Mr. Wrong (1986)

directed by Gaylene Preston
New Zealand
88 minutes
4 stars out of 5
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This slept-on horror film is very bad Friday the 13th viewing if you have intentions of getting into the Halloween spirit, because it's lacking in any kind of frightening images or lasting terror, though it's quite good nonetheless. I hope I've reviewed enough movies by women for it to be apparent that I'm not just saying this because it's directed by a woman. This is genuinely one of the most lovely, almost comforting horror movies I've ever seen and it takes talent and skill to make this sort of thing, the same way it takes talent and skill to make something disturbing.

Mr. Wrong is a take on the haunted car subgenre where a single woman buys a nice Jaguar after moving out of her parents' house in an attempt to be more independent, but ends up regretting it when it turns out the car may or may not be haunted by the ghost of a murdered young woman who previously owned it. Also present in the protagonist's life are several men trying to get up in her business- and one who isn't, but who, amusingly, always seems to get tied up in the doings of the more nefarious men, though he's harmless and only trying to hang out with a girl.

Like much about it, this movie's aesthetic is low-key, but it's got a look that's really gorgeous, although hard to pin down. I'm going to borrow a term from another reviewer here and call it "brass and woodwind", because that's one of the only accurate ways I can think to describe it even though it doesn't make much sense. It's this sort of analog, wood-colored, done-by-hand feeling. If you've seen Jan Švankmajer films, it's like that without quite the same level of intricate construction. Overwhelmingly brown but somehow not in a bland way.

The other thing people seem to agree upon about this movie is that it has feminist intentions, with one person even calling it "heavy-handed" in doing so. Part of me wants to argue that women protecting women shouldn't have to be labelled feminism, that it should just be what women do for each other, and a larger part of me wants to argue that if you do consider it feminism, women saving women certainly shouldn't be regarded as "heavy-handed". But mostly I agree that at the core of this movie are feminist beliefs: that women need to look out for one another, up to and including prioritizing women's safety over men's feelings. I think there does exist a narrative created by patriarchal oppression that women need to divide themselves over things like class, looks, race, life experiences, etc. and so the act of sticking up for other women in the face of that artificial division is, in a sense, feminist.