[Chattanooga Film Festival Review] STAG

Bachelorette parties (or Hen dos if you’re British) are a popular tradition where a bride-to-be gathers her closest friends to celebrate her upcoming nuptials. The entertainment on this special day often leans towards licentiousness as the guests try to honor their unwed friend’s final days before matrimony. While the focus of these frequently debauchery-filled festivities looks toward the future, the group also tends to reflect on the past. This ranges from the horrible exes to the guest-of-honor’s younger days, her wild and crazy times, and even deeply protected secrets that might only come out under the influence of female bonding and too much alcohol. Honestly, the whole ordeal offers up many opportunities for things to go horribly wrong, and writer/director Alexandra Spieth harnesses this hotbed for horror in her directorial debut STAG.

In upstate New York in 1985, two teenage girls take a calm stroll through the woods, when one of the girls decides to make the reflective nature walk a little more exciting with the use of a blindfold. It is not clear what happens, but the outcome of the harmless prank lets the viewer know it is not safe to go into the woods.

Fast forward a few decades and now it’s 2017, Brooklyn. The story focuses on the lonely Jenny (Mary Glen Fredrick). She lives by herself in a small apartment and works a boring job. And among the screaming neighbors and droll coworkers, the only one Jenny willingly talks to is a dog she meets outside. These brief moments of her life let us know she struggles with human connections. However, the voyeuristic qualities of Instagram let her partake in the life of her former best friend, Mandy (Elizabeth Ramos).

Jenny eventually works up the courage to reunite with her childhood companion and after some awkward conversation, the two reconnect at Mandy’s bachelorette party. The get-together takes place at a vacation camp (also in the woods) owned by the deeply religious maid-of-honor Constance (Katie Wieland) and her sister Casey (Stephanie Hogan). Needless to say, the small group of women has the whole scary forest all to themselves. Jenny does not click with the other guests because apparently, Mandy has spent her entire life collecting awkward women for her friend group. So, in an attempt to try to hide their gawkiness, they start to tell scary tales around the campfire.

The movie relies heavily on dialogue and inner monologues to tell the story as the film holds very little in the way of action. In fact, despite the stereotypical slasher setting, STAG does not embrace its horror side until much later in the film. Instead of depicting murderous sequences to create a harrowing atmosphere, the filmmaker relies on the camera.

Several frames throughout the movie will place Jenny or another character as the dominant figure in the frame, but instead of having a clear shot of the central figure, something obscures part of the lens: a support beam, drops of water, an unexplained blur, etc., which gives the impression we do not see the whole picture. But throughout the film, what we need to know is hiding right in front of us.

While STAG does not tick a lot of the boxes most horror aficionados would require to classify the film as a member of their beloved genre, the characters and dialogue will keep you huddled around the campfire until the real horrors show up. Spieth creates a briskly paced series of events. Even though this newest installment to the bachelorette horror subgenre might start with strong echoes of the well-loved Sissy, STAG takes a much different approach to its celebration of matrimony and finds its voice in the third act.

STAG played as a part of the 2023 Chattanooga Film Festival.