[Film Review] A Wounded Fawn (2022)

A Wounded Fawn (Travis Stevens, 2022) celebrates both art history and female rage in this surreal take on the slasher genre. The premise of the film, at first glance, appears fairly conventional: a serial killer, Bruce, takes a woman he has been dating, Meredith, away to an isolated cabin under the guise of a romantic break, intending to add her to his catalogue of murdered women. When Bruce begins to enact his plan, however, things take a sharp turn as Stevens guides us through a psychedelic fever dream in which the viewer can no longer distinguish predator from prey, reality from nightmare.

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Central to the film are the references to women in art (both as subject and creator). The film opens at an art auction, with Bruce (Josh Ruben) viewing “The Wrath of Erinyes”, a statue depicting the Three Furies from Greek mythology. The Furies were female deities who enacted vengeance upon those who committed murder, often taking on the forms of the murderer’s victims. Oblivious to both irony and foreshadowing, Bruce tracks down the winner of the auction and proceeds to murder her, stealing the statue and displaying it at his remote second home, where he will later take Meredith (Sarah Lind). The statue’s significance goes beyond its depiction of female anger at (often male) violence. Bruce’s theft—much like his murders— robs women of what is rightfully theirs. Stevens comments, in more ways than one, on the way that men also deplete women of their energy, often using them as creative muses or not offering them recognition for their work. This message is reinforced through allusions to the surrealist art movement from which Stevens draws: Bruce’s female victims are named after surrealist artists Dorothea Tanning and Kati Horna and the cinematography bears a striking resemblance to their work. Despite being stacked with heaps of references to classical and modern art, these never feel carelessly tacked on; they are strategically placed and interwoven into the narrative. 

The Furies will later take centre stage in the theatrical second act as Bruce becomes pursued by the figures of the women he has killed. It is at this juncture that the title of the film takes on a renewed meaning. “A wounded fawn” is a reference to the final play in the Oresteia, the Eumenides, in which the Furies hunt the male perpetrator “like to some hound that hunts a wounded fawn”. Here the penny drops: it is not Meredith who is the wounded fawn. However, unlike many slasher films or even true crime documentaries, Bruce is not portrayed as a sympathetic (or misunderstood) character. The women that haunt Bruce, conversely, ascend as the film progresses, empowered and united. It is worth giving a mention here to the elaborate and imaginative costume design of the Furies, replete with ornate masks and live snakes.

Though A Wounded Fawn is deeply immersed in art history (and arguably cinematic history as it is shot in the style of a grainy 1970s horror film), it never loses sight of present issues that women face from violence to everyday microaggressions. At the start of Meredith and Bruce’s date, there is an uncomfortable yet familiar danger that is deeply disturbing. We see Meredith made to feel uncomfortable during the meal, accused of being difficult and ruining the evening when she worries about a figure she sees outside. Meredith’s concern for her own safety is treated as an inconvenience. The audience’s awareness of Bruce’s murderous nature only increases the terror in this scene. Though the violence in this part isn’t overt, it parallels a lot of the fear women feel when they dare to be anything other than polite. This scene felt similar to Fresh (Mimi Cave, 2022) which shows protagonist, Noa, flatter and placate her sadistic captor as a ruse to escape. Though A Wounded Fawn is far from a rehash of Fresh, it is interesting to see horror engage with the smaller aggressions women face and the tactics they employ to keep themselves safe. We also can see the gender politics play out in this dinner scene as Meredith explains her thesis on deconstructing the figure of the muse and the erasure of female artists, something which Bruce dismisses; like the men who profit from muses, Bruce feels he too has a right to take from women, seeing them as ultimately beautiful objects to be possessed. 

A Wounded Fawn’s experimental style blends together aesthetics and genres that we ordinarily would not see together.  It combines “high” classical art with the “lowly” slasher genre; cinema with theatre. It is worth noting that you do not need to be well-versed in Greek mythology or twentieth-century art movements to appreciate the film, though it may certainly help. The core figures of the Furies are explained in the expositional cold opening as Stevens makes sure not to alienate his viewers. Ultimately, the costume design, cinematography, and superb acting make this an exciting innovation on a well-established genre.

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