Karyn Kusama

Kusama's career starts with one of the cleaner origin stories in indie film. Girlfight (2000), her feature writing and directing debut, followed a young woman — played by Michelle Rodriguez in her own breakout role — training as a boxer in a Brooklyn gym. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Prix de mise en scène at Cannes (Wikipedia). Not a bad opening move. The studio chapter that followed was genuinely difficult. Æon Flux (2005), adapting Peter Chung's cult animated series for Paramount with Charlize Theron in the lead, was a big-budget sci-fi action film that didn't connect with critics or audiences the way anyone hoped. Jennifer's Body (2009) — a horror-comedy written by Diablo Cody, starring Megan Fox as a cheerleader-turned-demon — was similarly misread on release, marketed as something it wasn't. Both films have been reassessed since, Jennifer's Body especially, but the commercial disappointments clearly pushed Kusama back toward independent work, which is where she's done her best stuff anyway. She spent a significant stretch directing television before returning to features with The Invitation (2015). That film — a dinner party that slowly, methodically becomes something much worse — is the one I keep coming back to. The scene where the host demonstrates a grief-therapy exercise on his guests is genuinely unsettling in a way that lingers. Variety and other outlets praised it for its psychological tension. Destroyer (2018) followed, with Nicole Kidman playing a burned-out LAPD detective whose face tells you everything about what the job has cost her. It's a grim, character-first crime film that doesn't offer easy exits. Kusama also directed a segment in XX (2017), an all-female horror anthology. Awards at Cannes and Sundance bookend a career that's still very much in motion (Wikipedia).