Night Stage Creates a New Landscape for the Gay Erotic Thriller

Night Stage

I’m in a film group chat where we recently debated what qualifies as an erotic thriller. Many struggle to define the genre, often lumping in films that don’t quite fit. For example, some argue that Babygirl (Halina Reijn, 2024) qualifies, but its heavy comedy and lack of real danger or murder set it apart from classics like Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992) or Color of Night (Richard Rush, 1994).

An erotic thriller demands a protagonist whose desires consume them, putting them in real danger or leading them toward ruin. The story must link sex and murder, or show the protagonist facing ruin — or extreme punishment — due to their desires.

Night Stage (2025), co-written and directed by Marcio Reolon and Felipe Matzenbacher, clearly qualifies, delivering on all fronts. Drawing clear inspiration from De Palma’s early 80’s classics like Body Double (1984) and Dressed to Kill (1980) — with echoes of Verhoeven, Hitchcock, Almodóvar and the giallo genre — it follows ambitious theater actor Matias (Gabriel Faryas) as he embarks on a torrid affair with local politician Rafael (Cirillo Luna). Their liaison quickly spirals into a dangerous game of shifting power dynamics, public trysts and murder.

The film explores duality (public vs. private selves), artistic rivalry, exhibitionism and repressed desires clashing with societal expectations. It also examines how capitalism and professionalism suppress our most primal sexual impulses. It’s hot, messy and deliciously unhinged — the essence of a great erotic thriller.

After the provocative Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980) and Windows (Gordon Willis, 1980) — which depicted gay characters as violent stalkers driven by repressed desire — the gay/queer erotic thriller largely vanished during the AIDS crisis. Aside from The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983) and Law of Desire (Pedro Almodóvar, 1987), the genre shifted toward heterosexual domestic nightmares steeped in misogyny.

The genre became fixated on variations of the “Blank from Hell” trope: the One-Night Stand from Hell (Fatal Attraction [Adrian Lyne, 1987]), the Wife from Hell (Dream Lover [Nicholas Kazan, 1993]), the Sexy Co-Worker from Hell (Disclosure [Barry Levinson, 1994], The Temp [Tom Holland, 1993]), and even Madonna as the Gold Digger from Hell in Body of Evidence (Uli Edel, 1993), literally fucking an old man to death. Horny heterosexual men were repeatedly punished by powerful femme fatales. The message was clear: if you have sex, you will die most likely at the hands of a conniving, evil woman.

Night Stage successfully reinterprets the genre through a modern lens, critiquing the power structures and professional pressures that prevent people from embracing their true selves. In this film, the real danger isn’t the outdated, AIDS-driven fear that sex will kill you — it’s patriarchal society and the denial of one’s own sexuality.

Masculine performativity plays a crucial role, shaping the characters’ actions. Matias, in his early 20s, embraces both traditionally masculine features and a more femme/fluid presentation than Rafael, who spends his days performing authority for potential voters. Matias is passed over for a role by a casting director who clocks him as not straight enough. His flatmate Fabio (Henrique Barreira), who embodies a more masculine, heterosexual ideal, gets the callback instead. When Matias opens up to Rafael, the advice is clear: to succeed, Matias needs to reproduce a cis heterosexual persona to maintain pallatability for a mainstream audience

The toxicity of these imposed roles fuels something deep and primal in both — a need to push boundaries and escape rigid ideals— leading them to increasingly public and risky encounters.  Initially, I thought the dynamic between the two would lean into some sort top vs bottom situation, but the film constantly subverts expectations. You might think the closeted politician would either be a sadistic dom top or an insatiable, self-hating pig bottom, influencing how he interacts with the actor who needs to be more masculine to succeed, or vice versa. But that’s not the case. These pressures to conform and perfom allow them to open up to one another, and they’re having so much fun and experiencing so much freedom with their public encounters they’re not really bound by defined top/bottom roles. It’s refreshing that the film doesn’t lean into these tropes regarding the nature of their sex.

When a dom/sub power struggle briefly surfaces, it plays out in a charged discotheque scene. Rafael — or is it? — assumes a dominant role, clad in full leather and a gimp mask, stalking Matias through the club. Matias, overwhelmed, recoils under the weight of it. Seeking comfort, he turns to a more femme-presenting guy, only to face rejection in a late-night park. Unlike Matias, this other queen embraces pleasure openly and unapologetically — perhaps on the dance floor or in the club’s darkroom — rather than lurking in the shadows of a late-night cruising spot. It’s just one of the many playful and subtle little moments in the film that will appeal to modern queer audiences, but might be lost on others. 

The film unfolds into a taut, thrilling ride, beautifully shot with camera work that echoes De Palma’s signature crash zooms and split screens. The plot is largely unpredictable, with danger lurking at every corner, culminating in a chaotic, almost operatic finale. Thiago Pethit, Arthur Decloedt and Charles Tixier blend elegant strings with piercing synths, resulting in a score that feels old fashioned and modern at the same time.

It’s not the fear of being caught, but the relentless pressure of oppressive forces — tied to antiquated ideas of sex, masculinity and performance — that threaten to tear these men apart. In revisiting and reinterpreting the erotic thriller, Night Stage dares to break free of traditional constraints, ultimately revealing a new, more complex landscape for gay desire and danger.

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Jared loves movies and lives with Kiki in Berlin.