While experimenting with her sister and guardian, Rachelle’s makeup and clothes,14 year-old Maya gets her period for the first time. Humiliated, Maya asks her sister for help, interrupting a date between Rachelle and her boyfriend, Eric. Reluctantly, Rachelle runs out to get pads for Maya leaving her in Eric’s care. Left alone while processing her fears of entering womanhood, Maya slowly loses autonomy over her own body, transforming in strange and frightening ways.

Fresh Blood communicates the pain, fear and unspoken anxiety that comes with being a woman by making unique use of the body horror genre. The film subverts the victim trope often subscribed to women in horror and explores themes of trauma without showing its female characters brutalized on screen.

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Supported by the Toronto Arts Council