I'm Sorry, I Tried, I Love You
2021 · 11m · USA
Directed by Goldie Jones
A struggling mother battles a relentless, mysterious home infestation that triggers an unexpected transformation, dramatizing the suffocating bind between societal expectations of motherhood and her own buried desires.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally—someone weaponizing body horror as a liberation narrative instead of a punishment fantasy. The infestation-as-metamorphosis conceit is exactly the kind of "wait, what?" premise that makes you realize how exhausted we all are by predictable feminist retellings; Jones doesn't reclaim anything, she just lets the mother *dissolve* into something unrecognizable and calls it freedom.
Jones situates this work squarely in the lineage of Cronenberg's body transformation and contemporary feminist horror, executing the formal constraint—domestic interiors collapsing into visceral unease—with genuine compositional precision and editorial restraint that resists the temptation to sensationalize.
The turning point is the sound design: the moment the infestation noise becomes indistinguishable from the mother's own breathing, and you realize the horror isn't external—that single layering choice collapses the entire architecture of the film and recontextualizes every preceding frame of suffocation.
Reviews
In Goldie Jones' 'I'm Sorry, I Tried, I Love You,' an infestation inspires unexpected transformation.
Festivals
- Dances With Films 2022
- NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) InFocus: Female Cinema 2023
- HollyShorts Screenplay Competition 2021, Finalist
- Women in Film Seattle Professional Grant 2021, Winner