M.F.A. has a series of murders in it, but it doesn’t have the atmosphere of a horror movie like I would usually review this time of year. I’d say it’s closer to a thriller. It came out in 2017, I’ve been meaning to see it for a while, and unfortunately I was reminded of it by current events. It’s a rape-revenge movie with more parallels to the recent Cornell University case than I expected, but of course it’s not coincidence – it’s a terrible reminder that this is based on things that happen all the time. I have to warn you that although I think this is a respectable movie and not sleazy like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE it does have two very disturbing assault scenes, bluntly staged to seem authentic. It’s not sugar-coating it, or giving you a quick out. It’s very upsetting.

Noelle (Francesca Eastwood) is a painter working on her masters of fine arts. She’s cool, but not very social, trying to change that when she’s invited to a party by classmate Luke (Peter Vack, SWELTER). She has a very supportive duplex neighbor named Skye (Leah McKendrick, who also wrote the movie) who notices her trying on outfits and encourages her, gives her tips for hitting on the guy. It’s torturous because if we didn’t know the topic of the movie it would be cute. She likes a boy, she kinda wants to get laid, her friend has her back, none of that is a crime. She’s not worrying about bad things that could happen, and she shouldn’t have to.

Even if we didn’t know the subject we’d hate Luke immediately. He is such a pretentious fucking poser. I think she probly notices, but is willing to overlook it. Doesn’t matter. Bad taste in men is also not a crime. If she thinks he’s cute that’s her business. She goes to his bedroom with him, isn’t surprised when he drops the conversation and moves close to her. But the kiss is awkward, and then he shoves her on the bed and doesn’t listen to wait or stop or no. Starts manhandling her, talking mean, becoming a different person, acting like he thinks it’s a turn-on even though it’s clearly the opposite. She can’t fight him off. Afterwards she leaves the party dazed, wobbly, beaten, looking at the other people at the party looking at her. Do they know what just happened, or are they thinking something else? They don’t say anything.

The way accusations are discussed in our society turns many people into unwitting rape apologists. Well, if what you say is true then why didn’t you go straight from the party to the police and immediately document perfect evidence of what happened? Why didn’t you know exactly how to handle this? But the very best things to do to make a rapist accountable aren’t always the natural things to do. Of course Noelle doesn’t wake up the next morning thinking, “Luke is a rapist and I am a rape victim, time to prepare my legal case against him.” She lays in bed not wanting to face what happened, wishing it weren’t true, it was something else, she doesn’t have to change her whole life.

But she decides she has to tell someone. She starts with Skye. Skye is very sweet and ready to be a shoulder to cry on, but when she starts talking about reporting this crime, Skye discourages her. Oh no, you don’t want to do that. A friend of hers did that, and regretted it. You need to just accept that it happened and move on. It’s another scene with so many layers to it, because it seems like such bad advice that will perpetuate sexual assault, among other things. But also we can’t argue with it too much because we know she must be describing her own experience of being assaulted, and reporting it, and then being putting under a microscope and blamed, and dragging the trauma out only to get nothing in the end. And sure enough we will see that happen to Noelle and to others, in the movie and in life. They say buzzwords of support before asking her insinuating questions, more concerned about the protection of the school than the student.

So what is she supposed to do? She goes to class, seems okay until Luke comes in late. There he is. In the same lecture hall. Looking at her. She can’t take it and has to leave class. Later, when he texts her like nothing happened, she convinces herself she can talk to him about it. Accepts his invitation to come over, demands an apology. He scoffs, belittles her, unconvincingly pretends this is out of the blue, tells her to leave. This is all so true to life. The part that’s unusual, that makes it a thriller, is that when he pushes her threateningly against a wall she struggles and accidentally knocks him over a rail to the lower floor, and he dies on impact.

Okay, yeah, problem solved! There’s a new problem of course, that she pretends she doesn’t know what happened to him. So now it’s officially a thriller, our protagonist trying to get away with something. And then she escalates into an avenger. She researches news stories about campus rape cases where the perpetrators got away with it, then she goes to their parties, pretends to hook up with them to get them where she can kill them. She finds out about a circle of frat brothers who gang raped an incapacitated woman (Jess Nurse), even made a video of it, still managed to make people blame her for being drunk. Noelle manages to go after them one by one, and makes it personal.

Also, her art improves. She loosens up and gets more experimental. A whole new Noelle.

In a way it’s a little like MS. 45, but Ms. 45 concerned herself with the more exploitation-friendly topic of burglars and alley rapists. Obviously that’s a real thing but M.F.A. addresses the more common (and more stigmatizing) experience of women raped by someone they know. Someone who counts on blurring the lines of consent, and making their victims feel they asked for it. Unfortunately a topic some people still think requires debate.

For sure there is an aspect of wish fulfillment – since the system doesn’t find justice for women, wouldn’t it be cool if there was someone who did? A Punisher in a pink wig? Of course, there are complications. In some instances, her actions re-traumatize the victims she’s trying to represent, forcing them to relive something they’ve tried to move past. In one, she goes after a guy who shows what I take to be sincere remorse. If we believe what he says, it was a horrible thing he did when he was young, he hasn’t done it again and tries every day to atone for it. What do we think about that? I get the sense that Noelle is actually persuaded, but she’s in this heated situation where things turn violent anyway.

But I appreciate that it doesn’t ultimately come around to shaming her. The movie knows her murderous vigilantism is wrong, but doesn’t try to say it’s just as bad, or the real danger we should be concerned with. To the extent that this is horror, her extreme behavior is not the scary part. It’s the fear that she’ll get caught. It’s the guy in the locker room shower who survives getting hit with a hammer and grabs her.

A more down-to-earth side effect is what happens with another classmate, Shane (David Huynh, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds), who as far as we see really is a real friend and nice guy. They hang out and laugh together and it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to make a move on her or anything, but she instigates it. He’s surprised and even asks “Really?” and they’re taking off each others’ clothes, but suddenly it reminds her of the rape and she reacts with anger, pushing him away and telling him to get out. He even handles that right: asks if she’s okay, follows her command to leave. But later you see that he’s afraid to talk to her and keeps a distance. It’s even more sad for her than for him; she clearly wants that sort of relationship in her life right now, but is unable to.

Clifton Collins Jr. (ONE TOUGH BASTARD) plays a cop named Kennedy who’s following her trail of bodies. It might be a stretch that the same cop investigated the murders and the rapes on campus (we see his name on some paperwork), but it’s kind of fitting. This seemingly “good” cop failed to bring the rapists to justice but won’t give up on catching the person who succeeded.

I think Eastwood is good in this. Reminds me a bit of Emma Stone, but seems meaner. I actually had to look up if she was one of those Eastwoods, but of course she is, she looks like her mother Frances Fisher. There’s a most likely unintentional meta element if you’re familiar with her dad’s SUDDEN IMPACT. In that movie Dirty Harry is on the trail of a serial killer who turns out to be simply avenging her rapists. Like many cops in vigilante movies, he becomes sympathetic and helps her get away with it. That doesn’t happen with this cop. It’s a less optimistic movie.

Although she had been in TRUE CRIME, I guess people mostly know Eastwood from a reality show called Mrs. Eastwood & Company. Around this time she was also in the horror movie THE VAULT, an episode of Fargo (playing the young version of a character played by her mom), and an episode of Twin Peaks: The Return. Her movies since this include OLD, QUEEN OF THE RING and her old man’s JUROR #2.

M.F.A is the second feature from director Natalia Leite; she had done a movie called BARE, a bunch of shorts and a TV On the Radio video. Since then she’s worked in tv, including five episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale and one of The ‘Burbs. Writer McKendrick later did the I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER legacy sequel, which I enjoyed.

Maybe it’s weird to review something like this right now. It’s a movie I’m telling you is good even though I know I can’t exactly recommend it, because when are you going to be in the mood for that? But I think it does a really good job of illustrating, within a straight forward genre framework, why the mechanisms for dealing with sexual assaults, on campus and elsewhere, need to be changed. Still. Art hasn’t fixed the world yet but I admire the artists who try.