For producer Rebecca Lafon, her professional filmmaking career did not begin with a conventional drama or a simple genre. Instead, it started with Lady Partsa daring queer body horror short that transformed the awkwardness, horror and exhilaration of teenage sexual awakening into something startlingly physical and unforgettable.
Written and directed by Ariel McCleese, the story follows Iris, a high school student who develops a disturbing condition: whenever she thinks about her classmate Ellie, she becomes uncontrollably and dangerously wet. What begins as an embarrassing bodily reaction develops into a full-fledged horror scenario that threatens anyone who gets too close to her. Yet beneath the film’s prosthetics, practical effects and gallons of lubricant lies a deeply emotional story about self-acceptance, intimacy and the risks that come with love.
A script unlike anything she had read before
Lafon immediately felt that this script was operating in a territory rarely explored by either horror or queer cinema. “I remember reading it and immediately feeling that it was doing something that I hadn’t really seen before,” she recalls. “Not just in the horror space, but in queer cinema more generally.” What struck her most was the film’s refusal to treat queer longing as something subtle or restrained. Traditional coming-of-age narratives often rely on lingering glances, hidden emotions, and silent emotional revelations. Lady Parts takes the opposite approach by externalizing every confusing and overwhelming feeling associated with adolescence and sexual discovery. “The film looks at sexual awakening as a kind of body crisis,” explains Lafon. “It found something true about what it actually feels like to be a teenager—your body betraying you, announcing you, before you’ve had any say in the matter.” The material also appealed to Rebecca as a producer who enjoys testing herself. Lafon has made a conscious effort to embrace increasingly difficult production challenges with each project and Lady Parts offered her that very opportunity.
Turn emotions into physical terror
One of the film’s most memorable achievements is how it transforms a visceral emotional experience into something tangible and cinematic. This process required extensive collaboration between Lafon, Higgins, McCleese and production designer Masha. “There’s a huge amount of lube in this movie,” Lafon says with a laugh. Since Iris’ central “monster” trait involves getting excessively wet, the filmmakers had to carefully develop a visual language that would communicate such a condition effectively on screen. Water alone, Lafon explains, does not necessarily register on camera convincingly. Creating the right effect required a combination of lubricants, glycerin, lighting and production design that worked in perfect harmony.
One sequence in particular, the bathtub scene, became a showcase for the collaborative nature of filmmaking. While Higgins worked closely with McCleese and the lead cast to ensure the emotional authenticity of the performance, Lafon and the production design team focused on the technical logistics of creating the film’s signature visual effects. The experience reinforced an important lesson for Rebecca: emotional storytelling doesn’t just come from actors and directors. “We often think about all the emotions on screen that come from the work of the director and the actors,” she says. “But every element, including production design, guides the audience to an emotional state.” The result is a scene that simultaneously feels intimate, unsettling and deeply empathetic – a hallmark of the film’s unique approach to body horror.
The ending that almost didn’t exist
If the bathtub sequence represented a technical challenge, the film’s final scene became a test of creative resilience. The production had invested huge resources to prepare an elaborate underwater climax. Lafon, who is scuba certified, spent hours in a cold swimming pool preparing the location for the submerged set. Specialist crew members, including an underwater photographer, were already on site. The art department had designed an entire room intended to disappear underwater. Then reality intervened when the pool heater broke down. What may have seemed like a logistical inconvenience quickly developed into a serious security concern. Rebecca found herself repeatedly pouring hot water into her wetsuit simply to maintain her body temperature. As a producer, she came to a difficult conclusion. “If I couldn’t be comfortable in the water wearing a wetsuit,” she explains, “I can’t ask my actors to come in.” Especially since the scene involved vulnerable performance work, safety had to come before the shot. The team made the painful decision to abandon the sequence altogether.
