Black Eyed Susanmade an early impression before I was even ten seconds into the film. For one, the screener came with a disclaimer, including sentences like “You may find yourself disgusted — or even nervously snickering — at its graphic nudity and coarse, vulgar language typically only found in pornography.” With that in mind,Black Eyed Susanis not for the faint of heart. There’s a lot of violence against women — even if that woman happens to be a robot — and a lot of crass language. Susan is called a “whore” and “slut” at least five times in every scene, and for what? Is there any payoff that comes from sitting through men living out their darkest fantasies while never pausing to acknowledge why they are the way they are?
As we’ve seen recently, particularly in some cases involving high-profile celebrities, the line of consent can become blurred when people want to play out sexual fantasies that revolve around harming someone else. WhileBDSMhas gotten an unfair rap in Hollywood, and people constantly judge and misunderstand it, there are areas of sexual desire that can’t be protected by the term “kink-shaming.” When it departs from being a mutually respectful blend of pain and pleasure and becomes humiliation and aggressive harm of a woman simply for a man’s enjoyment, things become a lot more sinister.Black Eyed Susandirector and writerScooter McCraemay think he’s pushing boundaries by exposing an area of the human experience that is usually viewed through a more shaming lens. But actually,all he seems to be doing here is putting a gross male fantasy on-screenand cutting out any — and I mean any — consideration for the women who are subjected and victimized by this dangerous approach to pleasure.
Black Eyed Susan
Desperate for work, Derek replaces his deceased friend at a tech startup and works with Susan, an advanced BDSM AI doll. The film explores Derek’s desires and the nature of pleasure and pain in a morally ambiguous future world.
What Is ‘Black Eyed Susan’ About?
The opening moments ofBlack Eyed Susandon’t pull any punches, as we’re immediately treated to a stilted encounter between Alan (Scott Fowler) and the titular Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker). Between the bad acting and worse dialogue, nothing feels natural about this exchange — including the setting, which looks like the lair of a villain from an oldCriminal Mindsepisode. Susan begs Alan to slap them and “fuck” them, while Alan is happy to hand out insults, one of the many being “dirty c*nt.”
They have aggressive, loveless sex, with McRae relying on close-ups of Susan’s ass posed perfectly in the air while Alan thrusts — and then, we realize this has all been an experiment. Gil (Mark Romeo), Alan’s friend and the head of a sex doll company, comes out to debrief Alan about his encounter with Susan, who isrevealed to be a very lifelike AI doll. Gil excitedly tells Alan about their continuing developments for Susan; they’ll really bruise when you hit them, and even cry when they get slapped like the slut they are! To further develop the research for their amazing project, Gil asks Alan to move into a home with Susan, which he happily agrees to.
Cut to a few months later, Alan has taken his own life under suspicious circumstances. Gil reconnects with his old friend Derek (Damian Maffei) at the funeral. Desperate for employment and money as he’s living out of his car and scavaging restaurant dumpsters for food, he accepts Gil’s offer of replacing Alan as his guinea pig in his development for Susan.The rest of the film chronicles Derek’s journey from discomfort to intrigue to romantic feelings towards Susan, as he tries to reckon with his true nature and sexual desires.
‘Black Eyed Susan’ Doesn’t Dive Deep Enough Into Its Issues
Black Eyed Susanis doing something not a lot of other movies are doing, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing it well. The main thesis of the movie appears to be in line with giving people who have violent tendencies towards their romantic partners a substitute so they no longer harm human beings. It’s an interesting idea, but one completely mishandled by McRae. Rather than simply swapping out a human for a robot,issues like these deserve deep, investigative introspection.
In better hands (perhaps even a woman’s), Derek’s journey would entail him looking inward and trying to understand why on earth he wants to harm a woman for sexual gratification. Again, this is not to shame people who engage in BDSM. Derek is seen literally slapping the shit out of Susan as they sit on the couch quietly. There is no mutual respect or equal gratification here. All the humiliation and harm goes to Susan, while Derek seizes all the pleasure for himself. By the end,we never understand Derek on any level. He’s as one-dimensional as he was when we first met him. How can we possibly unpack his approach to sex if the film isn’t that interested in exploring it?
