Two and a half decades after his last feature film, Sixteen Tongues, director and cinematic jack of all trades Scooter McCrae returned to delve into the most uncomfortable material of his career with the intimate and unsettling Black Eyed Susan. At least on the surface, this is a more extreme variation on the question of emotional connections to AI and artificial life forms posed in films like Her, Ex Machina, Companion, A.I., etc., which obviously have roots going back to works like Blade Runner and The Stepford Wives. What this one does though is confront head on the ethics and psychological effects of inflicting violence on one of these "consenting" recipients, embodied by what essentially boils down to an intense three-hander with more up its sleeve than you might anticipate.

Living out of his car after splitting with his wife and losing custody of his daughter, Derek (Maffei) is desperate for any kind of income and gets an opportunity when he runs into old friend Gilbert (Romeo). A mutual acquaintance of theirs, Alan (Fowler), has committed suicide and was doing a product testing gig for Gilbert that is now left available. Considering himself a good guy, Derek is apprehensive when he finds out the nature of the job: interacting with a sentient, very lifelike sex doll, Susan (Thälker), who has been built for physical punishment. According to Gilbert, the theory is that having her on the market will alleviate violent activity against real humans and held mitigate dark impulses in society. When he starts to spend time with Susan, Derek gets a chilling firsthand look at the downside of encouraging the nastier corners of the human psyche.

The concepts handled in Black Eyed Susan have been bandied around for quite a while and are tied to the arguments that pornography is a positive force meant to exorcise the drive for real-life sexual aggression, but the reality is always trickier and more dependent on individual cases. At first glance you might think this is a film dealing with toxic masculinity a la many mid-'20s genre films like Blink Twice, Fresh, and so on, but that isn't really the case; it's more about the responsibility of having a human consciousness versus an artificial one, what the destruction of one means over the other, and the line where one's moral boundary can't be crossed. All of the leads do excellent work here, with Thälker bringing an unearthly intensity to a tricky role that doesn't really bear comparison to any character we've seen before. As with McCrae's other two features (also including his intense debut, Shatter Dead), this is strong stuff that occasionally bears the influences of David Cronenberg and his mentor Frank Henenlotter but is unmistakably his own voice.

An opening disclaimer for the 2025 Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome notes that the film was shot on Super 16 at 1.66:1 and intended for 1.85:1 exhibition, with the presentation here a slightly windowboxed 1.78:1. The result looks great with lots of organic film grain, very deep blacks, and a moody, warm color scheme accented by some striking lighting work. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 English stereo track is subdued but effective with most of the channel separation going to the melancholy score by the legendary Fabio Frizzi (of Lucio Fulci fame), with optional English SDH subtitles provided. Two new audio commentaries are included, the first with McCrae and Fangoria's Michael Gingold and the second a group one with actors Thälker, Maffei, Romeo, Fowler, and Kate Kiddo with producer Aimee Kuge. Both are very substantive with plenty of discussion about the development of the story, the meaning of including certain scenes that almost didn't make it in, the internal process of creating the characters, the decisions involving technology (or lack thereof), the logistics of the more physically intense scenes, and a whole lot more. In "Tough Love" (27m39s), McCrae goes into the film's origins as a multi-story sci-fi script called Narrowcaster, the role of Frizzi in bringing in producer Justin Martell, the influence of Carl Theodor Dreyer, the impact of deciding to shoot on film, the crucial aspect of casting Thälker, the deliberate decision to never show a biological woman on screen during the running time, and the process of finally wrangling cinematographer Anton Zinn."Test Subjects" (27m7s) is a conversation with the three leads about their initial apprehension about the subject matter and relief upon reading the script, their approach to the tricky subject matter, the inherent discomfort in the themes and what it says about the culture at large, and the way it relates to the ongoing debate about AI today. "A Whole New Sensation" (18m13s) features Martell and Kuge talking separately about their own first experiences with the writer-director, Frizzi, the aspects of the script that made them eager to explore the project, and other genre connections that they all have in common. In "Admire Me, or Fuck Me: Creating the World of Black Eyed Susan" (17m13s), cinematographer Anton Zinn talks about his own perspective on McCrae and his work as well as the collaborative decisions they made on the film including uses of exposure and spotlighting to get the effect they wanted. Finally Frizzi appears in "Listen to the Replicants Warbling" (19m40s), Frizzi talks about his immediate positive response to the script, his love of the idea reminding him of Blade Runner, and the musical approach he took to the provocative material. Also included are a reel of deleted and extended scenes (9m41s) with a few extra little bits of character shading, Thälker's screen tests (4m23s), two trailers, and McCrae's marvelous 2015 short film Saint Frankenstein (17m26s), a wild vignette with Melanie Gaydos and Tina Krause about a sex work visit that turns out to be something very much out of the ordinary.

Reviewed on April 19, 2025