Alice Maio Mackay is the kind of filmmaker who seems incapable of sitting still. At only 22, and already with seven features under her belt, she has built a filmography that feels remarkably expansive for someone still so early in her career. She moves between horror, fantasy, science fiction, and intimate character-driven stories, constantly changing her approach without losing the strange, handmade energy that makes her movies so distinctly hers. But what has stayed consistent throughout her work is her interest in trans experiences, queer characters, identity, and the complicated process of figuring out who you are.
As a trans person myself, there is something particularly meaningful about the way Mackay approaches these subjects. Her characters aren't treated as lessons or symbols. They're messy, funny, horny, angry, vulnerable, complicated people. Their transness is often an important part of who they are, but it isn't necessarily the only thing that defines them. Mackay gives these characters the freedom to simply exist inside the weird worlds she creates.
There is a scrappy, handmade quality to her earlier films that gives them so much personality. Mackay embraces the silliness, blood, camp, and absurdity of genre cinema, but underneath all of that is a genuine tenderness toward people who exist outside the boundaries of what society considers "normal." T Blockers is a great example. Its horror premise becomes a way of exploring trans identity, community, belonging, and the fear of being consumed by a world that would rather you disappear. The monsters are fun and often outrageous, but they also represent something much more recognizable: the feeling of having to fight for the right to exist as yourself.
That is one of the things I love most about Mackay's movies. She doesn't separate the queer and trans experience from the pleasures of genre. Her characters get to be in horror movies. They get to fight monsters, have sex, fall in love, make terrible decisions, be funny, be ridiculous, and simply live. There is something incredibly freeing about that. Trans characters don't always have to be presented through stories of suffering or tragedy. They can just be people having bizarre adventures in bizarre movies.
Her work also understands that identity isn't necessarily something you figure out once and then never question again. The Serpent's Skin feels like another step in that evolution, placing greater emphasis on relationships and emotional connection while still allowing its supernatural elements to exist alongside those more intimate concerns. Mackay seems increasingly interested in the ways people carry their pasts with them and how difficult it can be to understand yourself while also trying to understand the people around you.
That feeling continues into Our Effed Up World. The science-fiction elements and alien threat are there, but what ultimately matters is the emotional world surrounding them. Grief, family, connection, and uncertainty become more important than simply explaining the mechanics of the creature or the world itself. It feels like Mackay is becoming increasingly comfortable letting her characters breathe, allowing their emotional lives to exist alongside the genre rather than using genre as the entire point.
And maybe that's what makes her evolution so exciting to me. Watching Mackay's filmography feels a little like watching a filmmaker figure herself out in real time. Each movie seems to take something from the previous one and then push it somewhere new. The films can be rough around the edges, occasionally uneven, and completely fucking strange, but they are never anonymous. You can feel a person behind them. You can feel the curiosity.
As a trans viewer, I especially appreciate that curiosity because Mackay's films often seem to understand something that can be difficult to articulate: becoming yourself is messy. There isn't always a clean moment where everything suddenly makes sense. Sometimes identity is discovered through other people, through fantasy, through desire, through the stories we become obsessed with, and through simply seeing someone else exist in a way that makes you think, maybe I can be that too.
That's what makes Alice Maio Mackay so exciting to watch. Her films are evolving, but so are the people inside them. The monsters change, the genres change, and the filmmaking becomes more assured, but her fascination with identity, queerness, transness, and outsiders remains at the center of it all. At only 22, she already has a voice that feels completely her own. I can't wait to see where she takes it next.