‘Black Eyed Susan’ Doesn’t Make Room for Any Female Perspective
From the get-go,one can’t help but feel the movie is taking a little too much pleasure in revolving around the sexualization, brutalization, and humiliation of women. It’s also very convenient that the female figure going through all this is a robot, so the movie gets to assuage any deeper mediation on how a woman would feel in situations like this. Even if they are a robot,Thälker’s breasts and genitals are always on full display as they wear a completely see-through slip dress the entire time. Moreover, Susan is literally just there to satisfy fantasies, the male gaze personified.
This parlays into the film’s most egregious flaw: the lack of a female perspective. If the movie really wanted to explore the relationship between violence and sex, it would have at least allowed some input from those who are often the victims in these scenarios. We learn that Derek once hit his wife, and it’s something that brings him great shame. Throughout the entire film, there are plenty of scenes that feature Derek on the phone with his wife, one of which sees them revisiting this traumatic memory, and the movie doesn’t even bother to offer her so much as a voiceover.Women are, quite literally, given no voiceinBlack Eyed Susan. The only representation is the stoic voice of Gil’s colleague on the phone and Susan’s robotic pleas to be slapped, fucked, and humiliated.
‘Black Eyed Susan’s Bizarre Twist Holds No Weight
A twist at the end of the film takesBlack Eyed Susan’s idea up a notch, and it would be compelling if it weren’t so damn silly, as Derek finds out that all this research has been for Gil’s next project. Still, the film does none of the work to investigate what makes humans behave these ways in the first place.Black Eyed Susanwants to embrace all the shock and subversion without doing any of the work to afford it any meaning.
McRae is known for his low-budget productions,so to hone in on the set pieces and props may be redundant. However, what can and should be criticized is the script and performances. In between Susan getting smacked around, there are tedious, excruciating scenes of Derek explaining basic concepts, such as music, to Susan for seemingly no reason. The most robotic performance of the film doesn’t even come from the actor playing a cyborg; in fact, Thälker gives the most naturalistic performance of the film, while Maffei constantly sounds and looks like he’s in a sex-ed video for teens. Romeo, as the movie’s villain, is somewhat believable as a man blinded by greed and glory into committing heinous things, but the script doesn’t afford him enough material to fully explore this aspect of his character.
‘Black Eyed Susan’ Is an Inferior ‘Ex Machina’
One could compareBlack Eyed SusantoEx Machinain the same way they could compareSharknado 3: Oh Hell No!toJaws. There are so many reasons why the fundamental ideas ofBlack Eyed Susanneed better exploration. AI technology looms larger and larger over our society, and its boundaries have become harder to discern; pornography and people’s reliance on it for pleasure is affecting real-world relationships and men’s expectations of sex from women; male abuse toward women, especially in romantic relationships, continues to climb. These are all very important and pressing issues, butBlack Eyed Susanhas absolutely no idea what to do with them. With a shoddy script that completely disregards women’s place in these issues, all it wants to do is depict men having rough sex with and hitting a female, human-presenting robot as they beg for more.
The most infuriating thing about movies like these is that they call themselves transgressive and thrive off condemnation from feminist snowflakes like me. You may think that I’m simply too scandalized or “woke” for a film like this, or that I represent the growing sentiment among Gen Z viewers that nudity and sex scenes should be wiped from cinema (here is proof that I am not). Butthe truth is thatBlack Eyed Susanrepresents a decades-old issue in film. We see right through its “shocking” and “brave” approach and discover the truth: women who are only there to be degraded, slapped, and humiliated.Black Eyed Susanisn’t a movie breaking the norms of cinema; it’s an empty, poorly made, and exploitative piece of filmmaking.
Black Eyed Susan is an empty, exploitative, and mishandled look at the relationship between violence and pleasure.
Black Eyed Susanhad its World Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.
