Fantasia 2024 Review: BLACK EYED SUSAN, A Hard Look at Toxicity and Exploitation

Derek is down on his luck. Separated from his wife and child he lives out of his car, using it for ride-sharing to make ends meet. He meets an old friend, Gilbert, who offers to give him a job testing out the latest product from his high-tech start up. That product is Susan, a high end BDSM sex doll, designed to take as much punishment as her partners desire. She is as real as a sex-robot can be. Derek marvels at how life-like Susan is. So much so, that he tries to engage with her beyond sexual acts. But Susan is programmed for one thing and one thing only, bring sexual satisfaction to her partner, through any means necessary. And Susan is programmed to bring only the darkest desires out of their sexaul partner.

 

In its opening scene, Scooter McCrae’s sci-fi erotic horror Black Eyed Susan gives its audience the lay of the land. A man enters the room and immediately starts deriding the woman sitting there for not pouring his drink. She talks back to him and this only makes him angrier. She goads him on, questioning his manhood and his ability to give her satisfaction until he can take the insults no more and sexually assaults her. 

 

Afterwards the curtain thankfully lifts and we learn what is really going on here. This is about as heavy as Black Eyed Susan gets. Thankfully we did not visit an equally dark and intense sexual act through the rest of the story. What follows from that harrowing opening scene is an exploration of what drives lust and desire, what pushes someone over the edge into acts of physical sexual violence. What forces you to give or receive acts of sexual violence? Do all men suffer from toxic masculinity and fragile egos, do we all wish we had a sophisticated sex doll like Susan with which we can act out our darkest, violent desires? 

 

Derek (played with eager sensitivity by Damian Maffei) suggests not, and that is one of the things that keeps us engaged is that he is willing to go through this experiment with Susan. We want to see if he is going to go as far as that man in the opening scene, or as far as his friend Gilbert wants him to go with the experiment. Gilbert is the exploiter, he’s not in this to create a substitute for those lonely and hard done by. This is for big payouts and ludicrous amounts of cash exploiting those who take part in the project. He preys on weakness and insecurity, with much darker and disturbing aims for his startup. 

 

Kate Kiddo is the voice of Amanda, a faceless member of Gilbert’s team who analyzes the data and interviews Derek before and after his experiences with Susan. This is not for Derek’s benefit, no way. Amanda is the algorithm, merely gathering data from Derek as long as he is useful, feeding it back into Gilbert’s project. No matter what Derek says or does Susan’s programming is always to bring the conversation back to exploitative sex. What can she do to get Derek to have sex with her, an embodiment of the sex industry. 

 

Actor and model Yvonne Emilie Thalker, who does a really good job as Susan, is naked for most of the film, so much that it quickly becomes a non-factor, which is very interesting to reflect upon after viewing. Thalker is an attractive person, we can all agree, so seeing a naked body all the time should be awesome, no? Is this part of McCrae’s intentions, so as to not distract from his real purpose and messages as the story progresses? The sexuality between Derek and Susan should entice the viewer but Derek marvels so much as to how real and good Susan and her act feels, to the point sometimes that it’s just silly to watch. You can see how McCrae uses this to distract the casual viewer from any arousal. You’re not here to get your jollies. 

 

To note, Thalker had reduction surgery in real-life, only after learning the fact do we not know if those were their real scars on their body in the movie, worked into the script while their many tattoos were covered.

 

When the ball drops in the final act we’re unsure if McCrae is commenting on artificial sexual experiences as a gateway to harder and darker things? No one jumps right into extreme and illegal levels of pornography, do they? Here we thought we were already witnessing a dark foreboding of where artificial sexuality was headed. Oh, it got dark, real quick. Derek, disgusted by this revelation, acts out violently. Once again, like in the opening scene, an act of violence follows something that Susan has said, which is very interesting. However, unlike at the beginning of McCrae’s story

 

In its hay day the erotic thriller genre existed to entertain and boost libido (and exploit, this is not a registered health service). Black Eyed Susan is very likely to do the opposite of that, looking at the sex industry raw in the face and exposing it as full exploitation. With all the data being gathered about your… extracurricular activities, how far away are we really from what happens in Black Eyed Susan? 

 

For the male viewer, the idea with this sci-fi erotic horror is to make you look into yourself, question yourself. Do you struggle with toxic masculinity, would you be that guy in the opening scene, ready to strike the moment your manhood is challenged? Or, would you be Derek, disgusted by their involvement with the exploitation and acting out against it. Not violently, please. Fuck, we don’t need any crusaders going on a rampage now.

 

Black Eyed Susan is a hard, sometimes difficult look at sexual exploitation and toxic masculinity. It is a necessary conversation to keep happening and Scooter McCrae makes a triumphant return after a lengthy absence from filmmaking to look the topics in their faces and say that they are not afraid to talk about it. Sometimes you gotta be uncomfortable to be comfortable… to talk about such things.