A man comes face-to-face with a demigod. Well, as face-to-face as you can get to a being whose mere presence would drive the man mad. What seemed like a chance encounter was in fact ordained by fate, for the demigod has a tremendous favour to ask of the man. A favour that could mean saving the entire universe, or dooming it at the hands of an even greater God. Now, have all of this take place in a disgusting truck stop restroom, and have the man (Ryan Kwanten) be a viciously hungover man depressed over a recent break-up, and you have the plot for this absolute gem of a film.
First off, this immediately appeals to my taste for stories about gods directly interacting with mortals, and the setting enhances that effect. It shows a divine power not going after someone who already believes, or who is already on the right path. Instead, the demigod Ghatanothoa (J.K. Simmons with another killer addition to his voice acting repertoire) came to a man at his lowest point. Someone who is ready to enter the abyss willing. The kind of person that traditional Western theology keeps insisting is the person most in need of divine guidance, while most of the focus is put on the already well-off and comfortable. For a film that deals so readily in cosmic horror and Lovecraftian coldness about mankind’s inherent goodness, it’s closer to the Christian ideal of salvation than any PureFlix movie I’ve seen.
From there, the film aligns somewhat with films like I’m Thinking Of Ending Things in how it frames the end of a relationship as a psychological breaking point, or even You're Not Thinking Straight in its depiction of existential dread in the middle of a location that would already have one questioning what bad choices led them to being there in the first place. Ryan Kwanten is in rare form here as Wes, having fun with the brain-shattering mania of his situation while also letting the more dramatic and even shocking moments ring true. He is consistently an arsehole, but he isn’t a monster; he’s only human, for better and for worse.
It's an intersection of psychological horror, cosmic horror, and dashes of body horror in its use of gore and… well, think of something else you’d find in a public bathroom that starts with “glory” and you get the general idea of where this is headed. It’s quite gross, and with the story pushing Wes towards an act of self-sacrifice, there’s a definite Saw vibe to be gotten out of this as well. Even its isolated framing does a lot for the more cosmic aspects, as it builds on the idea of the eldritch being unknowable… by keeping it largely off-camera. Nothing scarier than what we don’t know, right?
But while it examines existential dread and visualises what feels like a depressive episode with a red and purple colour scheme, what really makes it all fit together is that it’s also incredibly funny. Ghatanothoa will be explaining his backstory, getting into the film’s creation myth of a universe borne from the wound of a God that now wants it all to become nothingness again… and there’s Wes, taking a piss in the urinal because, understandably, this entire scenario has clearly gotten to him.
There’s quite a few little breaks in the tension that end up adding to the human element at its core, which is a hell of a trick considering this is basically a two-way conversation with the fate of reality hanging in the balance. Add to that Wes’ frequently erratic behaviour, and the showings that even a being of pure destruction like Ghat has a rather dry sense of humour about this whole thing, and it manages not to take itself too seriously. Which only ends up strengthening the moments when it does.
For a lo-fi take on a frequently mind-expanding genre, what director Rebekah McKendry has put together here is genuinely impressive. It’s another example of what I like to call ‘edgelord optimism’, where it’s aesthetically all about congealed blood and sweat and literal shit and its main characters are equally as revolting… but at its heart, it’s about how even the worst of us are capable of doing good, and that when you gaze into the abyss, hope gazes back. How Glorious indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment