Alice Maio Mackay – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE SERPENT’S SKIN – Review by Sarah Ward

March 26, 2026March 28, 2026 Sarah Ward Aaron Schuppan, Alice Maio Mackay, Benjamin Pahl Robinson, Charlotte Chimes, scott major, The Serpent’s Skin, Vera Drew

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.

Festivals

Women @ Fantasia International Film Fest 2024 – Alexandra Heller-Nicholas reports

July 3, 2024July 7, 2024 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alice Lowe, Alice Maio Mackay, Dale Dickey, Fantasia International Film Fest 2024, Heidi Honeycutt, Hunter Schafer, I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies, Kier-La Janisse, Naomi Jay, Samara Weaving

Women’s work is also centred elsewhere at this year’s festival, both in front of and behind the camera. The 2024 festival is foregrounding achievements of two of important women film critics working in genre criticism today. First, acclaimed critic, curator and historian Heidi Honeycutt will launch her decades-in-the-making magnum opus, I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies. Canada’s own Kier-La Janisse will be appear in-person to read the introduction from her soon-to-be-released book, Cockfighter. about the 1974 film.

Reviews

CARNAGE FOR CHRISTMAS – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

May 13, 2024May 12, 2024 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alice Maio Mackay, Ben Pahl Robinson, Carnage for Christmas, horror, Jeremy Moineau, Salem Horror Film Festival

Another year, another sack-full of jaw-dropping professional accomplishments for horror filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay. If Mackay is somehow not already on your radar, so impressive is her CV that you are forgiven for thinking it could only be the result of a drunk, delusional AI program: at a mere 19 years of age, her latest film Carnage for Christmas is her fifth feature. May might for some seem a random month to premiere a Christmas-themed movie, but for those of us already under Mackay’s spell, it’s Christmas whenever she damned well says it is. Consciously inspired by the Pamela Sue Martin fronted Nancy Drew Mysteries of the late 1970s, Carnage for Christmas feels like a wry punk twist on the murder-of-the-week formula, a defiantly queer Murder She Wrote for a new generation.

Reviews

SATRANIC PANIC – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

September 15, 2023September 15, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alice Maio Mackay, australian films, horror genre, Satranic Panic, transgender

Alice Maio Mackay as a filmmaker brings so much fundamental joy to her movies. There’s an old school punk rock spirit here of finding joy in the bleak mess of it all, and perhaps nowhere else in her work is that joy more vivid than Satranic Panic – bright, eye-popping jewel colors explode on a screen further electrified by her meshing of the traditional horror film format with that of the musical. Mackay simply delights in Satranic Panic’s musical numbers – clearly as much as she does the more gruesome horror vignettes – and it is this sense of glee that render her films so effortlessly charming. A bright light in a dark world, Satranic Panic is another welcome addition to this astonishing young filmmaker’s growing oeuvre.

SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT May, 2023: Alice Maio Mackay, Eighteen-year-old Transgender Australian Horror Filmmaker

April 30, 2023April 30, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alice Maio Mackay

Alice Maio Mackay is, at the age of 18, a one-woman horror filmmaking machine whose already impressive filmography of low-budget genre bangers barely gives us time to exhale before she is ready to throw another one at us. An Australian transgender filmmaker who wears her activist spirit fiercely on her sleeve, Mackay’s films are unapologetically queer and delight in the fantastic potential the horror genre affords. Whether it’s demon cults or vampires, her colorful cadre of characters tackle all that the supernatural has to throw at them with Mackay’s now-signature comic verve, yet she never takes her eye off her determined vision to position queer folk front and center in her stories.

Reviews

T BLOCKERS – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

April 18, 2023April 18, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alice Maio Mackay, australian films, Lauren Last, T Blockers

Meet 18-year-old Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay. Don’t let her age fool you – this is an experienced indie filmmaker, now with her third feature T Blockers following on from 2021’s So Vam (which was picked up by Shudder) and 2022’s Bad Girl Boogey (which features a cameo by horror legend Bill Mosley). Following in the “make them hard and make them fast” of horror icons such as Jess Franco, Mackay’s already impressive output speaks of both a drive and urgency that manifests in the films themselves as a kind of seductive high-octane mania