INTERVIEW: Director Kelsey Egan on ‘THE FIX’ and Engaging with Criticism

Every critic who has been at it long enough (and does more than give studios free PR) has had some sort of interaction with a filmmaker whose movie they panned or even disdained. My worst interaction was at an international festival where I saw one of the worst films I’ve ever seen and had a two-minute spiel about how bad the film was before I learned who my conversation partner was: the film’s director (who had hidden their identity to learn how I really felt). She bowed out of the conversation with the classic, “Um, I will go over there now.” I felt like a dick. I was a dick! But her movie was terrible.

Most of the offended filmmakers just reach out via Twitter (X) or Instagram to tell me about how I was wrong or how mean I am or how I was unfair. I try to be as generous as I can, always rooting for any film to be the best version of itself. Generosity can only take a bad or misguided film so far though. One screenwriter even asked me to remove a (negative) review from Rotten Tomatoes.

Kelsey Egan, a Wisconsin-born and South African-based director, was the first filmmaker to reach out to me after reading a negative review of mine of her own film, Glasshouse, not with intentions to scold or ask anything of me but to thank me for my writing and to offer a screener of her next film, The Fix. I suspect she may be the last, too.

In our interview, she referred to the gesture as her “olive branch.” She also sympathized or even agreed with most of the major qualms I voiced, including my issue with the all-white casting of a film meant to critique South African apartheid (more to follow). She too was frustrated by the way that turned out; the cast she was offered didn’t fit the part she originally wrote and the producers recommended white talent after seeing all the auditions.

Egan’s first two features are both lower-budget sci-fi films with bigger socio-political axes to grind. They also both involve a toxin that spreads through the air, though the concepts and tones differ dramatically. Glasshouse, the film that began our online correspondence, takes place in one location on the South African Eastern Cape where an airborne disease colloquially referred to as the Shred erodes memories and causes dementia. In The Fix, a film I adored that finished just off my 2024 Best Of list, Earth’s air no longer qualifies as breathable and the poor wear masks while the rich have pills to solve their problem (and make them a lot of money.) As I noted in my review at In Review Online, “It’s renewing to see a film — produced closer to the periphery of global capitalism in South Africa — that functionally challenges rather than reinforces the same paradigm it seeks to critique.” From the action, performances, and even plot similarities, it’s also a deserving offspring of Resident Evil and The Fifth Element. If The Fix is a glimpse into Egan’s future filmography, I will consider myself lucky to be privy so early on.

The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Read the interview on the Boston Hassle.