Instead of letting the disappointment derail the production, Lafon and Higgins pulled McCleese aside and shifted their focus to finding a new ending. Their goal became simple: finish the film and protect its emotional core. “We’re not going home without a whole movie in the can,” they decided. What started as a compromise ended up being one of the production’s biggest successes. The replacement ending proved so emotionally effective that the filmmakers never had to return for the planned reshoot. For Rebecca, it became a crucial example of a lesson every producer eventually learns: sometimes the version of the film you planned isn’t as strong as the version you discover under pressure.
Cooperation above all else
When Lafon reflects on Lady Parts today, the first thing she remembers is not a specific film or festival screening; it’s the people. She attributes much of the film’s success to the creative partnership she formed with McCleese and Higgins. Recommended to connect with Higgins by industry mentor Chris Schwartz, Lafon quickly discovered a collaborator whose strengths complemented her own. Higgins brought the perspective of a skilled director, while Lafon focused on balancing creative goals with practical execution. That partnership became especially important when severe weather threatened production. During filming, reports of an approaching storm forced the crew to abandon outdoor preparations and huddle indoors. Phones came out. Weather trackers were monitored. Everyone saw the distance between the output and incoming thunder. The storm eventually passed without causing serious damage, but the outage revealed something important. Instead of letting stress hurt the team, the filmmakers stayed focused on what they could control: safety, morale, and making the best movie possible. For Rebecca, it validated one of the most important decisions a producer can make. “The people you choose at the beginning of a project are the same people who determine how that project survives its worst moments,” she explains.
Finding an audience
If you do Lady Parts was rewarding, seeing the audience embrace it proved even more meaningful. The film quickly established itself as a standout on the festival circuit, gaining recognition from both genre and LGBTQ+ audiences. It won at the Queer Fear Film Festival (Best Short), Access:Horror (Best Director), and the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival (Best Production Design), following its West Coast premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival. Screenings at Brooklyn Horror, Salem Horror Fest, Portland Horror Film Festival and many other events further confirmed the film’s growing reputation. Then came perhaps the biggest milestone of all: distribution through Shudder and ALTER. Lafon points to this as the moment that turned the project from a successful festival card into something bigger. “The idea that Lady Parts could be someone’s first queer horror film,” she says, “That it could be the first time a queer teenager sees their experience reflected in the genre—that’s exactly why I wanted to become a producer.”
Building on the legacy of Queer Horror
While some have described queer horror as an emerging genre, Lafon sees it differently. She sees Lady Parts as part of a long tradition that includes landmark works such as A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, The hunger, Interview with the vampireand Hellraiser. What has changed, she claims, is visibility. For decades, queer themes have often existed beneath the surface of horror films, encoded through metaphor or subtext. Today’s filmmakers have the freedom to be more direct. Lady Parts exemplifies that development. Instead of presenting queerness as the source of horror, the film locates horror in shame, oppression, and societal judgment. The monstrous elements arise not from the protagonist’s identity, but from the pressure placed on it. “It uses horror to manifest the inner feelings of its characters in an outward display,” notes Rebecca. That perspective helped to make Lady Parts one of the most distinctive queer horror films of recent years while cementing Lafon’s reputation as a producer focused on bold storytelling, creative confidence, and the belief that sometimes the most powerful filmmaking moments emerge when things go unexpectedly wrong.
Lady Parts is just one example of a wider career that has established Rebecca Lafon as an emerging force in independent genre filmmaking. Over the years, Lafon has built a reputation for successfully leading ambitious productions from development to distribution, often handling projects that combine significant creative complexity with demanding logistical challenges. Her work has received recognition from film festivals, distributors and industry professionals, contributing to a growing profile in both horror and independent films. The success of Lady Parts also reflects a pattern that has become increasingly associated with Lafon’s career. Instead of focusing on conventional projects, she has consistently gravitated towards bold, distinctive narratives that challenge audiences while remaining commercially viable. This approach has helped her build a portfolio of successful productions and establish credibility among filmmakers, festival programmers and industry decision makers. As a result, Lafon has been recognized not only for his individual projects but also for his wider contributions to the development of innovative independent film.
