THE SERPENT’S SKIN – Review by Sarah Ward
The Serpent’s Skin belongs to filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay first, then to her lead Alexandra McVicker, plus Avalon Fast as the latter’s love interest. Mackay’s knack for the ethereal and the sensual in her proudly transgender features, McVicker’s luminous tenderness and patience, Fast’s dynamic sense of assurance: potent individually and entrancing combined, they’re the ink that this dark fantasy romance is etched with. But it plays like a sign that two of the movie’s other cast members, Charlotte Chimes and Scott Major, each have long-running stints on former Australian TV mainstay Neighbours on their resumes — a positive one, no matter your connection to or affection for the recently cancelled Aussie serial, or lack thereof. While The Serpent’s Skin isn’t a soap opera or set in the Melbourne suburbs, it appreciates how infinitely more manageable and enjoyable life is when those around you are truly and committedly in your cul-de-sac or corner.
Following 2021’s So Vam, Bad Girl Boogey in 2022, 2023’s duo of T Blockers and Satranic Panic, then Carnage for Christmas in 2024, The Serpent’s Skin marks Mackay’s sixth feature in five years; this 2025 festival favourite-turned-2026 theatrical release is again flavoured, vividly so, with the Australian writer/director’s lust for creating lived-in cinematic life that centres trans and queer experiences. It has its own neighbours on her filmography, then. The Serpent’s Skin also resides eagerly and cosily beside the work of fellow trans filmmakers. The People’s Joker’s Vera Drew returns as Mackay’s editor, after splicing Carnage for Christmas. With Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, The Serpent’s Skin shares the beloved supernatural horror of 90s and 00s TV as a guiding light (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale might no longer be going ahead, but Buffy keeps illustrating its immutable influence elsewhere.)
A smattering of neighbours help fuel The Serpent’s Skin’s narrative, too, after Anna (McVicker, Castration Movie Anthology II: The Best of Both Worlds) escapes her stifling small-town upbringing by moving in with her city-dwelling elder sister Dakota (Chimes, Good Cop/Bad Cop). The siblings’ home is an apartment building that Dakota dubs “the Bates Motel”. It’s also where Danny (Jordan Dulieu, Bump) is “the only hottie”, and where little goes unnoticed by its most-vigilant inhabitants. When Anna and Danny hit it off, for instance, Dakota hears about their one-night stand via gossip before the next day has barely begun. The fact that the talk, tattle, views, venom, thoughts, phobias, prejudices and politics of others can impact how you move through the world, and how you see yourself in it, thrums through The Serpent’s Skin. Equally pulsating: Mackay’s fondness for bursts of bright tones such as magentas and greens, a stylistic touch with dreamy flair that also reflects how existence’s ebbs and flows can colour your perspective.
Once the plot takes a witchy turn and eyes literally light up, The Serpent’s Skin’s beaming hues are as much a reminder that we’re all the source of our own perception and power. That said, the film also knows the rewards and the magic of finding someone who is on your wavelength, and who accepts everything about you exactly as it is. In other words, it believes deeply in love. This is a movie of overlays — thematically and emotionally, and also visibly through lensing by cinematographer Aaron Schuppan (a veteran of all six of Mackay’s features to-date) and Drew’s editing. Accordingly, Gen (Fast, a filmmaker herself, and another Castration Movie Anthology alum) is introduced during Anna’s tryst with Danny. Via cross-cutting, she observes their bedroom antics psychically, and thoroughly enjoys them, before the two women meet physically. On hand to assist Anna after an unexpected incident with a robber at her new record-store job (where Scrublands’ Majors is her boss), Gen is immediately her other half — including in understanding and harnessing the Scanners-style mind-popping mystical abilities that they both possess.
Mackay co-writes with her regular screenwriting partner Benjamin Pahl Robinson, continuing a collaboration that spans past shorts (Smothered, Love and Blood, Tooth 4 Tooth, The Serpent’s Nest and Howl of the Werewolf) and every one of her features so far, as well as the upcoming Schoenbrun-produced Our Effed Up World. Among its many inspirations, The Serpent’s Skin clearly counts gothic romances; as much as the literary genre reliably holds sway over cinema, regardless of whether or not a new version of Wuthering Heights is gracing the silver screen, Mackay has never been one to let her influences overpower her own vision. She doesn’t forget that characters, not tropes or loving nods, are a movie’s lifeblood, either. When Anna and Gen are tasked with stopping a soul-sucking demon — the design of which cements The Serpent’s Skin’s adoration for Buffy — their quest proves urgent and involving because the duo, their journey, their relationship and the stakes have already been fleshed out.
Calling a filmmaker ambitious isn’t always a compliment. Noting that they’re prolific can fit the same category. All of the intent and drive that someone can summon, plus all of their ever-shooting efforts, doesn’t instantly and automatically conjure up a memorable, meaningful movie — or demonstrate that a director and/or writer sports a firm, unique voice. In the 21-year-old Mackay’s case, though, the proof of that enthusiasm and determination paying off, alongside that keep-on-rolling approach to crafting film after film, grows with each and every new feature. Given her embrace of creative reunions (Dulieu and Major are among Our Effed Up World’s cast, too), here’s hoping that McVicker and Fast extend their charismatic pairing in front of Mackay’s camera in the future. As the Neighbours theme has told everyone for decades, communities supposedly thrive when good neighbours become good friends; when great talents forge great partnerships, their films charm and delight as well.
