Poison

Poison (1991) is Todd Haynes' debut feature, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Three short stories, three shooting styles, one thread running through them all — outsiders the world spits out.

The tales are braided together, cutting across each other. "Hero" plays as a tabloid TV investigation: a suburban boy shoots his father, and his mother swears the child then flew out the window. "Horror" mimics a black-and-white B-movie, where a scientist drinks his own distilled human sex drive and becomes the carrier of a disfiguring plague. "Homo" is a prison drama about one inmate's obsessive desire for another, drawn straight from the writing of Jean Genet. Haynes edits them so the register lurches from parody to raw hurt and back.

The film took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1991 and became a cornerstone of New Queer Cinema. Part of its funding came from a public grant, and the uproar that followed only sharpened its reputation. This is not a casual night in — it's thorny, provocative, built on the handmade look of low-budget art cinema. If you want to see where Haynes started, it's essential. Stream Poison (1991) online on iFILM.