On The Chopping Block: False Positive (2021)

 

My intrigue with False Positive was ignited almost immediately: While I can't remember when exactly I found out about this film (Wikipedia says it was announced in March 2019, but either time is illusive or I did not read about this film until much later), I do remember signing the hell up for it when I first read about it. Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux and Pierce Brosnan? In a "modern day Rosemary's Baby"? From A24, the studio behind some of my favorite movies of the last decade? Hell yeah! While I have seen many try to imitate or homage Rosemary's Baby to varying levels success, the talent lined up in front of the camera and the distributor had me hooked. I bided my time and, eventually, False Positive was delivered to Hulu two weeks ago. I went in mostly blind to what was going to come, and I stress mostly because while I avoided the trailers, I still saw gifs of certain scenes present in the trailer, including a certain moment involving Theroux and Brosnan.

And, having now finally watched it the previous night, I can confirm False Positive was mostly worth the wait!

Finding My "Queeroes" In Planet Terror & Cruising

"Representation matters" is a mantra that one has probably heard a lot over the last five years. A reflection of the desire for those considered "The Other" by mainstream society/culture to see themselves reflected in another medium. It's something I've had to examine recently, while dealing with a former friend who would repeatedly rant to me about the lack of queer superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's repertoire of characters. Of course, I was always quick to reassure him that progress he craved would come soon, despite my wariness of my own words. This happened often enough that it got me to thinking: Who would my queer superheroes that I could connect with be? It was a question that left me pondering, until I dipped into a well that I tap into frequently: The horror film genre. While there are a lot of characters I identify with in this genre, such as Scream's Gale Weathers and Promising Young Woman's Cassie Thomas (See my post discussing that right here), there were two queer characters that I eventually realized fit the bill of being my "queeroes": Dakota Block from Planet Terror, and Steve Burns from Cruising.