The last decade gave rise to a horror-comedy renaissance that's still thriving. But we bet you missed one of the genre's greatest, most criminally unknown masterpieces: Prevenge.
Luckily, the little known 2017 British indie recently started streaming exclusively on Shudder. Delivering a perfect blend of uneasiness and hilarity, the dark comedy makes for an ideal kick-off to spooky movie marathon season, whether you're a horror film aficionado or total scaredy-cat.
Prevenge follows the journey of Ruth, a very pregnant and grieving single mother who commits violent murders at the behest of her killer fetus. After her husband dies, Ruth is forced to carry out her bossy unborn baby's murderous rampage as it gives these high-pitched demands straight from the womb (often rudely, mind you — because kids, amiright?!).
Released in theaters at the same exact time as the Oscar-nominated Get Out, Prevenge doesn't get nearly enough credit for also helping to elevate the niche horror-comedy genre into critical acclaim. If Get Out is the father of this transcendent new era of elevated horror-comedies, Prevenge is its mother — so it only makes sense that it'd get far less recognition for it.
Jokes aside, there are a lot of similarities between Get Out and Prevenge. Both were unexpectedly brilliant directorial debuts, though Prevege's writer/director Alice Lowe also starred in hers — all while in her third trimester of pregnancy (nbd). Like Get Out, Prevenge's poignancy comes from how it uses the horror-comedy as an allegory to capture raw, awful lived experiences that the director intimately understands.
Prevenge uses the genre to immerse viewers in the ridiculous societal expectations imposed on pregnant women. The core of its unsettling horror and humor lies in its brutal dismantling of the myth of motherhood as an innately beautiful, blessed, self-sacrificial moral good for all women.
If Get Out is the father of this transcendent new era of elevated horror-comedies, Prevenge is its mother.
It doesn't matter who you were before; the minute you're visibly pregnant, the world seems to stop seeing you as a whole human being and instead as a saintly symbol. The idolization of motherhood robs pregnant women of their own identity, personhood, and agency, reducing them to a divine vessel for innocent unborn life.
Ruth tries again and again to talk about her inner turmoil, seeking answers from any medical professional who will listen. But they don't hear her, instead parroting back platitudes about baby knowing best — meanwhile, baby is telling her to violently murder. So what else can she do but oblige?
Prevenge highlights the warped worldview that underlies these loaded beliefs around motherhood, which you see crop up in anti-abortion arguments and laws. So-called "pro-life" ideologies will often argue that saving a fetus is more important than saving the lives of women who will die if forced to take their pregnancy to term or who were impregnated by their rapist.
Horror (especially horror-comedy) thrives on the uncanny, distorting what comforts us into something monstrous and grotesque. Little else is held as more sacred than these false ideals of the happy, selfless mother, which is exactly why it's so hilarious to see Prevenge gleefully flip the narrative on its head.
Through Ruth, the saintly life-giver becomes the unfeeling life-taker. She weaponizes the idolization of pregnant women, using it as a lure to casually murder her victims. With little care for the ample witnesses and evidence she leaves behind, she knows no one will suspect a pregnant woman (let alone her precious unborn fetus) of being a serial killer. Some victims struggle to process it even as they're choking on their own blood after Ruth stabs them in the throat with a butcher knife.
On a more personal level, Prevenge serves as a larger metaphor for the still taboo realities of prenatal and postpartum depression — or really, any mixed feelings about motherhood experienced by pregnant women. As Ruth wrestles with her grief, she admits to uncomfortably ugly feelings we rarely let pregnant women express in media, like wishing she could trade her unborn child's life for her dead husband.
Prevenge reclaims the female horror empowerment narrative on its own terms.
Overly romanticized portraits of motherhood can make pregnancy an unbearably alienating, lonely, terrifying experience. But admitting to that is in itself seen as a failure of character. Often, women internalize shame over their totally normal misgivings or negative experiences with pregnancy, blaming themselves for falling short of an impossible ideal.
Beyond its thoughtful exploration of womanhood, though, Prevenge is also a pure, liberating, unadulterated comedic triumph. I did a literal spit take after hearing the cussing fetus speak for the first time and, after several rewatches, am convinced it's voiced by Lowe herself but pitched up through some cheap auto-tune software.
I can only imagine how cathartic Prevenge is for people who've actually had to endure the nauseating messages pregnant women get sold. It not only validates stigmatized feelings of inadequacy but luxuriates in the fantasy of saying fuck it all to hell and getting loaded off tequila shots at a dive bar. Despite its shoestring budget, Prevenge is also bursting with iconic imagery, like Ruth in skeleton makeup and a flowing goddess gown, completing the look with a pair of practical flats and her trusty knife.
Women's revenge fantasies have become a known trope in horror movie, naturally evolving from the final girls of slasher flicks. But the final girl revenge fantasies still often trade in the feminine myths and ideals of patriarchy, allowing only "virginal" victims to get even with the literal monsters who tried to kill her.
Prevenge reclaims the female horror empowerment narrative on its own terms. Ruth doesn't need to be a perfect pure victim in order to justify her rageful vengeance. She's a human being crying out for help while suffering unimaginable pain, while the world can only respond by cooing at her belly to remind her of the blessing she's been gifted — how grateful she should be.
If you ask me, that warrants more than enough righteous anger for a baby-fueled killing spree.
Prevenge is now streaming on Shudder.
