Toxic

A slow dance with the poison veiled as the perfect girl fantasy.

In the Ozempic era—when beauty is measured in algorithm-approved silhouettes and sold as wellness.

“Toxic” (2024), directed by Saulė Bliuvaitė and inspired by the 2011 documentary “Girl Model” as well as her own adolescent experiences, peers unflinchingly into the lives of those chasing the “perfect-looking” girl fantasy.

It doesn’t exactly break new ground, but it’s a sobering reminder that little has changed in the demands placed on women — how they must look to be deemed “visible.”

There’s no overt body horror here, but the film hovers on its threshold, calling to mind recent works such as “The Substance” or “The Ugly Stepsister.”

The latter seeming either to draw inspiration from “Toxic,” or perhaps simply sharing a distinctly Nordic-European fascination with certain dark cultural motifs. You’ll see what I mean when you watch both.

Instead of horror, Bliuvaitė delivers a painfully recognisable drama: the reality of nurturing big dreams in a small industrial town, of being the pretty girl next door, and of chasing someone else’s fantasy of becoming a model.

In “Toxic,” body positivity is not liberation but a hollow marketing tool—a glossy label masking the same old pressures perpetuated by magazines and social media.

That’s the bitter truth: no awareness month can save us from the princess fairytale we are still told we must live out.

Set against the faded asphalt and weary skies of a Lithuanian industrial town, Bliuvaitė’s tough-minded debut is unsparing in depicting the punishment and self-abuse endured by girls at a modelling academy.

Here, even the vaguest promise of escape—to anywhere—is enough to drive frightening extremes of disordered eating and body modification.

Newcomer Vesta Matulyte plays Marija, a shy girl with a slight limp caused by a disability.

Often clad in Marilyn Manson Tee (an image loaded with its own cultural baggage), she lives with her grandmother while her mother attempts to fix her own relationship problems.

After being bullied at her new school, Marija stands up to — and eventually befriends — Kristina (Ieva Rupeikaitė).

Together, they respond to an ad for a “modelling school” audition, which promises the winners fashion trips to the Far East and the US.

Rather than delving into the well-documented corruption of the modelling industry, Bliuvaitė focuses on the fraught, co-dependent relationship between these two girls.

They nurture and wound each other in equal measure, fuelling insecurities even as they cling to their bond. It leaves us wondering: is a toxic friendship better than no friendship at all?

The film alternates between chilly composure and bursts of kinetic movement, mirroring Marija’s fluctuating sense of self. Occasional detours into the heightened, dreamy mise-en-scène of music videos evoke the kind of future she and her peers imagine for themselves.

Cinematography by Vytautas Katkus is particularly striking, with elegant, cold-toned compositions and ambient set pieces that reflect themes of alienation, poverty, and exploitation.

Close-up portrayals of both young women—each a narrative in herself—deepen our sense of the growing, tender-yet-dangerous bond between them.

The horror here doesn’t need to shout. Sometimes, as Poppy sang, “the silence screams so loud.”

“Toxic” is a catwalk of quiet devastation—its silence seeps under the skin, reminding us that this story repeats itself, that we never seem to learn, and that, too often, we keep walking further into toxicity and self-destruction.

And somewhere, in the background, the camera keeps rolling—because the world never really looks away.