Use of Tropes: The Herd

This is a 16-minute short film directed by Melanie Light and released in 2014. It is billed as a feminist-vegan horror film and, whilst watching, it is one where the misogyny displayed is palpable. That said, on viewing, I never really hit upon the vegan aspect. With hindsight I guess I can understand where this was coming from – by setting up a brutal farming regime of human females, to extract milk, it offers a simile for dairy farming – yet the message wasn’t overpowering within the film, as the visceral horror took centre stage.

It was reminiscent of the later Breeder. The later film had women held in terrible conditions, forced to carry babies (with sperm supplied by the man the technique would benefit) and the baby harvested to create an anti-aging/longevity serum. In this the women are forcibly impregnated, male babies disposed of but female babies (it is intimated) kept so that they can later be bred (cutting down on human trafficking relied on). The women’s milk is extracted and then used in an anti-aging cosmetic.

comforting each other

That is the primary trope, the anti-aging aspect. The difference, of course, that in this the baby’s fate is arbitrary and not a necessary part of the process as in Breeder. I also thought of Atom Age Vampire and how the recipient of the treatment was unaware of the mortal cost. To be fair, I think I was thinking in a more ‘purist’ way when I originally considered the 1960 movie and so returned to it last year, to it to see if my ‘Not Vamp’ verdict still held, and my view had changed on that, with Atom Age Vampire actually a vampire film in my opinion. This does not veer to ‘Vamp’ that strongly but I do think it holds tropes. Finally, human farming (often for blood) has been used in several vampire films - be they kind of free range, Thirst, or purely factory farmed, Blade Trinity.

selling the product

Again, like Breeder this is a difficult watch – and designed to be so – it may well be a trigger for some viewers, so please be warned. The film shows us the brutality of the treatment of the women in ‘the herd’ and then the film follows an attempted escape. In this the chops are very similar to Breeder. Not an easy watch, but a well shot horror.

The imdb page is here. The film is age restricted and must be watched on YouTube