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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: INTERFACE (2021)

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DIRECTED BY:  Justin Tomchuk (AKA )

FEATURING: Voices of Justin Tomchuk, Libby Brien, Christa Elliot

PLOT: A lone man and a pink shape-shifting parasite wander and reminisce in the aftermath of the Philadelphia Experiment.

Still from Interface (2021)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Interface has a dreamy vibe from start to finish, uncanny and uneasy in the vein of ‘s works.

COMMENTS: Interface is not your typical, shallow Adult Swim-style surrealism, even if it may seem like it at first. A melancholy and sense of existential dread infuses every scene. Something uncanny lurks in the movie’s corners, and it isn’t just the monster accompanying our protagonist in his wanderings.

The setting is an alternate version of the aftermath of the Second World War, in which the Philadelphia Experiment had unforeseen consequences. (For those that do not know or remember, the Philadelphia Experiment is an urban legend about a hypothetical U.S. Navy teleportation experiment). Many sci-fi movies— especially B-movies—have been inspired by this story, most notably Stewart Raffill’s The Philadelphia Experiment from 1984.

Interface approaches this narrative more subtly than previous adaptations, recalling a dream and a work of pure surrealism. We follow, for the most part, two survivors of the Philadelphia Experiment, a lonely man unable to grow old and die and the shape-shifting monster that accompanies him everywhere. The lonely man wanders aimlessly, a soul trapped in limbo, while the accompanying parasite uses him as a host for its own survival.

There are clear symbolic undertones. The protagonist represents modern man, trapped in guilt and grief after catastrophic event (WWII). The parasite works as a personification of the negative emotions consuming him. A lyricism underlies the grotesque absurdity of the situation, highlighting the personal and collective trauma.

Memories of the past, as well as scientific attempts to restore that past, are interspersed throughout the movie. The focus, however, remains on our hero and his attempts to move on with his life (or his death). The uncanny, retro digital animation—recalling movies of the 80s and 90s—adds to the uneasiness of his situation. The melancholic soundtrack, composed by the director, does the same.

For the art lovers out there, there are a plethora of visual references to paintings, especially surrealist paintings, like Rene Magritte’ s “The Son of Man” or ‘s entire oeuvre. Even seemingly random abstract shapes in between scenes recall Kandinsky. These Easter eggs showcase Tomchuk’s wide range of influences and rich intellectual background.

“Interface” started as a web series, and it is still available on Youtube in its entirety for free; you can also rent or buy it on VOD for an ad-free experience that puts a little money in the filmmaker’s pocketbook (and even less in ours). Alternatively, you can purchase a Blu-ray or VHS version directly from the director for a more immersive retro experience.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…meditative, philosophical, atmospheric, surreal, imaginative, fantasy-sci-fi animation that brings to mind Mamoru Oshii at his most enigmatic and bizarre with a light sprinkling of Miyazaki.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

List Candidates

CAPSULE: HIM (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Justin Tipping

FEATURING: Tyriq Withers, Marlon Wayans

PLOT: After suffering a traumatic injury just before the draft, a star college football player attends a remote retreat to be mentored by his idol, who years ago suffered a similar setback before making an unlikely comeback.

Still from Him (2025)

COMMENTS:

Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.

Stamina, speed, and sacrifice: three elements you need to become the GOAT. Especially sacrifice. Football must be what drives you. Forget family, forget God. Everything for the game. Isaiah understands this—it’s why he ushered his team, The Saviors, to victory in eight Super Bowl championships. But Isaiah has grown old, and new blood must take the helm. Does this young rising star have what it takes?

And it shall be said in that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

The parallel backgrounds of Isaiah (Marlon Wayons) and Cam (Tyriq Withers) are slammed on the screen, sports news-style, showboating the talent and lite psychosis of the fanatical athlete mind. Growing up, Cam watched Isaiah dominate the field, all under the relentless pressure from his own father to become HIM, to become the GOAT. Cycle forward a decade-and-a-half, and Cam is on the cusp of his first professional draft. Then one night, after practice, he ends up brained by a warhammer-wielding team mascot.

And said unto me, Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.

The bulk of the story unfolds within Isaiah’s remote compound, chronicling a week of Cam’s trials as he recovers from his injury while attempting to gain his idol’s favor. During that time things become strange—borderline weird, in fact. Mystical overtones abut sports satire: Isaiah’s wife is a cryptic marvel heading up a cavalcade of followers, enablers, psychos, and fools. HIM (all capitals, mind you) has smash-style to spare, and as it ratchets up the intensity, so it also ratchets a primordial kind of evil. I shall say no more on that point, save my observation that I’m not sure whether the finale went too far, or not far enough. Regardless, the talents behind HIM rise to the difficult challenge of providing me a third sports movie I can wholeheartedly recommend.

