Erin Tan’s Oxpecker (2025) is not merely designed to scare, but to speak. With queer and POC characters so often stereotyped and sidelined within the horror genre, Tan reclaims and subverts this narrative through the centralisation of their voices, both before, and behind the lens. “We’re just people…”, she reflected. “We’re people that need to be seen and represented on screen.” Silently nodding in agreement, principal actor Jane Martin-Smith (as Zoe) affirmed that “it’s just a story and they happen to be gay”, speaking to the relatability of the story to any relationship. The universality of the film’s themes of obsession, loneliness, and control surpass the reductionist approach to identity within mainstream media; Oxpecker’s characters are wholly realised in that their race, and sexual orientations shape, but do not define their stories.

“Erin Tan’s Oxpecker is not merely designed to scare, but to speak”

Compelled to ask the origins of Tan’s groundbreaking script, she replied laughing, “Everyone always asks me how I came up with this.” The response being that she is both veterinary medicine student, and dreamer: “This whole story actually came to me in a dream, I think because I’m very influenced by a lot of body horror manga.” She referenced Japanese novelist Edogawa Ranpo’s The Human Chair as an identifiable influence, as Oxpecker similarly articulates the physical compulsion of wanting “to be completely one with the person you’re obsessed with.” Tan’s academic knowledge of animals lends itself to the inherently predatory nature of these relationships, recalling the film’s title. She described the seemingly mutualistic symbiosis between the oxpecker, which feeds on the parasites on the bison and how they “might actually create wounds on the bison’s backs.” The premise for her film being that Ruweena, like these duplicitous birds, “will do anything to get blood.”

Ariel Chan (as Ruweena) elaborated on her character, discussing “the stigma surrounding queerness in East Asian society” as a disruptive influence on “how she defined the relationship of her and Zoe.” Though Tan admits “you could easily see her as a villain”, her behaviour is complicated by cultural expectations, creating a social commentary expressed through the language of horror. As the interview progressed, both protagonists’ actors slipped fluidly in and out of first-person, with Martin-Smith confessing, “I felt like I had Zoe already there; she wasn’t someone I had to find.” Tan’s casting of leads who intimately understand the identities of their characters grounds their performances in authenticity, and even plausibility. Tan wants “people to see her (Ruweena) and think that could very easily be me, and how do I avoid that?” Thus highlighting how horror can manifest through the audience’s own speculative reflection, alongside traditional scare factor.

“As the interview progressed, both protagonists’ actors slipped fluidly in and out of first-person”

Further credibility is found through the palpable chemistry between Chan and Martin-Smith, who were addressing each other across the table as they discussed their first auditions together. Tan recalled a specific run-through of the segment preceding the intimacy scene where “they were getting closer and closer that I was like, ‘Guys stop, we don’t have an intimacy coordinator!’” The group accredited their rapport to producer Chris Kwun Shing Lau, who has significant experience in the curation and exhibition of short films since graduating in 2024. Lau described the collaborative environment he created, where “everyone can contribute and raise their thoughts”, as “unlike an industry film setting, there’s not really a hierarchy on the film set.”

Though Lau kept Oxpecker’s cast and crew comfortable until shooting wrapped, Tan left the film’s resolution ominously paradoxical regarding the fates of her protagonists: “It’s not an ending that will give you all the answers, but it’s a beautiful one.” She did however reveal to me that Zoe and Ruweena will be “together forever” – a phrase I was instructed to place in my own stage direction – menacingly.