by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
Babygirl | 2024
There was a time when the erotic thriller was something of a Hollywood staple. Karina Longworth's "You Must Remember This" podcast recently did a two-season deep-dive into the erotic films of the 1980s and 90s, a series that inspired me to explore the genre myself, focusing mainly on 90s erotic thrillers like Single White Female, Indecent Proposal, and Basic Instinct. It's a genre that is essentially dead; a shifting media landscape and changing social mores have not only sanitized sexuality in movies but have also made erotic thrillers essentially a thing of the past.
There's something agreeably no-nonsense about Alex Parkinson's Last Breath, a straight-down-the-middle, meat-and-potatoes true-life rescue thriller we rarely see anymore. Perhaps I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but there once was a time when mid-budget actioners like this were multiplex staples. Nowadays, you're more likely to see movies like this relegated to streaming rather than playing on a big screen.