My Animal

Heather is trapped in her small-town life. She’s at odds with her alcoholic mother, chances are slim that she’ll be allowed to try out as goalie for the boys’ hockey team, and when the moon is full, she needs to chain herself up in her bedroom. Big changes come in the form of Jonny (Amandla Stenberg), a figure skater who practices at the rink where Heather works. Heather begins to break out of her shell as she considers revealing her true feelings to Jonny, even though the shadow of her monthly transformations threatens everyone around her.

Like the Canadian Lycan classic GINGER SNAPS, director Jacqueline Castel invests as much time telling a coming-of-age story while mining family dynamics as she does chasing monsters under the moonlight. Bobbi Salvör Menuez’s powerful and heartbreaking performance as Heather grounds the more fantastical elements, tackling the vulnerability of revealing your sexual orientation and your deepest feelings. Bathing the action in bright dreamlike colours and a droning electronic ’80s score, MY ANIMAL is a uniquely queer horror story in every sense of the word.