, Lisa Fanto, and Xai from Mackay’s other two films. She’s honestly building a modern-day Dreamlanders at this point. However, Laura Last and Lewi Dawson carry the film as Sophie and Spencer. The friendship between these two is incredibly authentic, and it’s not hard to get attached to the duo. They work as long-time friends, and Spencer’s painfully obvious crush on Sophie is personally relatable. I cringed at it lovingly.
Sophie gets character-building moments with her older brother London (Joe Romeo). Despite her found family in Spencer, the bar crew, and her overwhelming need for independence, Sophie has a somewhat supportive family back home: a luxury she relishes, for it is rare yet beautiful. Though her childhood may not have been the best, her family still supports and wants her to succeed. Her neon-drenched talk with London is easily the best scene in any of Mackay’s films. The cinematography is gorgeous, the acting is fantastic, and it’s easy to believe these two are siblings trying to reconnect after healing separately for some time. While the time spent on character development impacts the pacing — the first minute of action related to the parasites doesn’t start until halfway into the film — it’s fun to experience Sophie and her friends being normal young adults. It adds to the film’s balance of campy joy and genuine distress that Mackay has mastered.
Now more than ever, we need more films like T-Blockers. Seeing genuine representation and a return to proper camp is always a treat. Still, films actively calling out transphobia and for us and our allies to fight back meaningfully are a limited yet necessary resource. In a time where transphobia of monumental proportions is spreading like wildfire, it’s essential for films advocating for resistance against bigotry to be released. We can rely on Mackay to keep producing high-quality, low-budget films that fill this necessary niche.
