From The Boston Underground Film Festival: ‘Medusa’ is a Sensuous and Stunning Exploration of Patriarchy and Liberation

In the world of Anita Rocha da Silveira’s “Medusa,” everything is heightened. Every room is saturated with color, dripping with neon light; each public moment is calibrated to present a polished image; every prayer is passionately spoken then sung in pop-inflected songs on a church stage; and modern life is a minefield of temptations dangled by the devil. That is, at least, according to the film’s main characters, who belong to a sisterhood of pious young women determined to resist the corruption around them, shunning sex and independence as they strive to achieve Godly perfection. Yet their activities aren’t limited to singing, praying, and making upbeat vlogs about “how to take a selfie for the glory of God.”

As audiences see in the early moments of the film, which screened at the Boston Underground Film Festival last week, their orthodoxy has a darker edge. At night, they become a roving squad of violent vigilantes, donning masks to track down women whose behavior they deem improper, beat them, and film them professing allegiance to God. Audiences first meet them in their masked mob, stalking a young woman down the street like something out of a “Mean Girls”/”The Purge” crossover special. As the film progresses, dedicated vigilante Mari (Mari Oliveira) begins to second-guess the teachings of the church and her sisters, especially the ringleader Michele, after she is injured in a scuffle with a victim and gets fired from her job. Embarking on a career as an intensive care nurse, Mari decides to track down the disgraced celebrity Melissa, who was disfigured years before by the original vigilante girl-squad. As Mari attempts to find and photograph her, she descends into the haunted, hallucinatory world of an end-of-life hospital and faces unexpected temptations that lead her to question her faith.

The central vigilante-squad premise, which could easily come across as gimmicky or heavy-handed in its depiction of petty teenagers lashing out, is emotively executed and unpredictably developed. Rather than satirizing her main characters as ridiculous caricatures, Silveira leans into the insidious sincerity of their mission and the glossy aesthetics they hide behind, introducing the story in a hyper-stylized ‘80s palette that fades into a lush, organic green color scheme in film’s second half, when Mari explores the decaying hospital where she works. In the film’s first half, which focuses mainly on Mari and the girls she patrols the street with, Silveira’s heart-racing chase sequences, Oliviera’s nuanced performance, and João Atala’s mesmerizing cinematography manage to ground the absurd violence of Mari’s girl-gang in a twisted and believable reality, emphasizing the relatable humanity of the film’s characters. In the second half, though, the focus shifts to Mari’s hospital job and the fractured politics of her church, and the film’s editing and score heighten the tension of otherwise everyday moments, finding horror in the mundane. In one standout scene, Mari’s hospital is hit by a rolling blackout, throwing the cavernous rooms into intermittent darkness as the dim generator lights flash. As Mari and her coworkers check the patients’ machines, shadows flooding in around them, their routine activity becomes chilling.

Silveira’s antiheroes are at once repulsive and sympathetic, appearing not as caricatures or fools but as complex young people seduced and ultimately alienated by an ultra-conservative religious movement. Through careful narrative and visual incorporation, Silveira shows how the church’s influence is reinforced and ensured through its male vigilante groups, who show off their strength in pageants of masculinity in an attempt to woo the church’s young women and eventually marry one. Where similar narratives of feminist liberation like “The Handmaid’s Tale” frame violent patriarchy as a dystopian threat rather than a historical reality specifically weaponized against Black and brown women, “Medusa” is firmly contextualized within its present-day setting and historical context, showing how communal ties to the church (such as Mari’s boarding house’s religious foundation) maintain antiquated influences and gender roles.

Silveira’s portrayal of the young church members’ heavily-supervised joint activities — from speed dating events to the men’s physical training sessions, which the girls observe — are fraught with repressive expectations, trapping the young women of Silveira’s story in a politely misogynistic and terrifyingly antiquated system. When they finally rebel — in a striking last act sequence — it is the most exaggerated moment of the film (even prompting laughter from the audience) and a symbolic sigh of relief, allowing both the characters and viewers a cathartic experience that ends not where it begins — with violence — but someplace new, outside the cycle of retaliation and rage that propelled the plot thus far.

Through the interplay of these elements, “Medusa” delivers a nuanced take on religious orthodoxy, patriarchy, and sexual liberation, which is particularly relevant in a moment when women are being pulled into anti-feminist backlash movements like the “tradwife” internet phenomenon under the guise of empowerment and self-respect. Silveira treats the patriarchal underpinnings of her fictional community’s misogynistic traditions with the seriousness they deserve, using the horror format to highlight the link between the oppressive system and the inherent violence of its enforcement (from domestic abuse to vigilante assault). Yet Silveira handles these subjects with deft humanity and understated precision, culminating in a film that is at once a gripping horror thriller, a work of visual art, and a resonant social commentary.

—Staff writer Harper R. Oreck can be reached at harper.oreck@thecrimson.com.