This review is spoiler-lite, intended to give relevant info about the plot of the film without revealing important twists.
D.C. Hamilton’s The Interrogation of Anna Goode (2025) begins with the title character (Brinna Kelly) being brought into, of course, an interrogation room. She’s accompanied by two law enforcement officers — Detective Marshall and Special Agent Savage — who want about a mysterious disappearance, particularly because the missing man’s dismembered limb may be part of a series of grisly murders. When Marshall leaves the room, she confides to the Agent that not only did she kill that man, and another, she has been doing so for decades, if not centuries. Before he can learn more, she grabs his wrist and he awakens on the other side of the table.
For the bulk of the film, then, Special Agent John T. Savage is in the body of Anna Goode and vice versa. In a scene I admired, he draws on his own training not to become completely overwhelmed by this turn of events. (In another scene I admired, she imagines him crying out in shock for his missing member and feeling himself up, as many a transformed fellow has done on Fictionmania and elsewhere.) But, the movie doesn’t really spend a lot of time on the difference between men and women and what a man might feel about having his body changed, because there are far more pressing things going on.
This is probably the correct choice. John may be facing a lifetime stuck in the body of Anna, a woman, but he is rightly more concerned about that lifetime being spent in prison for crimes he did not commit, while the real killer wears his face. How he deals with this situation is an intriguing enough way to spend 90 claustrophobic minutes as the characters share a small space — with a few brief flashbacks to the outside world — and simply talk it through, a little game of chess for three, in which John makes every gambit he can to save his skin.
The actors make or break the film. Kelly (who co-wrote the film with its director) gives an eerie and effective performance as Anna. It doesn’t quite modulate as much as you’d think when she’s playing John, but then again, she’s largely playing John doing an impression of Anna, and when she finally gets a chance to play John himself, there’s not much confusion who you’re looking at. As the body of Agent John, Neil Hopkins (Charlie’s brother from LOST) actually has a bit of fun with his interpretation of Anna. The odd man out is Max Adler, whose performance as Detective Marshall is a little too daytime-soap-dayplayer to match his scene partners’ vibe.
The film is overall quite smart, although it’s maybe a tad satisfied with itself (yes, sometimes I personify a film, get over it.) The script mostly manages to flaunt its unusual tone without falling into clunky philosophizing or cold recitation of law enforcement tropes. It’s structured to showcase a lot of load-bearing banter and innuendo-laden half-truths (not sexual innuendo, necessarily.) With such a talky film you’ve got to have good dialogue, and 90% of the way through, the movie serves, with the other 10% being a little too overcome by its attempts at being clever. This is good low budget, where it feels unlike like a Hollywood film in ways that are sometimes distracting or mood-breaking but mostly interesting. I also never thought I’d see Cassandra Clare quoted on an interstitial card.
If you’re looking for TG excitement — bathroom stuff, sexy stuff, social stuff — this is not your girl. John could care less about the dress he’s wearing or the lipstick on his face, or what he’s packing down below under these circumstances. The plot of the movie would have been virtually the same if Anna had been Andrew. It was intriguing to see more and more revealed about the Agent and the Detective and their views on the nature of justice, particularly as it pertains to an earlier case the Detective famously cracked that made him a local hero. But if you’re looking for resolutions, including a hard-and-fast detailed explanation for why (and how) Anna has done what she’s done, you might be disappointed.
I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, even absent most of the easy and obvious pleasures of a TG story. Eventually, however, the characters reach the end end of the labyrinth and have to make a choice between going left or right to get out of the maze they’re in. I found myself wishing some third option had been found to really twist the story one last time.
If you’re a TG fan who likes thrillers, this fulfills the brief reasonably well. If you really, really want to see someone grasping at their crotch in shock and horror, and badly stumbling in heels, there are other things to watch.
The Interrogation of Anna Goode is available on Amazon Prime in Canada and elsewhere.