Assassination Nation is the Witch-Hunt of Modern Cinema

By Ranuka Tandan

I first saw Assassination Nation in Leicester Square as part of the 2018 BFI London Film Festival. I’d been watching the trailer over and over in anticipation. There was something about it that at once drew me in and scared me away. I had no misconceptions that it was going to be anything less than an absurdist feminist horror film, and that’s essentially what I got. But I didn’t expect to relate to the characters, to be considering themes of patriotism and the internet alongside sexism, or to enjoy it so much as to be sitting here, inspired to write a review about it. This film has its issues—the plotline is at times, weak and underdeveloped; there are so many themes that none of them are explored in any level of depth—yet it is a story simultaneously absurd and authentic, satirical and relatable, and, if you can get past the explicatory, gory content, extremely entertaining.

 Heroine, 16-year-old Lily Coulson narrates the opening lines of the film: “This is the story of how my town, Salem, lost its motherfucking mind.” Assassination Nation follows a group of teenage girls as half of their town gets hacked and a witch-hunt to find and punish the hacker ensues, at the expense of privacy, friendships, morals and lives. Assassination Nation has, as the trigger warnings that flash up on the screen at the beginning of the film tell us, just about everything. “Bullying. Blood. Abuse. Classism. Death. Drinking. Drug Use. Sexual Content. Toxic Masculinity. Homophobia. Transphobia. Guns. Nationalism. Racism. Kidnapping. Murder (+ attempted). The Male Gaze. Rape (+ attempted). Sexism. Swearing. Torture. Violence. Gore. Weapons. Fragile Male Egos.”

The trigger warnings immediately communicate both the explicit and feminist nature of the film, providing the audience with a glimpse of what is to come. Set in the conservative, patriotic town of Salem, where rigid, sexist ideas about how women should behave abound, the young women of the film are positioned as disruptive and authentic, in opposition to older men such as Mayor Bartlett and Lily’s father, who are characterised as conservative, hypocritical and out-of-touch. Director Sam Levinson enhances this effect through use of lighting, which plays an important part in determining the mood of each scene. Lily’s parents are extremely old-fashioned and have outdated views about sex and gender. Both the colour palette of their house—grey and brown—and the mise-en-scène of the dining room—plain, clean and ordered—reflect this. As the film progresses, the blandness of the house is juxtaposed with Lily’s room, which is filled with so much artificial light and colour that it looks like a chaotic disco; the lighting moves from yellow, to orange, to green, to blue, to purple, an outward representation of her vibrant personality.

 Cinematically, nothing tops the gripping, uncensored party scene that happens chronologically in the film before the first leak has even occurred. The screen is split into a triptych, each showing a different aspect of the party through either a red, white or blue filter—unmistakably the colours of the American flag. Hazy dance music blares, the scenes are in slow motion, and the bass is intense and overpowering. Sometimes three different scenes are shown at once, sometimes one scene is spread across two boards, sometimes across all three. We see the teenagers dancing, see Lily taking nudes in the bathroom, see the sex scene between Diamond and Bex. The juxtaposition of emotions between scenes means that it’s difficult to know where to look, and as soon as you concentrate on one scene, something else captures your attention and draws you to another. There is an abundance of symbolism present in Assassination Nation but perhaps the most important is the appearance, and continual reappearance of the American flag. Blue, red and white are the colours through which the director filters, and we read this story. But we see it as a negative thing. As each new chapter of the film unfolds, the sun rises over the American flag outside East Salem High School.  

Throughout the film, there are repeated extratextual references to the Salem witch trials, which began in Salem Village, Massachusetts in 1692 after a group of girls accused several women in the town of practicing witchcraft, and widespread mass hysteria followed. In this modern context, Lily Coulson is not accused of practicing witchcraft, but of leaking the texts and emails of half of Salem. The response is undeniably similar, and although influences such as mass psychogenic hysteria play a role in the ‘witch-hunt’ that follows, the underlying reason for why everybody believes Lily is responsible for the leaks is gender. Assassination Nation does not hesitate in making the point that if something like this were to happen in our world, it is far more likely that a woman would be blamed than a man. Lily is called a slut, a whore, a porn-star, a home-wrecker. Everything about her is sexualised. When the texts of Nick Mathers’, with whom she is having an affair, are leaked, and Lily’s boyfriend Mark realises she is the girl in the nude photos on his phone, he is not upset that she cheated on him, but angry that she humiliated him. And his response is confrontational violence. “You fucking humiliated me,” he tells her. “And now it’s time for me to humiliate you. I’m going to show the whole world what a dirty whore you are… You brought this on your fucking self.”

 Watching this all unfold is horrifying because despite this film being totally absurd it’s not impossible to imagine, especially in the current political climate of America, where many states are moving to completely outlaw the right to abortion, and where powerful men referred to the #MeToo movement as a ‘witch hunt’ against them.

 There are many aspects of Assassination Nation that evoke witch-hunt imagery. The pointing of fingers, the turning on your neighbour, the blame game. The rapid ascension of anxiety and hysteria to the point where the truth is inconsequential in comparison to rumours and secrets, and where fake testimonies are indistinguishable from real ones.Most importantly, the realisation that it doesn’t matter who is being punished for these wrongs, as long as someone is. Using these witch-tropes and histories, and bringing them into a hyper-exaggerated, and satirised modern context creates a comparison of sorts between these two societies, and demonstrates that women’s rights gains have given us a false sense of security. Underneath these layers of equality, fought for throughout the centuries, fundamental patriarchal structures ensure that women can never achieve full equality, because men will always view us as lesser and weaker. “The truth is; no one wants the real you. They want to pick and choose. They want that laugh with that smile. That girl with that willingness.” This dialogue, which recurs throughout the film, slows down the scene to a deliberate halt. Lily’s haunting voiceovers are one of the most engaging techniques of employed in Assassination Nation.

Despite this, Assassination Nation subverts this narrative and delivers a powerful feminist performance. The friendship that the four girls have never wavers, and the strength of their support for one another ultimately defeats the misogyny and patriotism which they are subject to. This is not only clear in the scenes where they fight off toxic men with guns to save each other, but also in the deeply raw conversations that occur between them under the covers at their sleepovers.

 In a scene that prefaces the biggest leak of the film—and the one that leads to the witch-hunt—Lily, Bex, Em and Sarah lay on their backs in a circle in the middle of the school gymnasium. Their conversation about privacy being dead gives the audience the feeling that this is the calm before the storm. The allusions continue as the girls make a pentagram shape with their bodies; this is not only aesthetically pleasing, but an allusion to Wicca and to the other pagan religions that the film appropriates certain ideas from. At the end of the scene, Bex whispers, “Carrie, if you’re listening, we miss you,” and a fifth girl Grace, lays down with them to complete the pentagram. Much like Carrie, the feminine power in Assassination Nation “is too bloody, dangerous, bodily, sexual and excessive to be represented with ‘glamour’” in the way that the alluring, seductive witch-woman is usually represented.

Assassination Nation is a modern response to age-old societal problems. It is a film which doesn’t shy away from depicting aggressive behaviours as they are, or pretend that women don’t face the same undermining discrimination today as they did in Salem in the 1690s. The cleverness of this film lies in its ability to draw so many cultural and historical connections between the America of 1692 and the America of 2018, without ever having to say it out loud. This is not just a film about a data leak, but about people’s reactions to it, the gendered nature of these reactions, and what the ultimate consequences of are, not just for women, but for society as a whole. The use of witch tropes and imagery enhance the underlying issues addressed in the film, and scare the audience into believing—despite the absolute absurdity—that it’s all true (and it could happen to you).