The Scary of Sixty-First

ALEX

With a title like this one, and knowledge of the director herself, it’s hard to imagine a better film than we got. I mean, we got what we deserved.

JADE

I was imagining less self-degradation and less covering my own eyes. Aren’t the Red Scare girls always saying that people today should have more dignity and self respect?

ALEX

Everything they say comes with the caveat of ‘Not that we should be talking.’ I think Dasha was using this film as a way to confront her own relationship with self-degradation. A kind of examination and exorcism of her conspiracy theory obsessions. And since its completion she has become religious and more focused on the Good of the world overall.

JADE 

This film was definitely an exorcism of the obsession with conspiracy theories: Every woman in this film is possessed in some way by the Epstein conspiracy. Dasha’s character says repeatedly, “I want to find the truth,” but getting closer to the truth will only put her more inside of the horror. She acts out Epstein’s possible murder, choking herself in a truly wretched display of self-degradation. In her desire to know more about the dark force haunting her, she proves that she doesn’t need any villain: to try to know darkness is not to illuminate it, only to suffer it. Of course she could only turn to God after that.

ALEX

You said earlier that here is depicted the absolute worst of movie monsters: a being that is both the victim and the perpetrator of the violation. There isn’t a source of the Good anywhere in this film: the closest we have is one of the girls’ boyfriends soundly rejecting the whole affair as ridiculous and insane. He’s depicted also as a cuck and a weakling, but he’s making the right move. These women are only bringing this evil upon themselves.

JADE 

It’s interesting that Dasha portrays this Sane Man character as a guy obsessed with big tits. It would be merely another overtly sexual aspect of the film, except that it serves to symbolize his normal, non-pedophilic sexuality. Here’s a healthy man, with healthy interests, who just wants to get away from these Vyvanse-addled girls' dark, worm-brained obsessions.

ALEX

I suppose the most simple way of viewing this film is to say it’s Dasha’s own state at that point in time. Taking Adderall and getting obsessed with bullshit, until she gets more acting work to do or a podcast to make. There are also ideas at play about the magical feminine itself: it’s powerful enough to inspire the truly hideous evil of Jeffrey Epstein & Co, it’s mysterious enough to fall under its own spells of darkness.

JADE 

This film fits into the haunted house genre. Actually, it’s a haunted apartment on the Upper East Side. And its haunted by the horrors of Epstein’s sex ring. Beginning to uncover Epstein’s secrets doesn’t free the girls from this haunting. It only takes them deeper into the horrors of what happened there.

The women in this film fall under the spell of their own vulnerability. One reason conspiracy theories like Epstein’s are so seductive is because  they give plot, narrative and realism to this feeling of vulnerability and lack of control that we walk around with, especially as women. It’s in some ways a relief to find that this latent feeling comes from somewhere real and specific, and is not merely a formless haunting.

ALEX

It’s the convenience and clarity of a work like Lord of the Rings. Because the evil is from someone specific (Sauron), from somewhere specific (Mordor), the heroism of your actions can be accurately judged by your relationship to these specific evils. Maybe that’s why this film was made? Anyone paying attention to the Epstein case can easily start to feel the uncanny valley open all around them. Why is no one reacting to this very specific, very real evil? Did she make the film to further make this evil objective, and thus to know herself?

JADE 

Dasha illustrates the way that so many people are complicit to horror, even as they try to set themselves in opposition to it. Unfortunately for the audience, we actually have to witness Dasha’s extreme self-degradation to see her point. And in that sense, you’re quite right. We got what we deserved.

ALEX

It’ll be interesting to watch what Dasha makes next. Maybe she’ll make a transformation on film like the personal transformation she’s made in the podcast.