Filmmakers make great serial killers, posits this exclusive trailer for I Blame Society

By Randall Colburn  |  December 8, 2020 | 2:00pm
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Filmmakers make great serial killers, posits this exclusive trailer for I Blame Society

Image: Cranked Up Films

One of the grandest, most perverse crimes against the publishing industry was the rocky release of O.J. Simpson’s If I Did It, a “hypothetical” account of how the acquitted football legend would have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. You know, if he did it.

“If I did it” are also some of the first words you’ll hear in the below trailer for I Blame Society, a satirical thriller from rising filmmaker Gillian Horvat. Horvat, director and writer of the feature, also stars as a struggling filmmaker in a male-dominated industry—her characters, you see, are just so “unlikable”—who finds inspiration in a casual remark about how she’d make a pretty good murderer. In the documentary within the meta-story, Gillian embarks on a journey to see if there’s truth to the comment, hypothetically plotting out “the perfect murder” as an experiment. Unfortunately, as a synopsis portends, “her obsession with authenticity leads her to lose sight of where creativity ends and madness begins.”

The A.V. Club is pleased to share an exclusive first look at the indie’s new trailer. Check it out below.

“A few years ago a couple friends of mine gave me this really interesting compliment that I would make a good murderer,” Horvat tells The A.V. Club. “I soon realized that the same traits that accomplished serial killers possess (creativity, resourcefulness, vision, sense of scale, follow through, etc.) are also necessary to being a good director and that got me thinking about making a film that examines that overlap in the character of an underestimated, hyper ambitious female filmmaker.”

She continues: “In addition to the genre premise though this is also a really personal film about struggling with the potential of failure and the compartmentalization and commodification of women in the film industry in a time when gatekeepers are telling them that the problems of gender equality have been solved by firing a couple guys and replacing them with… other guys.”

I Blame Society, which premiered to acclaim at 2020's International Film Festival Rotterdam, will open in virtual theaters on January 8. It will then receive a VOD release on February 12.

Check out its striking poster below:

 
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