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I Blame Society (Gillian Wallace Horvat, 2020) sets the tone from the get-go. Struggling filmmaker Gillian (Gillian Wallace Horvat) is making a movie based on a “compliment” paid to her by some friends: that she would make a great murderer. The film’s centrepiece, she explains on camera to friend Chase (Chase Williamson), will see her walk us through her hypothetical perfect murder. Her pretend victim will be the nastiest and, therefore, most deserving person she knows. That person, she tells him, is his girlfriend. Or as Gillian likes to call her, “Stalin”. Chase stares at her in disbelief. Gillian turns to the camera. “I… I’m not pitching this right.”

Cut to three years later. Gillian is still struggling to break into the L.A. film industry. After a video call with her manager’s ear, where he breaks the news that he can’t sell her latest script (Israel is trickily “political” subject matter and the female main character is “not really likeable”), Gillian decides to resurrect her old project. Her friends are unconvinced. Boyfriend Keith (Keith Poulson) is disturbed. But Gillian is determined to be bold, to make art on her own terms. And why plot a hypothetical murder when you can push the envelope that bit further and film the real thing?

Thus begins one woman’s descent into serial murder, ferried along nicely by zingy humour, increasingly daft fake suicide notes, and the odd makeover scene. This is Wallace Horvat’s feature début, but the film’s mumblecore sensibilities, its mockumentary framing device, and the deadpan humour of the whole affair means its unavoidable rough-and-readiness is incorporated nicely. 

Stripped back to the basics, I Blame Society lives or dies on its comedy. Here, I’m glad to say, it has more luck than the misfortunates who cross paths with Gillian. The sharp end of its humour is aimed mainly at the warped gender politics of the film industry, where a ‘strong female lead’ is a must but female creativity behind the scenes? Not so much. The satire is not so much razor-sharp as sardonic and suggestive. The title pins the blame for Gillian’s rampage on society with its tongue in its cheek. She can be every bit as obnoxious and ignorant as the men who hinder her and no one is quite as convinced of her talent as she is.

Some might see this style of commentary as underbaked or overly ironic. I felt it was an astute choice for a low-budget film co-written, directed by, and starring Gillian Wallace Horvat, centring on, well, a fictionalised Gillian Wallace Horvat. Any attempt to be too serious might have seen the film buckle under its own self-importance. Instead, the film revels in a brand of humour that is as dumb as it is clever. Gillian tearfully monologues to a mirror that her first semi-accidental murder has “precipitated a really drastic tone shift” in her documentary, GoPro strapped to her head. “I’m living my best life!” she whispers as she sits in a balaclava on the bed of her next victim, glass of wine in hand.

The film’s homemade documentary style makes an active participant of the camera. In a world where the camera has become a feature of everyday life, its foregrounding has resonance beyond the realm of film-making. I Blame Society intriguingly suggests how cameras deceive, in more ways than one. Gillian gets away with filming herself shoplifting by pretending to be on a video call; no one so much as bats an eye as she chats to her phone camera. She sees nothing wrong with petty crime, breaking and entering, and eventually murder as long as it’s done for the camera. Her camera trivialises and makes comedy out of sex, a break-up, death. Like much of the complex issues it brushes up against, the film wears this commentary lightly, but it is from here that this comedy-horror derives its truest thrill of terror. Keith turns, perturbed, to Gillian’s camera. “Has… Has that been recording this whole time?” Gillian zooms in. “Is that okay? Am I scaring you?”

Blue Finch Film Releasing presents I Blame Society on Digital Download 19 April.