Hulu’s Thirsty is a short movie with a unique relationship. Thirsty, from Nicole Delaney, premiered on Hulu in 2019 and puts a twist on a classic love story. The film starts with a quote from The Little Mermaid, “I know that I shall love the world up there, and all the people who live in it,” a setup for the strange fairy tale that is to follow. Thirsty follows a mosquito, with human thoughts, voiced by Maya Rudolph. The mosquito happens to suck the blood of a man played by Insecure‘s Jay Ellis and becomes infatuated with him. The man, for his part, has recently been through a painful breakup.
Through the mosquito’s eyes, the audience is taken through a surprisingly touching story about forbidden love as the mosquito desperately tries to get the attention of the man she’s fallen in love with. Like Ariel in the quoted movie, the mosquito wishes she could become a real human to be with her love. It’s a strange and heartwarming short film that manages to make its darker aspects play as goofy. The camera zooms around, giving an accurate perspective of a flying bug, but the director is smart enough to hold back some, so motion-sickness-averse people need not worry. Funny, weird, and well-acted, Thirsty has a lot of ideas packed in twelve minutes.
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Thirsty Flips The Idea Of The Male Gaze On Its Head
One of the fun things about Thirsty is how it flips the script on the idea of the “male gaze”. The male gaze can be described as, “a way of portraying and looking at females that sexualizes and lessens women while giving the power over them to men,” via No Film School. It’s such a common trope that some people may just consider it a facet of movies. In Thirsty, the camera swings around, focusing on the man, showing him as an object of desire for the woman, or female mosquito in this case. Ellis’ character is very intentionally framed as athletic and fit. The mosquito’s infatuation is understandable.
Rudolph’s mosquito holds the power here as a bloodsucking insect, and for once, it’s the woman’s thought that the audience hears in a non-stop flood of longing thoughts. Far from being creepy, it’s cute and relatable, a simple rom-com trope where a man pursues a woman who doesn’t notice him. However, by putting these thoughts in a female mosquito’s head, Thirsty is subversive and charmingly funny. Just like audiences find themselves rooting for a shlubby suitor in many romantic comedies, it’s hard not to root for one of the world’s most annoying insects.
Thirsty’s Ending Spoofs Classic Fairytales
Throughout Thirsty, the mosquito wishes it could be a human so that she could share a real relationship with Ellis’ character. The more she worries and dreams, the more often it appears that Ellis’ character can hear her. It’s on a basketball court when he happily exclaims, “I can hear you!” then in a poof of smoke… Ellis’ character turns into a mosquito. It’s a total flip of expectations when, instead of the mermaid becoming a human, like in the fairy tale, the man becomes a mosquito.
The Ellis mosquito pronounces his love for the Rudolph mosquito, not a moment too soon, because Thirsty has one last joke to pull. A basketball flies in from off-screen and flattens them both midsentence. At least the Rudolph-mosquito did finally hear someone tell her they loved her, ensuring she died after finding romance. Perhaps the finale is a comment on the fleeting nature of love. Perhaps it’s just a funny left turn. They are mosquitos after all. Squashing them isn’t always the worst decision.
