Whipped
2019 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Andrew Wonder
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, fantasy
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, tense
Invisible-feeling high schooler Elaine gains the power to make people do what she wants — and tests it on her crush.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that could be maudlin wish-fulfillment instead becomes a moral ambush — the invisible girl gets her power and immediately we're watching her become the thing she hates, and the film never blinks or looks away from that ugliness.
Wonder situates this squarely in the dark-comedy lineage of *Heathers* and *Carrie*, but the film's real discipline is formal restraint: it refuses the cathartic release we're trained to expect, holding its tension through editing and performance rather than spectacle.
The entire weight of this film lands on the moment Elaine *chooses* to use the power — a single beat where the actress's face shifts from longing to something colder — and that one decision transforms what could've been a gimmick premise into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring.