Queen of Earth is a psychological horror film about a woman on the edge of madness and the “frenemy” ready to push her over it. Neither character is all that likable, yet each inspires a good deal of fascination. Writer-director Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip) conjures such a strong atmosphere around his characters—and Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston are so powerful in the leads—that one gets sucked into their emotional conflict. Perry has cited Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water as an influence, and like Polanski he excels at creating a sense of claustrophobia; Queen of Earth is about the terror of feeling trapped in one’s own head.
Perry often flashes back to the previous summer, when Catherine visited the lake house with James, and reveals that her relationship with Virginia was fraught even then. In the first flashback Virginia digs into Catherine and James’s interpersonal dynamic, calling it nothing more than codependency. Perry suggests that one reason for her hostility is her resentment of Catherine’s happiness with James, and that the relationship Virginia has with Rich the following summer—which she flaunts in Catherine’s face—constitutes a form of revenge. Arguments that the women have had in the past seem to continue in the present, and vice versa; it can be difficult to determine when exactly certain conversations take place, this slippery sense of time reflecting the heroine’s loosening grip on reality.
Directed by Alex Ross Perry
