Black Eyed Susan made a strong impression right from the start. The screener came with a warning, stating, “You may find yourself disgusted — or even nervously snickering — at its graphic nudity and coarse, vulgar language typically only found in pornography.”
With this warning in mind, it’s clear that Black Eyed Susan is not for the faint of heart. The film contains a lot of violence against women — even if that woman happens to be a robot — and a lot of crude language. Susan is called a “whore” and “slut” at least five times in every scene.
This raises the question: Is there any benefit to watching men act out their darkest fantasies without considering why they behave this way?
Recently, we have seen how the line of consent can become unclear when people want to act out sexual fantasies that involve harming others. BDSM is often misunderstood and unfairly judged in Hollywood. Some sexual desires cannot be protected by the term “kink-shaming.”
When fantasy shifts from being a consensual mix of pain and pleasure to humiliating and aggressively harming a woman just for a man’s enjoyment, things get much darker. Black Eyed Susan director and writer Scooter McCrae might believe he is pushing boundaries by showing an aspect of human experience usually viewed through a more critical lens.
However, it seems like he is just presenting a disturbing male fantasy on screen, without any consideration for the women who are subjected to this harmful approach to pleasure.
What Is ‘Black Eyed Susan’ About?
The film Black Eyed Susan starts off strongly with an awkward encounter between Alan (Scott Fowler) and Susan (Yvonne Emilie Thälker).
The acting and dialogue are poor, and nothing feels natural about this scene — including the setting, which looks like a villain’s lair from an old TV show. Susan asks Alan to slap her and “fuck” her, while Alan happily insults her, calling her a “dirty c*nt.”
They have harsh, emotionless sex, with McCrae focusing on close-ups of Susan’s body while Alan thrusts. We soon learn this is all an experiment. Gil (Mark Romeo), Alan’s friend who runs a sex doll company, comes to talk to Alan about his encounter with Susan, who turns out to be a very lifelike AI doll.
Gil is excited about their ongoing developments for Susan, mentioning she will bruise and cry just like a real person. To advance their research, Gil asks Alan to move in with Susan, which Alan agrees to.
Months later, Alan has died under suspicious circumstances. Gil meets his old friend Derek (Damian Maffei) at the funeral. Derek is struggling financially and living out of his car.
He accepts Gil’s offer to replace Alan in testing Susan. The rest of the film follows Derek’s journey as he goes from being uncomfortable to intrigued and even develops romantic feelings for Susan, trying to understand his true nature and sexual desires.
Black Eyed Susan tries to do something unique, but it doesn’t do it well. The movie’s main idea seems to be giving people with violent tendencies towards their partners a robot to avoid harming real people.
It’s an interesting concept, but McCrae handles it poorly. Rather than just swapping a human for a robot, such issues need thorough investigation.
In more capable hands (perhaps even a woman’s), Derek’s story would involve him exploring why he wants to harm a woman for pleasure. This is not to shame those who engage in BDSM. Derek is seen hitting Susan while she quietly sits on the couch.
There is no mutual respect or equal pleasure here. All the humiliation and harm are directed at Susan, while Derek enjoys all the pleasure. By the end, we don’t understand Derek at all. He remains as flat as when we first met him. How can we understand his approach to sex if the film is not interested in exploring it?
