Noah Dorsey’s intimate, chilling thriller She Did It opens on an unnamed woman (Anne Peyton Brothers) waking up in her bed after an apparent suicide attempt. Her boyfriend (Memphis Taylor) steps into the bedroom covered in blood, seemingly stunned to find her there alive. After he regains his composure he tells her that she can’t be in the bed, as her dead body is in the bathtub.
He helps her take her seizure meds and tries to sort out the reality of what’s happening. In the conversation that follows we learn that he betrayed her with another woman, and this may explain why she tried to kill herself. She accuses him of abandoning her while he vigorously defends himself, saying he lives for her. His part of the conversation is couched in outraged about her lack of trust, and at her questioning his devotion. He asks her if she thinks he would deceive her, and then tells her she’s not crazy, but clearly the situation is impossible.
Abruptly, he shifts gears and begins to act as though everything is (or can return to) normal. He suggests that her current frame of reference could be a mental construct like the artificial world of The Matrix. In this case, he posits that she’s experiencing life after death as a simulation. When she resists the idea, he insists that she go into the bathroom and see the body. The face is covered with a washcloth.
He’s obviously gaslighting her, and has taken it to the level of a fine art. The audacity to believe he could convince her that she’s dead either means he’s deranged or that he has confidence in her susceptibility to manipulation. One suspects this is not the first instance of him distorting the facts.
“… he tells her that her own dead body is in the bathtub …”
For the viewer, suspension of disbelief is strained to the limit as the interaction between them turns to quiet verbal conflict. One would expect this situation would be accompanied by considerably more agitation and screaming. It takes the tension between the two an unrealistic amount of time to build up to intense hysteria. It’s clear he is being disingenuous, but she avoids considering any real-world possible sequence of events that would explain a dead body in the tub. The action takes place in the confined space of a small apartment, which adds to the claustrophobia of being trapped in an impossible scenario. Dorsey’s camera stays in close to complete the effect. Brothers and Taylor do the rest, focusing their skillful performances on a razors edge to keep the anxiety high.
In his production notes, Dorsey describes the film’s creation: “We shot the film in just six days on a very limited budget… She Did It was inspired in part by my own experience in a troubled marriage, particularly the daily psychological toll of gaslighting and the feeling of being trapped inside a reality that was constantly being questioned or rewritten.”
She Did It captures the terror of finding yourself powerless, with reality upended. The viewer feels the panic of becoming untethered from sanity.
Learn more at the official She Did It website.
"…Gaslighting as a fine art"
