Melania Is a Horror Movie
Fans of the Melania Cinematic Universe may wonder what has happened to the protagonist of Melania (the memoir) and Melania (the creator of the Cursed Red White House Christmas Forest) since her last foray into entertainment. Bad news! The first lady is trapped in an invisible bubble from which she will never be able to escape as long as she lives, and she hasn’t even noticed.
What I am trying to say is that Melania is a horror movie. And a horror movie of this magnitude (no gore, but a pervasive sense of dread) deserves to be seen on the big screen, where you can also feel the bonus dread of knowing that the money you spent on your ticket will be funneled to Amazon, which might put it toward a seat at the inaugural high table for Mr. Jeff Bezos and Ms. Lauren Sánchez Bezos. (You can glimpse them both, gabbing with Donald Trump and Elon Musk at a preinauguration candlelight dinner in one of the film’s most effective jump scares!)
When I saw it in theaters today in Washington, D.C., I was hoping to find a few avid Melania-heads in attendance, perhaps dressed as Cursed Red Trees or wearing her I Really Don’t Care, Do U? jacket in homage to her trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. But when I sat down with my commemorative black-and-white Melania popcorn bucket—on which a business-suited Melania stares impassively from a white chair—the audience was … almost entirely journalists, with maybe three exceptions.
This film, directed by Brett Ratner (yes, the one accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women), follows Melania’s preparations for Inauguration Day: her outfit, the decorations, some vague gestures toward her various initiatives as first lady. It involves many moments that are intended to be compelling, or mournful, or romantic, which you can tell because the soundtrack so aggressively telegraphs what to feel at every possible moment. First out of the gate: “Gimme Shelter”! Then comes “Billie Jean”—not once, but twice (Melania’s favorite, she reveals). Then we get a snippet of “The Thieving Magpie,” which plays as the Trumps escort the Bidens to their departing helicopter; I can’t hear “The Thieving Magpie” without recalling A Clockwork Orange. Is any of this on purpose?
Every so often, Melania almost senses that something is wrong; she experiences a ripple of genuine feeling when facing her grief over the loss of her mother and the raw anguish of an October 7 hostage whose husband was being held captive. But for the most part, the movie reveals how well insulated she is from anything resembling human life, like a cheetah in the house of a Russian oligarch.
Watching Melania fills you with a profound and despairing claustrophobia. On my way to the theater, I stopped in at a used bookstore and bought two books and sat across from a woman on the metro whom I didn’t know, and we smiled at each other. To live in a city is to have neighbors. Melania has none. Her voice-over mentions that she has lived in D.C., New York, and Florida. But watching her traipse from limo to limo, private jet to private jet, just to get to identically fancy rooms full of identically sycophantic people, I wanted to scream: You don’t live there! You don’t live anywhere!
The film alternates between Aggressive Songs to Tell You What Emotion to Have and halting, bland narration from the first lady describing her feelings and initiatives. Some of the most bleakly funny moments are when Melania recollects her personal triumphs in the White House: She redid the Rose Garden (now paved over). She fixed up the bowling alley (now demolished by her husband to make room for a ballroom). An end-credits note mentions her efforts in support of a bill to prevent the creation of nonconsensual AI nudes—and we all grok how well efforts are going on that front.
Think of all the good things in life: meaningful conversations, shared laughter, petting a dog, reading a book, casual interactions with someone who is neither an employee nor a family member—the kind of things people are willing to pour into the streets to protect. They are all absent from Melania. In their place: Fittings! More fittings! Pomp! Private jets! Expensively attired billionaires being served—I am not making this up—golden eggs. Donald Trump and Melania Trump, waltzing to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Thirty-five million dollars were spent marketing this! It is like someone eating spoonfuls of gold-encrusted garbage and beckoning you to watch. Look at how much gold I’ve put on it! More gold than anyone! Doesn’t it look delicious? She doesn’t know it’s garbage! Does Brett? Does Donald? Do any of them?