Nobody is proud to be on Hinge – least of all Chris (Brendan Bradley), a new father and the conflicted protagonist of Succubus. The film is nothing if not reminiscent of giants of the horror genre in its exploration of cultural unease around sex and vulnerability. In Succubus, R.J. Daniel Hanna asks an age-old question: what if there was a demon in the internet?
Featuring at the London International Fantastic Film Festival for its London Premiere, Succubus follows Chris’ foray into online dating after separating from his wife. Egged on by his comedically toxic best friend (Derek Smith), Chris meets the gorgeous Adra (Rachel Cook). But something is off – she is selectively mute on-camera, refuses to show her face without filters, and wears sunglasses indoors. The analogy for the online phenomena of catfish and deepfakes couldn’t be more thinly veiled.
Heavily featuring found-footage elements, much of Succubus takes place on video calls, direct messaging apps, and a conveniently-placed nanny cam. Admittedly, this is a difficult feat to pull off, as we tend to turn increasingly toward cinema to escape the online overwhelm. However, far from the trite gimmick I was expecting, Succubus deals with the internet sensitively, allowing it to guide the story rather than invade it. Glitches are eery, and yet their placement is realistic. Claustrophobia reigns as the webcam’s omniscience becomes overwhelming. Even so, a la Black Mirror, this story is not so much a condemnation of the internet as an exploration of the corruption of its users. Indeed, Chris can only be saved from Adra through the powers of the world wide web and its many-splendored delights.
A compelling take on the developing relationship between sexuality and the internet. Cut together with an unusually strong instinct for the use of found footage in narrative cinema, it is leaps and bounds ahead of other stories centring the internet which feel dull and out of touch.
Where the film begins to falter is in its second act, where it more or less abandons its carefully curated rumination on the panopticon of the internet. Away from the fast-paced phone calls and the humiliation of surveillance, its pathos falters, and quickly dies. Its themes become jumbled and characterisation feels far less three-dimensional than the film’s promising opening. By the end, Succubus dissolves into an incoherent mess of plot twists and symbols clearly intended to shock and horrify, but for which too little ground work has been laid.
What is refreshingly striking is the fact that the online monster is female. Of course, there are a couple of ways to read this, and the film itself seems largely ambivalent about which you choose. On the one hand, a beautiful but wicked young woman who would lure a compassionate father to his doom is clear incel cannon fodder, tracing back to the likes of Circe. She is deceitful, heinous – she is an amalgam of a history of anxieties of women’s sexuality. This in addition to a baffling and ultimately unresolved plot point regarding a disputed case of sexual assault does not incline me toward a feminist reading.
However, I’m sick to death of the cautionary tale of the ingenue girl inadvertently stumbling into the arms of the forty-year-old pervert (an accusation Chris makes of Adra, flipping gender norms of who gets to be a creep online.) It’s impossible not to be reminded of an early episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer following a similar premise, with the key difference that the one getting duped is a teenage girl. Succubus is by no means a feminist treatise, but there was something invigorating about Chris’ continued victimhood. His agency is increasingly restricted throughout the movie, his fate wholly dependent on the actions of others. The only fateful choice he makes for himself is the ultimate emasculation. In all its flawed glory, Succubus is a compelling take on the developing relationship between sexuality and the internet. Cut together with an unusually strong instinct for the use of found footage in narrative cinema, it is leaps and bounds ahead of other stories centring the internet which feel dull and out of touch. Unfortunately, the ending falls short of this phenomenal strength, collapsing into the realm of the tacky and bewildering. As twist after twist assails the script in its later stages, I find myself beginning to yearn again for the simple distress of the uncanny video chat.
Succubus played at the London International Fantastic Film Festival
August’s Archive – Succubus (2024)
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