Insecstasy

Bluesky

“I don’t want to make love. I want to be eaten alive,” says the breathy audio as she masturbates in bed with an insect in a jar pressed against her chest, killing it as she comes.

It’s quite an intro, but what do you expect from a film with a title like this? Angus Silver, who brought this tasty little treat to Fantasia 2026, has never been subtle with his titles, and this one sets us up nicely for what is to come. In a work which follows the traditional structure of a porn film, Tirion Healy, who previously collaborated with him on Church Of The Flying Saucer, plays a young woman who knows what turns her on but has no idea how to translate that into an experience that satisfies for more than 15 minutes. She spends her time searching without knowing what she’s looking for, whilst navigating a series of sexual acts involving humans and arthropods in which the only common factor is disappointment.

First things first: viewers should be aware that this film is very carefully shot, and there is no evidence of any animal abuse. What we might imagine we see is a result of very precise cutting and implication. The film does not seek to condone any particular sexual practice. It has no interest in morality one way or another, though it does have a sense of humour. What it does do, very effectively, is to explore the nature of desire and the experience of living with a desire which is subject to opprobrium – indeed, one which, at one stage, our heroine imagines she might share with nobody else in the world. It also uses the unusual to interrogate the normative, in pornography and in the world at large.

Sadie works as a medical receptionist, gossiping with colleagues about a patient whose obsessions she disapproves of. At break time she shares cigarettes with a guy called Theo (Emmett Roiko) who works nearby. It’s not clear if she cares about smoking, but she’s absent-mindedly thinking about fucking him. At the end of the working day, she regularly visits the local pet shop, where she tells the staff that the insects she buys are for a lizard. Assistant Honey (Lyndall Huber) doesn’t seem altogether convinced, but is thinking about fucking her. Later, when she’s at home, her friend Genevieve (Kelsey Thompson) calls her up or comes around. It’s not quite clear why she’s friends with Genevieve. It’s one of those relationships that seems to have developed by accident.

“I feel like I get smaller and smaller ever day, and then one day there’s going to be nothing left,” she tells Genevieve, who is busy talking about something else.

Into that porn film structure, Silver weaves the visual language of the 1980s erotic thriller. Sadie’s obsession might relate to early thoughts about dirt and a dead schoolfriend rotting in the ground, but her apartment is bright white and scrupulously clean. When her body arches backwards, her hands clutch the pristine sheets. Whenever the narrative threatens to stagger, one of those wonderful little leaps of porn logic gets it back on track. Even if you never really understand Sadie’s fetish, you’ll recognise her ultimate object of desire as soon as you see it. Single-minded as she is, it can only be a matter of time until she gets her way; but what will that mean?

Honey likes women with big eyes. Sadie has a very direct gaze. She doesn’t believe in messing about. When a prospective lover hesitates to talk dirty, she struggles to take him seriously, wondering if he knows what he wants. Better a clear path to destruction. Freud would have a lot to say, until she left him speechless. Silver keeps us close so that it’s not until things change that one can clearly see how very much off-balance she has been.

The montage work here is first class and deserves a star of its own. Silver does an impressive job of managing the challenges presented by scale, managing to keep track of what’s going on with Sadie and with the assortment of insects she meets, and there are some delightful snippets of surrealist imagery slotted in too. The film also benefits from an awesome score by Tom Cepeda and the Rats that Drink Blood. Just as a well-made documentary ought to be engaging regardless of its subject, a well-made piece of erotica ought to be sexy regardless of whether or not one is attracted to its stars. Insectasy is not afraid to go for that, even if its real goal is elsewhere. It has that lively, liberatory vibe found in all the best radical porn, and its final shot will certainly get a reaction.

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