All posts by Giles Edwards

Film major & would-be writer. 6'3". @gilesforyou (TwT)
366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: MY VEGAS EYES (2026)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Xavier Terhorst

FEATURING: Kevin Ludowitz, Justin Cutler, Alyssa Duarte, Pamela Pace, Michael Vaughn

PLOT: Left behind with the riff-raff after the Rapture, Emo Superstar attempts to leave Sin City behind.

Still from My Vegas Eyes (2026)

COMMENTS: “There she was: the only innocence let on Earth.” She is a naked woman, mouth pursed in anticipation, and limbs ready to accommodate any bend. Easy to hold, easy to lift, easy to caress, and easy to inflate. Amidst the dregs of humanity, a crude sex doll may be the apex of humanity after the better souls are wrenched from our sick plane. This rapture is shown simply: human silhouettes—dozens, hundreds of them—in still-form floating above the garbage remnants of Las Vegas where the rat-like survivors cling tenuously to an existence of violence and getting high. Emo Superstar (Kevin Ludowitz) wants something more, and with the reluctant acquiescence of his drug boss, Superstar attempts an impossible journey for salvation—or at the very least, something more than the mass damnation where he finds himself.

Early on, Emo Superstar remarks that “[l]ife became colorful when my parents died.” Xavier Terhorst is obviously working through some rough thoughts, and we ride alongside him over the course of My Vegas Eyes. Guerrilla filmmaking and exhaustive editing make for a visually compelling journey. Vegas has rarely looked so depressing, sparsely populated by made-up psychos clinging to a lust for kicks or hope in the Lord. A photorealistic face of a person fills the screen, its eyes carved out to reveal a flickering backdrop of trash and bright lights. Colors saturate and flip as Superstar navigates a dead city and an ominous tunnel guarded by the Trash Man. The protagonist’s thoughts play quietly from time to time, only for us to be jarred back into the harsh now with full-volume shouts from a psychotic matriarch or simpering Mormon preacher.

The experience is rough. Terhorst’s feature debut shows much promise, however, maintaining stylistic coherence and a just-followable-enough narrative, all despite the apparent restraints of him nearly being a one man band. Terhorst slots firmly into the informal collection of “curious what comes next” filmmakers. Putting that potential future aside, though, My Vegas Eyes is an interesting exploration of life after the apocalypse, and how we can still find value in life (or death?) at its worst.

You can buy My Vegas Eyes now on Blu-ray from the distributor; we’re informed it will show up streaming (free option available) on bloodstream.tv from September 20.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

No other critics quotes available at time of publication.

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: CUDDLY TOYS (2022)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Kansas Bowling

FEATURING: Kansas Bowling

PLOT: Professor Kansas Bowling, with a degree in “Teen Age,” draws on myriad examples of girls’ ruined childhoods to explore the dangers of impressionability and sexual predation.

Still from Cuddly Toys (2022)

COMMENTS: There’s a human skeleton arranged on a string, a red backdrop, an old slide projector, and a strange figure: a professor, she tells us, with her field of study situated on the grim intersection of the evil and the mundane. Shattered futures, injured esteem and injured bodies, dogged sunniness, doom, defiance, death, and rape: all these elements, across numerous (“There are 100 actresses in this film”) testimonials, flesh out this frightful and compelling, sometimes experimental and sometimes verité, mockumentary dissecting the teenage girlhood experience in all its harrowing possibility.

These girls’ lives unfold in a murky ’70s-to-’90s era, with postcards sent from the road, nary a portable phone to be seen, and the recurring Scott Walker tune, “It’s Raining Today,” lashing ominously as crooned counterpoint to the poppy Nilsson/Monkees title track. After a brief introduction from the professor, Cuddly Toys dives right into its deadpan-dreadful proceedings with a “Miss Pre-Teen” beauty pageant, setting the tone: we’re in for a nasty ride, made just barely tolerable by the clinical absurdism of our guide and the improbable perkiness of (some of) the girls and women onscreen.

But discomfort—to put it mildly—weighs on the viewer, and appropriately so. As a general rule, I am not prone to guilt by association, but by the film’s end I was truly appalled by the evil potential, and the evil realized by, my fellow men. I had no objections to Bowling depicting this, however. There’s far too great a streak of nastiness in the world, which menaces one sex exponentially more than the other. That said, Professor Bowling slips in a trenchant observation in her closing remarks—one which raises the question as to which sex is actually considered more disposable.

Cuddly Toys is a mind-blowing journey into the casual cruelty found in our culture, weaving harrowing nightmares from grubby dreams. The victims are clear, and the perpetrators—though predominately male—seem to be just about everyone; there is more than enough blame to go around.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“I definitely wouldn’t shade you if this was not your cup o ‘tea, it’s weird. Part shockumentary, part arthouse fever dream, it’s an astutely delivered, if a bit meandering, pitch black mondo-comedy.”–McBastard 2000, Rock! Shock! Pop! (Blu-ray)

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average
Cuddly Toys [Blu-ray]

Cuddly Toys [Blu-ray]

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Capsules

2026 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: NOM NOM NOM, PART NOM NOM NOM

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Montréal 2026

An ace of diamonds signed by a cartoonist rests alongside its fifty-one unadorned companions.

7/30: Recluse

Henry Chaisson goes full tilt 1980s BBC spook story here, with his slow pacing matching the gloomy atmospherics. A sound engineer (a profession seemingly irrelevant to the goings-on) must return home to attend to her dying father, a famously troubled artist who suffers a nasty gasoline burn at the film’s beginning. The lead is, appropriately, a cipher, with costars carrying various degrees of mysterious weight (shouts-out to Fantasia regulars and ). If you can slip into the measured nature of the game, Recluse is a satisfying little spooker.

The Leader

Alternately funny, sinister, and unbelievable, The Leader chronicles the rise and devastating fall of Marshall Applewhite and his “Heaven’s Gate” cult. Members are harvested from the dejected and hopeless masses and molded into a helpless existence. positively shines in Michael Gallagher’s docudrama, but the real gem is Vera Farmiga as co-founder Bonnie Lu Nettles. Here down to earth seriousness gives weight to the experience, making Bonnie’s death in 1985 a preemptive death knell. Well-crafted and very unsettling.

Never After Dark

After the serious let-down of The Mouths, Dave Boyle’s J-Horror restored my faith in the phenomenon. There’s the expected blue-cold darkness, and a ghostly fellow with slashed mouth hunting for something at certain hours of the day, but there’s also warmth and fun. Airi is a ghost hunter with a sidekick in the form of her deceased older sister (appearing in mirrors as a young girl, having died many years prior) and a disinclination toward live people (her semi-flirtations with a new client’s skeptic son are delightfully awkward). Her rig to visit the other realm is a doozy, involving a zoetrope, a candle, and a receptacle to burn a lock of hair, and the mid-century Continue reading 2026 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: NOM NOM NOM, PART NOM NOM NOM →

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: BUDDY (2026)

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DIRECTED BY: Casper Kelly

FEATURING: Delaney Quinn, Cristin Milioti, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan, and the voice of Keegan-Michael Key

PLOT: A group of children’s-show friends attempt to escape from the increasingly homicidal titular unicorn.

Still from Buddy (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Buddy’s lair is carved directly into the sheer walls of the uncanny valley, sure, but the denouement’s dreamy poignancy secures Kelly’s caper a place in our weird hearts.

COMMENTS: You may not know it, but Buddy wants to be your friend. And even though he’s just met you, he loves you very much. But unless you want to spend the remainder of your existence (or perhaps longer) cycling through an endless series of singing, dancing, frolicking bromides, do not extend your hand to this beastly television host. Watch out for your family, too, because once they’ve gone Buddy, there’s no going back.

Buddy will appeal to a number of audiences: horror fans seeking something candy-coated and full of carnage; adventurous viewers yearning for the sinister side of wacky; drug aficionados who have themselves tasted of the butterscotch psychotropic flower petal; and especially anthropologists studying television culture of the late second millennium. This film is a simulacrum of excesses that, in hindsight, feel almost barbaric.

I am not referring to the creepy gore found in Buddy, no. I speak of the bombardment of treacly songs and horrific performance foisted on the youth of yesteryear—and, regrettably, today as well. Strip away Buddy’s murderous rampages, and there’s still an ever-pulsating technicolor blob of repulsiveness. When we root for Freddy and her liberated buddies, we’re not just invested in their physical safety: we want them to escape to live a well-adjusted life, with all its surprises and misfortunes.

Casper Kelly leaps out of the fire and into the impossibly vibrant world of 1990s children’s programs with his latest film, and the product of his imagination both sears the eyes and slashes the mind, all while also capturing the heart. During Kelly’s introduction to his movie, he commented on his own children’s viewing of the various late-20th-century “children’s classics.” I can only hope and pray that those days are gone, that the memories fade, and that in years to come we can look upon Buddy as a totem of daytime horrors past.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…get’s [sic] more and more fun the weirder and weirder it gets… A deranged, go for broke experiment that makes the most of all of its bizarre ideas…”–Derrick Murray, Nerdbot (festival screening)

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average