Possibly in Michigan
1983 · 12m · USA
Directed by Cecelia Condit
Genres: experimental, horror, musical
Tones: absurdist, dark, darkly comic, surreal
Two women browsing a suburban shopping mall are stalked by a masked cannibal named Arthur, but in a darkly comic reversal they turn the tables on their pursuer. An operatic fairy tale of cannibalism, desire, and female revenge in Middle America, sung entirely as a musical.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A cannibal-mall-musical that lives forever on TikTok because nothing else looks like it — Condit's lo-fi opera is the rare cult film that earns the cult. Five stars for making suburban dread sing.
Condit's operatic suburban-mall fairy tale found its TikTok audience honestly — its lo-fi video grammar prefigured analog horror by forty years. Vimeo hosts what appears to be a complete copy.
An entirely operatic narrative with original songs on early VHS-era video - the lo-fi haze is what makes the suburban-mall cannibal premise feel like a transmission from a fever dream. The Vimeo upload's chaotic licensing reflects how this film has lived on as pure analog-horror artifact.
Reviews
Stylish, head-scratching but quietly unsettling... packs a punch that few feature-length genre films of its year could manage.
Condit puts on femininity with a visual and narrative vengeance, using disconcerting irony and sweetly gruesome stories to challenge societal taboos about women's subjugation.
Festivals
- Internationales Frauen Film Fest 2024