Utukku: A self-glorifying revenge fantasy
Written for The Aquinian
(*artwork: Amulet by Incé Husain)
Acadian filmmaker Mathieu Laprise’s horror comedy web series Utukku features playground bullying that escalates to the supernatural.
It is devious, silly and satisfyingly over-the-top — a celebration of the urge to enact disproportionate revenge. It both parodies and validates school kid intensity, shifting from petty to poignant to gleeful.
Rather than a horror-comedy, it feels like a self-glorifying revenge fantasy. It does this in a mere 15 aesthetic minutes that toys with non-linear timelines, segmented into three five-minute chapters called “The Doll”, “The Exorcism” and “The Amulet”.
The audience is introduced to our heroine, Vielda, as she sniffles and cries into a pitch black space devoid of sound.
The scene is an intimate closeup on her face that is almost uncomfortable. It is sad, striking, and complex. The nature of her tears shift through shock, pain, memory and composure for ten long seconds. When her phone’s ringtone ricochets across the darkness and breaks her reverie, we hear her voice for the first time.
The audience bonds with her immediately - her frailty, her intensity, and her naivety.
The scene shifts into a jarring flashback: a swarm of snickering girls, led by ringleader Nadine, are shoving Vielda into a locker. The lights of the school shut off as Vielda cries for help.
As much as the situation is emblematic of anti-bullying skits that course through middle schools, it feels freshly agonizing. It is quite a feat to rehumanize a trope with one sentence of dialogue.
And, crucially, it justifies and drives the plot: all we need to understand is that being shoved into a locker is worthy of seeking a demon to curse your bully.
The film plays with visuals very convincingly to build this suspense. It is strategic that Nadine looks like a textbook bully, every feature of her face angled in malice. It is strategic how this complements the victimized Vielda, who is doe-eyed, awkward, sassy, and a budding goth girl. It is strategic how prettily the world of Utukku is saturated in movement, colour, and a memorably mellow soundtrack. The whole film’s aesthetic is spun from revenge, pain, and power. It does not have to be explained.
The tropes of Nadine and Vielda are perhaps most crucial. The stereotypes are so familiar and comforting, the film succeeds without exploring character. And then, their boundaries are deliciously pushed as Vielda visits a shaman to acquire a demon.
“Having enemies has nothing to do with age,” Vielda says to the wary shaman.
She is offered a demon trapped in doll form.
It is a comedically creepy doll - waxy, humanoid, with scraggly black hair, a body made of voodoo cords, and a green amulet. It comes alive in a flash of red eyes and a growling, snarling soundtrack. It is actually a trope in itself - a rageful spirit imprisoned for thousands of years, newly bursting with evil. This offers another piece of cute logic for why the film works: it bluntly plays with tropes that typically don’t intersect, giving it an easy originality.
At school, Vielda hisses commands into the doll’s ear, eyeing Nadine. She smiles as she sees her wishes come true. Nadine spirals into self-humiliating acts that are tuned to the petty dark desires of a school kid.
The way the film tackles the supernatural is also likeable. The supernatural is not portrayed as dramatic or even strange. It is casual. The demon is a classic demon - a red-eyed rage with a passion for telekinetic chokeholds. But the characters are unfazed. They roll their eyes. They call the demon a nuisance. It is simply an unpleasant part of life, just like being shoved into a locker.
This makes the film feel like a daydream — something that does not have to be realistic or even consistent. It just has to feel satisfying. Indeed, the events of Utukku could be interpreted as Vielda’s own daydream, a mental space where she ponders the trials and errors of humiliating her tormentor in a supernatural format loyal to her gothic self-concept.
Utukku is addictive and witty. It is predictable but entertaining, exaggerated but relatable.
Rather than a film, it is more intuitive to view it as a painting. It is clean and compact. It is consistently lush. There is not a second wasted. It is purposefully shallow so it can fully embody self-indulgence and its comedies. It is simple. I love its brevity and its unabashed escapism.
Utukku is a concise way to playfully reconnect with your vengeful side. Who doesn’t need that? ♦
A modified version of this article appeared in The Aquinian on November 6th, 2022: