Nineties ‘It’ Girls Toast Tara Subkoff

“Happy birthday, Chloë!” actress Natasha Lyonne shouted with the bravado of a sports announcer. She was the last to arrive (arm-in-arm with Waris Ahluwalia) to the red carpet at the Museum of Modern Art Wednesday night.

“Shhhh!” said Sevigny, playfully pursing her bright red lips, which perfectly matched her Proenza Schouler dress. It was her 41st birthday. The two actresses weren’t there to mark the milestone, though, but to toast another one of their comrades in 90’s ‘It’ girl-dom: Tara Subkoff, who was screening her directing debut, #Horror, in which Sevigny and Lyonne star. They have all known each other for some time.

“Tara and I grew up in the same community in Connecticut,” Sevigny said. Later, they co-starred in Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco.

Subkoff’s is a horror flick set at an affluent junior high school. Peer pressure and social media mix for a night of mayhem. Given the plot, it seemed appropriate to ask the crowd about their horror movie memories growing up.

“I was a real scaredy cat,” Sevigny said. “I grew up Catholic, so The Exorcist was really powerful for me and Poltergeist.” The last thing that really scared her though was Episode 4 of The Walking Dead. “Home invasion, to me, is the most terrifying thing,” she said.

The most talked-about horror film of the evening? Roman Polanski’s Repulsion. Annabelle Dexter-Jones also cited his Rosemary’s Baby while Tennessee Thomas is a fan of Evil Dead 2.

Subkoff fully embraced the #Horror theme, dripping in red diamonds — literally, her Solange jewels were meant to resemble blood drops. But she turned sincere when asked what scares her the most. “People,” she said without hesitation. “The lack of compassion and empathy that I see in the world today is the most terrifying…Those are the two things that separate us from animals, and I hope we can cultivate them more, rather than less.”