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… director Justin Tipping’s Him is a strange film, in ways that go well beyond the surface-level observation that ‘American football horror movie’ is a pretty bizarre pitch… A trippy, giallo-inflected freakout that unabashedly portrays professional sport as a heathen ceremony of blood, greed, and power, the film is chiefly a showcase for Tipping’s off-the-leash stylistic excess. Does it make a lick of sense, either narratively or thematically? Not really. Is it weird, unsettling, and nightmarishly gorgeous? Definitely.”–Andre Wyatt, The Take-Up (contemporaneous)

HIM

HIM

  • Runtime: 97 minutes

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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HOPITAL BRUT (1999)

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DIRECTED BY: Le Dernier Cri (Pakito Bolino, Marc Druez, Christophe Istier)

FEATURING: None

PLOT: A revue showcasing the grotesque occupants of the world’s most inhospitable hospital.

Still from Hospital Brut (1999)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Hopital Brut is an indefatigable assault on the senses, combining a deliberately crude and hyperactive visual style, a clamorous soundtrack that never softens or slows, and a giddy disregard for propriety. The curators aim to offend, and they never let up in their compulsion to shock.

COMMENTS: The digital hive mind at Google Translate interprets “hôpital brut” directly as “raw hospital.” However, “brut” alone lso translates as “gross,” and “Gross Hospital” is a far more appropriate and accurate title for these 45 minutes of cartoon cacophony assembled by the French collective Le Dernier Cri (translation: “The Latest”).

One of the things that makes animation anthologies like Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation compelling is the broad range of styles and intentions sitting alongside each other. Hopital Brut is based on comic panels created by more than two dozen stars of the alt-comic scene, and their unique artistic approaches seem well-suited to the format, which promises something distinctly strange behind each door. However, the end product suffers from an interminable sameness, with one chaotic onslaught sliding into the next one. The techniques change somewhat, with stop-motion, paper cutouts, and even the occasional burst of sped-up live action footage spotlighted, but they all share a rapid pace, herky-jerky rhythm, and a love of the coarse. With so many sources of artistic inspiration at play here, and considering the assembled film’s intention to be a patchwork quilt of strangeness, maybe it’s not asking too much to expect a little variety. Instead, the same ideas keep popping up to the tune of the relentless hammering of an industrial soundtrack.

Despite its repetitiveness, a few segments have enough novelty to stand out, such as the tale of the lonely artist who turns to a lord of the underworld in order to get girls, but discovers that the over-endowed demon has more to offer. Another patient freaks out when he sees himself drowning in his soup. A set of genitals features anthropomorphized testicles that look like busts of German composers. A giant praying mantis shows up for a quick orgy of rape and evisceration, which makes for a change of pace from all the poking, prodding, and maiming that the doctors usually employ. But even these moments are only marginally more impactful than their brethren, as the same notions are served over and over again. The chef may change, but the dish remains the same.

There’s little doubt that Hopital Brut is weird. It wears its irreverence and its iconoclasm on its sleeve. But after that, there’s very little to recommend it. The film is a Venn diagram where the categories of “weirdness” and “watchability” are moving steadily apart until they are completely separate circles. It ends as it began, no less defiant and no more engaging than it was from the outset. Still, the collective seems to have landed squarely in the center of its intended target, and there’s an amusing piece of evidence to back that up. If you visit the film’s page at MUBI, you’ll be greeted with a piece of text which is both absurdly tangential and highly apropos: “Hopital Brut is not available to watch. Instead, check out Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.” An even trade? It’s probably a perfect double feature, an algorithmic pairing that would make Le Dernier Cri’s collective hearts flutter.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Don’t want to fry on acid? Afraid your gonna do a Diane Linklater dive off a skyscraper thinking that you can fly and the only “scraper” you’ll get is when they peel you off the pavement?! Look no further than the semi short ‘Hopital Brut’!!!… keep kids far away from this, unless you want your kids traumatized for their rest of their short, miserable lives.” —noisepuncher_caiaav, Noisepuncher

(This movie was nominated for review by Parker Weston. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: OM DAR-B-DAR (1988)

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DIRECTED BY: Kamal Swaroop

FEATURING: Anita Kanwar, Gopi Desai, Lalit Tiwari

PLOT: A young boy named Om comes of age amidst diamond breeding frogs, melodramatic love affairs, and other absurdities.

Still from Om Dar-B-Dar (1988)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Almost completely incomprehensible at first, like a Hindi “Finnegan’s Wake,” Om Dar-B-Dar requires at least a second viewing to fully appreciate its eccentricities and chaotic nature.

COMMENTS:  At first, the narrative seems straightforward, but don’t be fooled, this is as surreal as a movie can get. We follow a family, father Babuji and his two children, a thirty-year-old woman named Gayatri and a young boy with the unique name Om. After a short voiceover introduction giving us a bit of a socio-political background, Om seems to emerge as the tale’s main character. However, something is off.

Dialogues between Om and his family start casually but stray immediately into the absurd. A love affair begins between his sister and a young man, full of extravagant musical numbers in the familiar Bollywood style, albeit with nonsensical lyrics. Early on, the movie shows a willingness to break with stylistic conventions and to parody and deconstruct long-established genres through absurdism. Gayatri’s love affair subverts the language of erotic melodramas, for instance, while the main narrative of Om’s life plays like an epic saga on steroids.

And then it really gets weird! Characters rant about space travels or express a longing for female emancipation, while embarking on a variety of bizarre schemes involving diamond breeding frogs, or imitating God for profit. Humorous sketches pseudo-poetic and pseudo-philosophical ramblings abound, all while delivering caustic commentaries on the commercialization of spirituality.

Om’s life flash-forwards before our eyes through rapid editing full of jump cuts. Occasional gaps in time or space create a sense of disorientation and the fragmented narrative contributes a dreamy quality. Hypnotic sound effects like voice echoes, or psychedelic futuristic tunes, are applied. There’s even a complete, albeit momentary, disruption of the audio at one point.

Om Dar- B -Dar is an enigmatic puzzle thanks to the unconventional way it combines the everyday with surrealism. It will appeal mostly to those that have some familiarity with Hindu tradition and history, though, as many mythological and cultural references can be found among the absurdity. The rest of us will scratch our heads and open an online encyclopedia.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a hodge-podge of non-sequitur dialog and scenes, trippy montages, political symbolism, genre-splicing, nonlinear storytelling, magical realism, social satire, society seen through pop-commercialism, art-house mysticism, and general confusion.”–Zev Toledano, Worlwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by debasish dey, who suggested it with the following background: “…a 1988 Indian Postmodernist film directed by Kamal Swaroop. The film, about the adventures of a school boy named Om along with his family, employs nonlinear narrative and an absurdist storyline to satir[ize] mythology, arts, politics and even philosophy. The movie was described by its director as a story of Lord Brahma, and it sprouted from the idea that in Hinduism, although Lord Brahma was considered the father of the entire universe, strangely no one ever worshiped him. The director also said that the film’s script was written based solely on dreams and images that he had and claimed he ‘cannot think in words.’ ” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNITED TRASH (1996)

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aka The Slit

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DIRECTED BY: Christoph Schlingensief

FEATURING: Udo Kier, Kitten Natividad, Joachim Tomaschewsky, Johnny Pfeifer, Jones Muguse, Thomas Chibwe

PLOT: The wife of a gay German UN commander stationed in Africa gives birth to a child who is declared the new messiah; when an accident causes the boy to be horribly injured and endangers the UN mission, an escalating battle for power arises between the power-hungry commander, a religious leader who has declared war on the Vatican, and a chieftain who is attempting to actualize his dream to ride a ramshackle rocket into the White House to kill the American president.

Still from United Trash [AKA The Slit] (1996)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Movies can be weird, they can be strange, they can be bizarre, but it’s rare to come across a movie that is actually insane. Under the trappings of satire on a global scale, United Trash offers a critique of international affairs forged in the crucible of late 20th century daytime talk shows. There is not a single character in the film who isn’t as awful as they can be, nor a situation that is not plussed to become the most grotesque version of itself. So many fluids are spattered across the screen, everyone is subject to abject humiliation, and not a single institution fails to be undermined. Rarely has a film’s contempt for its subjects been so blatant and so complete, nor has a commitment to the most base appeals for a laugh been pursued so vigorously.

COMMENTS: In a career cut appallingly short by cancer, Christoph Schlingensief racked up a remarkable number of achievements, including staging a Wagner opera at the Bayreuth Festival, making plans to build a performing arts center in Burkina Faso, and curating a retrospective of his art that was staged posthumously at the Vienna Biennale. In cinema, he created a trilogy of films exploring the trauma caused by both the rise of Hitler and the process of German reunification. (The last of those, Terror 2000, also sits in our Reader Queue.) And in the middle of all this, he directed a film in which Udo Kier paints himself in blackface, dons a skirt made of bananas, and dances like a monkey in front of an audience of Africans while stroking the center banana aggressively. It’s an extraordinary career.

United Trash features one of the most game casts I have ever seen. There’s not an ounce of shame among the lot of them. They got the note that subtlety would be punishable by death, and they responded by going furiously over the top. Keir leads the way with his relentless prissiness, matched by a frequently naked Natividad raving maniacally about her lack of sexual satisfaction. They are surrounded by actors working just as hard to win the title of Least Restrained Performance, including a Hitler-mustachioed doctor/rocket scientist, an amoral, sexually ravenous, Vatican-hating priest, and Keir’s absurdly bewigged, unexpectedly jacked, child-molesting Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNITED TRASH (1996) →