Alice Maio Mackay is a young and ambitious transgender director. At only 18 years old, she presents T Blockers, her third feature film. As she does one project directly after at fullspeed, she once again deals with a subject inspired by her life and the LGBTQIA2S+ community.
In a small Australian town, Sophie (Lauren Last) is a transgender young woman who dreams of becoming a filmmaker. As her love and family life wasn’t complicated enough, an earthquake that releases hate-feeding parasites causing people to violent behaviours. Along with her close friends, she becomes the only hope to save the day.
Being transgender is not easy and T Blockers deals with the subject with sensitivity. In all spheres of her life, Sophie is labeled and people always see her identity first rather than the human being, which causes a lot of discomfort. She has difficulty finding someone who loves her for what she really is until one day she meets Kris who seems to be a nice guy. Lauren Last plays with conviction. But being a trans woman herself, it’s not really a composition role. That said her character is charming and endearing. There is a lot of drama but we care for her.
The tone changes drastically when Kris is attacked by parasitized cannibal men. When the protagonists understand what they are dealing with, out of nowhere they become some kind of vigilantes with masks and weapons. Did we miss something? With this haste, we still find ourselves laughing and being entertained. The Alice’s directing is great. She learned a lot with her short career, but the movie seems rushed, especially with the script. We go from drama to horror comedy and the transition is not very well done. But at the end, it is still a very enjoyable pretty fun movie. With her first films, Alice’s work seems very colourful and we are curious about what she can reserve for us in the future.
3/5
