Bystanders is not your typical rape revenge-o-matic. Mary Beth McAndrews’ feature length directorial debut subverts the more lurid expectations, while making sure not to dull the edge of her hyper relevant, razor sharp take on this subgenre. The film hit VOD yesterday and what the film lacks in budget, it more than makes up for in its ideology and creativity.
Bystanders centers on Abby (Brandi Botkin), a timid senior in high school who is invited to a college frat party at a remote cabin in the woods with two of her female friends. Unbeknownst to her the bros throwing said party, plan to not only drug and sexually assault Abby and her friends, but afterward hunt them down for sport. Director Mary Beth McAndrews manages to walk us through the inciting events in the first act, without forcing us to endure the assault. She does this in such a way to not rob the act of the weight it necessitates to fuel the audience buy in, and propel the back half of the film. This is not only thanks to how Mary Beth paints this scenario, with a few, but heavy brush strokes, but also thanks to Bob Wilcox’s take on the ringleader of this endeavor, Cody, who feels like a slimy Gen Z David Hess.
It’s while the affluent entitled rapists are attempting to hunt and kill the women they just assaulted, that Abby runs into the road flagging down a car with our titular bystanders Clare (Jamie Alvey) and her boyfriend Gray (Garrett Murphy) who appear to be a pair of normal folks fresh from a wedding reception. It’s how they factor into this film and their expertise that allows a third party to not only add their commentary onto the situation, but for them to intervene on Abby’s behalf. This allows the film to avert one of the tropes of the sub-genre, where after the protagonist is sexually assaulted, she must then regroup and formulate a plan of revenge after the fact. Here however, the revenge is served hot to go, as the bystanders turn out to be not so bad at dispatching Abby’s attackers.
It’s this and the lack of gratuity in the rape that I think fixes two of my biggest pain points with rape/revenge as a subgenre. First we as an audience are forced to endure the assault of our protagonist stripping both our avatar on screen and by proxy the audience of their power and agency, while the antagonists are allowed to move on. The victim and the audience are then forced to endure the aftereffects of the assault, regroup, heal, and watch as our heroine plans her attack with the audience in tow. This film instead circumvents those beats in favor of riding that momentum right into that final act, allowing the audience a bit of a reprieve, but not letting them completely off the hook.
That said Bystanders is a brutal and refreshingly feminist take on the rape/revenge sub-genre, that shows a complete grasp of how these films need to work, while updating the formula for a new generation. This is not only thanks to Mary Beth McAndrews’ script and competent vision executed here, but the performances of her cast, that delivered something more dimensional than you’d expect. Bystanders still has the heft of a sleazier revenge-o-matic, but one that’s traded those more exploitative bits and its nihilistic helplessness for a more empowering narrative, that manages to offer up some hope for its viewer when all is said and done, which is not what you expect from this subgenre.
