This review is part of IGN's coverage of the 2023 BFI London Film Festival
Female puberty, particularly menstruation, has long been a common element in coming-of-age horror films like Amanda Nell Eu’s vibrant debut, Tiger Stripes. Think the opening scene of Carrie and its nightmarish first-period-in-the-school-shower scenario, or the lead character of 2016’s The Love Witch, who makes powerful potions out of menstrual blood and leaves used tampons on her lover’s grave as a token of her undying affection. Yet it’s a recent animated comedy, not a horror movie, that has the most in common with Tiger Stripes: Like her counterpart in Domee Shi’s Turning Red, 12-year-old Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) finds that her first period brings with it not only your usual hormone-fuelled anxieties but a stranger, much more unusual transformation doomed to send the teen headfirst into a spiral of social and personal anxieties.
Luckily, the peppy Zaffan is far from thin-skinned, and finds great pleasure in standing out from a crowd – and sticking it to The Man. We first meet the teen as she valiantly removes her headscarf inside the bathroom of the all-girls Muslim school she attends in Malaysia, the first step of a two-part act that also involves proudly displaying a shiny new acquisition to her group of friends: a padded, underwire bra. The awe and curiosity that spreads amongst the group of girls in this small space is quickly dissolved by the arrival of a teacher ready to curb all signs of disturbance and make an example out of rebellious Zaffan.
Not only is Zaffan the first to whip out a bra at school, but she’s also the first in her class to hit puberty. The negative attention that comes with it sours the girl’s desire to stand out – suddenly and overwhelmingly, the feisty nature that once made her the cool leader begins to reinforce her status as a pariah. The conservative values she lives by mean little information is available to young girls entering womanhood, making the school a fruitful environment for the spread of rumours and myths. Zaffan should be careful, says one of her schoolmates, because if she doesn’t clean up the blood that now pools between her legs, it is doomed to attract all kinds of demons – and who wants to be by the side of a girl capable of summoning such creatures?
Eu’s marriage of familiar horror tropes and little-explored Malaysian mythology makes for a fresh coming-of-ager with great merit in the casting of the endlessly charming Zairizal. The very same balancing, however, also prevents Tiger Stripes from fully leaning into the fantastical elements it so entertainingly teases throughout its first half. The anticipation of watching Zaffan realize the changes in her body go beyond the realm of the biological is always quickly interrupted by Eu’s need to dissect how the girl’s transformation affects the structures that surround her. Such a relentless back-and-forth keeps Tiger Stripes from ever reaching a climax, this unanswered bubbling up of expectation culminating in nagging frustration.
If Tiger Stripes suffers from a tiresome lack of focus, the opposite is true of Eu’s rich visual storytelling. Guts spill from inside dead carcasses next to bubblegum-colored stickers as girls spend afternoons by the river, the water that cools the body on a hot day washing away the gruesome trail of predators. Dangerous claws rip the skin from the hands that so skillfully respond to the catchy beats of TikTok songs and the same eyes that move hungrily across smartphone screens turn an eerie, dreadful shade of red as the night falls. It is a shame, then, to see such a knack for world creation be so painfully wasted by a film that never fully capitalizes on its competent encapsulation of modern adolescence. Tiger Stripes proves an often entertaining but ultimately unfulfilling watch.
