Our Effed Up World

🙂 Our Effed Up World, dir. Alice Maio Mackay, 2026, Australia, 67 min.
Friday, June 19, 2026, 8:45 PM, Castro Theatre
🌐 World premiere

Our Effed Up World

Frameline blurb: “Space is big and freaky and full of dangerous shit.” Even with a dad who studies the stars for a living, Sheri (One of Us Is Lying’s Sara Thompson) has always been afraid of the cosmos overall — and meteors in particular.

After years of living in an astronomy hot spot, Sheri starts to find solace in the stars, only to have her world turned upside down when her beloved grandmother dies. Alternating between apathy and lashing out, Sheri turns to her ragtag group of cinephile friends for comfort. But when she begins to have strange dreams that coincide with a meteor shower and a string of local disappearances, she uncovers an otherworldly evil that dates all the way back to her father’s youth.

For her seventh feature, prolific 21-year-old trans director Alice Maio Mackay (The Serpent’s Skin, Frameline49) assembles an impressive who’s who of queer cinema icons (and Frameline favorites) both in front of and behind the camera, including actors Jack Haven (I Saw the TV Glow), Leela Varghese (Lesbian Space Princess, Frameline49), Annapurna Sriram and Brandon Flynn of Fucktoys (Frameline49), producer Jane Schoenbrun (Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma), and editor Siobhan McCarthy (She’s the He, Frameline49). Sometimes the best way to deal with your grief is to save the world and kick some alien ass.

My take: There are quite a few interesting pieces in this puzzle, but it just didn’t quite cohere into a whole picture for me. Our Effed Up World is unsatisfying as sci-fi, somewhat waving a magic wand and saying a few buzzwords, putting a thin veneer of real science on some very B-movie tropes instead of creating a believable alternative world. Likewise, the elements of Sheri’s past and present don’t tie together very well. It’s not a bad film, and probably good fun if you’re into schlocky sci-fi horror, but the best I can give it is recommended.

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