Hyena

Sex work is a difficult theme to use responsibly in creative work, given that it is subject to a great many popular but misleading narratives. Having made documentaries on adjacent subjects, Matthew Ninaber is more alert to this than most directors, and fiction gives him a new medium through which to explore his ideas. The result is a thriller which explores the real vulnerabilities of some people in the industry without suggesting that they’re universal, and which deals with desire without erasing its characters’ humanity.

It opens with Nicole (Kristen Kaster) under interrogation in a police station. She’s a suspect in a series of murders, but is she guilty, or has she been framed by her flatmate and sometime lover, Rachel (Storm Steenson)? The police suggest that Rachel has already betrayed her and that she should take this opportunity to give her side of the story, but they would say that, wouldn’t they? She is guarded. In discussing her relationship with Rachel – personal, professional, etc. – she is careful to present herself as an innocent led astray, first giving cam work a try and then gradually getting drawn into other activities, shocked to discover Rachel’s propensity for violence – but should we believe her?

As you would expect, much of the tale is told in flashback. There are further flashbacks from there, one of them addressing an incident in childhood which may have inspired those violent tendencies, but Ninaber is careful to avoid straightforward victim or avenger narratives. He’s more interested in the effect on the psyche of repeated exposure to hostility. There are lighthearted scenes in which Nicole enjoys her work – the artifice and the playfulness of it. Most of the clients are polite and play by the rules, but an incident with a troll, despite the recitation of the familiar mantra that such things should be ignored, secretly leads to an extreme reaction. This does two things: highlighting the way that PTSD can give people instinctive, disproportionate responses, often to their own detriment; and raising the spectre of male abuse in a way that does not necessitate showing a woman getting hurt.

Ninaber makes cautious, conscious choices throughout. There’s plenty of eroticism but actually very little nudity. The women’s sexual relationship is established without gratuitous sex scenes, and the focus quickly shifts to their emotional connection, which runs deeper than either might be ready to admit. Despite Nicole’s habit of effecting meekness, they are both strong personalities, and even without the murders, their proximity seems like a recipe for trouble. That’s even before they take an interest in the same man – who just happens to have another connection to the case, and is, in the circumstances, a deeply risky choice.

Perhaps the attraction to risk is the real driving force behind both central characters’ behaviour. As the story builds, there is an increasing sense of compulsion rather than choice; a loss of control. The dénouement feels a bit contrived, but several of the film’s key arguments rest upon it, and it complements that aspect of the narrative well enough. The interrogation might as well be internal, Ninaber’s carefully constructed, stylised world collapsing in upon itself like a house of cards.

Watch Hyena for a second time and you’ll appreciate the cleverness of its structural elements, especially the editing, even more. The vivid pinks and purples get a bit wearing, but are popular in the camming world, contributing to the sense that one has entered a fantasy space where the usual rules need not apply. Like cinema, it is all, in the end, about shared illusions.

Reviewed on: 06 Sep 2026