Life is hard for trans folks everywhere. In Western society, the dominant faction is one of white, cishet, perisex, abled men. To those of us who don’t fit that mold? Good luck! Hope you like fighting for your rights and for recognition every single day! Now imagine alien parasites are actively making everything worse, and you might have an idea of where the conflict in T Blockers is coming from.

T Blockers follows Sophie (Lauren Last, she/they), an aspiring filmmaker slogging through her not-so-glamorous twenties in an Australian city that is slowly being encroached upon by the alt-right and chasers (cis people who date trans people as a fetish, for those blissfully unaware). Not even the bar where Sophie and her friends go to unwind is safe from the entitled pissboy incursion for long, and after the worst earthquake in decades hits the town and Sohpie develops strange psychic abilities, the group realizes something bigger may be at play. Following a mysterious indie film from the 90s that seemingly matches up with current events, Sophie and co. step up to protect themselves and their community from the growing threat.

This movie grabbed my heart in a way few horror movies have. Despite the campiness of alien worms and black goo eruptions, T Blockers is so, so real. Through her portrayal of Sophie, Last captures the rage, heartbreak, and exhaustion that come from constantly fighting for your right to even exist, of having to step up and fight for yourself and everyone like you because no one else will. The fear of having to be the princess and the knight who saves her from the dragon, because no one else even sees the dragon.

T Blockers is a cry of solidarity for the queers, the women, the addicts, the mentally ill, and, especially, the transfems. It is a love letter to the loud, proud, noncompliant freaks who are just trying to live their lives, and it is exactly what the world needs right now. It shouts out John Waters and Frankenstein and draws worthy comparisons to both. It is cheesy and it is unflinching and it is damn good.

I especially want to shout out the music. Alexander Taylor ties the film together with a feminist punk soundtrack that pumps you up and leaves you on a high note, driving home the empowerment aspect of the movie. By the end, I also wanted to swing a blunt object at a couple of corpses being puppeted by bigoted space worms.

I also want to mention how much I loved the framing device of the Elvira-esque drag queen Cryptessa (Etcetera Etcetera, she/they) hosting the whole thing. Like The Twilight Zone or a 1960s horror film, they’re there at the beginning and end of the movie to introduce the film, set the mood, and offer some food for thought. But, to make things a little meta, they’re also there in the 1990s film that exists within the film, Terror From Below. It might seem a little jarring at times, but I see it as a good bit of character work. The first time we meet Sophie, she’s writing a screenplay based on her life. Sophie is a filmmaker, telling her story through her medium, and that’s what we’re really seeing when we see T Blockers – a sci-fi horror that’s all too real. Besides, who doesn’t want more reality-warping drag queens in their life?

Someone show this film to John Waters immediately, I need to know his thoughts.

10 out of 10