Relax, it’s just a little cosmic joke.
CONTENT WARNING: Psychedelics use, bathroom humor.
Tag Archives: Drug abuse
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: LOWLIFE (2012)
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DIRECTED BY: Seth A. Smith
FEATURING: Chik White, Kate Hartigan, Mitchell Wiebe, voice of John Urich
PLOT: Asa reappears after six months to join his friend Elle before a bad trip triggers a journey to a remote island littered with drug-secreting starfish.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Though hewing toward gritty realism, the plot hook—starfish drug—as well as the recurring hallucinations—narrated by a mystical dog—combine to create a singular something which is as strange as it is unsettling.
COMMENTS: Addiction has rarely looked this icky. A typical drug movie usually takes some effort to showcase the fun part: gathering with friends, experiencing euphoria, and the overall feeling of jolliness before the tragic results of substance abuse rear their heads. Lowlife diminishes these easy-times considerably through the drug in question: the brownish secretions of rather unhealthy looking starfish. While the characters do appear to appreciate the ensuing, loopy high, Seth Smith obliges the audience to endure a smearful dampness; and then, of course, hits his characters with the nasty ramifications.
The movie’s time-flow is somewhat uncertain, with three different narrative chains interlocking. The segments in color feature Asa, increasingly disheveled, as he roots through the murk of shallow streams in search of something. Black and white footage is used for the sequences involving Asa, Elle, and eventually the foppishly mysterious drug dealer Damon. Asa and Elle have a reunion—a reluctant one, as far as Elle’s concerned—which begins icily, but improves to the point that Asa reveals and shares what’s in his cooler. When these entities die from exposure (Asa is convinced Elle left the cooler lid off on purpose; Elle insists otherwise), the drug movie tragedy kicks off, catalyzed by a visit to Damon, who really creeps out Elle—her fear of telephoning him is palpable—but who also has two well-cared-for starfish to share.
The third block of narrative is the most cryptic. Black and white, and projected, it seems, 8mm-style, with a thick narration provided with its own subtitles, despite being in English. Nature, breezes, and words of fate, doom, and redemption. These are from the perspective of a dog, or perhaps dog spirit. (Smith is not hung-up on the viewer knowing what’s happening at the moment, so long as they feel what’s happening.) The dog-visions culminate alongside Asa’s arrival at his nadir, when Lowlife tilts briefly but fantastically to existentially unsettling body horror.
And so, the viewer is doomed with Asa; and Smith quietly shocks and awes in his feature debut. He would continue his evil-organism-tinged angst some years later with his sophomore effort, Tin Can. (This time with ill-omened fungus.) Lowlife is an unpleasant experience, but a worthwhile one—and a worthy member of the drug tragedy canon.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
CAPSULE: LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Rose Glass
FEATURING: Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Jena Malone, Anna Baryshnikov, Dave Franco, Ed Harris
PLOT: In a small Southwestern city, Lou (Stewart) manages a gym and generally keeps her head down, keeping an eye on her sister, Beth (Malone) and her abusive husband, JJ (Franco), while keeping distance from her dad, Lou Sr. (Harris), a major player in the local crime scene. When Lou meets Jackie, who’s temporarily working for her dad while saving money for a body building competition in Vegas, sparks fly, setting off a conflagration which threatens to burn everything to the ground.
COMMENTS: It’s reductive to call Love Lies Bleeding just a queer neo-noir, but that is basically what it is. It hits all the right noir notes: shady characters mired in shady dealings for questionable reasons. The setting (New Mexico, 1989) brings the “neo” to the noir, along with the fact that the star-crossed protagonists are a lesbian couple instead of the usual heterosexual pairing. And at first glance, it seems that, interesting and entertaining as it is—performances are good all around, as well as Glass’ direction—there’s nothing truly “weird” about this, at least not in the way we at 366 Weird Movies define the term.
However, as an A24 release, it’s at least atypical: it ain’t no Bound, for sure. For one thing, the setting allows for Glass and co-writer Weronika Tofilska to make some cultural commentary. There’s a solid background of violence always hovering about, and Lou Sr.’s club/shooting range is always packed with people eagerly exercising their Second Amendment rights, evoking specters of the wild west. There’s also the gym rat culture: intimidating motivational slogans and steroid use, which is a major plot point in the story.
The weird elements aren’t exactly subtle, but they are startling and metaphorical: a massive ravine in the landscape that reads as rather vaginal and several instances of ‘roid rage. At the bodybuidling competition, Jackie vomits up a full-grown Lou. The climatic confrontation between Jackie, Lou, and Lou Sr. has been called “the most A24 ending of A24 endings.” It works well, as long as it’s not taken literally, and it doesn’t detract from the denouement, which isn’t afraid to put the worm in the apple, as noir endings go. It may not be “weird” in the full sense, but there’s enough weird to notice in this hot, queer neo-noir.
Currently streaming on several platforms like Max, Hulu, and Sling, the film is also on a Region-free Blu-ray with a commentary by Glass and Tofilska, two featurettes—“In the Land of Guns and Muscles” and “Sex, Steroids and Codependency”—and an image gallery. A 4K UHD will be available in January 2025.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
- Blu-ray Movies, Blu-ray TV Shows
CAPSULE: PSYCHOSIS (2023)
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Psychosis is currently available fro rental or purchase on-demand.
DIRECTED BY: Pirie Martin
FEATURING: Derryn Amoroso, Kate Holly Hall, James McCluskey-Garcia, Pj van Gyen, voice of Lindsay Dunn
PLOT: Van Aarle, a criminal “fixer” who hears voices (but is not otherwise obviously schizophrenic) reluctantly takes a case involving drug dealers, zombie-like assailants, a vigilante, and a master hypnotist drug kingpin with a connection to his own past.
COMMENTS: “They said you’d be weird,” observes a dim-witted pusher after Van Aarle explains how his paracusia (auditory hallucinations) give him a “unique perspective” that helps him to tap into “unknowing awareness.” We, the audience, directly experience that auditory condition—sometimes as a murky choir of overlapping advisors who sound quite a bit like those YouTube videos that try to put you inside the head of a schizophrenic, and sometimes in the form of an omniscient narrator, whose commentary may or may not be audible to Van Aarle. The voices are sometimes helpful to our fixer, alerting him to the presence of hidden enemies or whispering clues, but just as often they’re warning that everyone is going to die, or simply reminding him to keep up his psychotic coffee regimen (Van Aarle apparently does not sleep while on a case). Although Derryn Amoroso looks more like Serge Gainsbourg than a matinee idol, Van Aarle is in the lineage of hard-bitten, haunted, and cynical-yet-decent private investigators: the great-grandson of Mike Hammer or Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade, with an Australian accent. The official narrator, a chatty sort who fills in quiet spaces and is sometimes almost comically redundant (“in the distance, he sees something”), adds another film noir note to a movie already flavored with dashes of action, horror, psychological thriller, and science fiction.
Stylistically, you will immediately notice that Psychosis is (95+%) black and white, and with a boxy 1:1 aspect ratio, the narrowest I’ve ever seen in a feature film. You actually get used to it fairly quickly, but along with odd camera angles and other tricks (one scene is shot upside-down) it puts your mind in an odd space. Unusually for a film of this budget, there are a lot of action scenes, and director Martin compensates for a lack of ace action choreographers and athletic stunt doubles by shooting scenes in disjointed styles: schizophrenic editing, strobe lights, woozy double-vision cam for an under-the-influence melee, the upside-down sequence previously mentioned. The fights aren’t as involving as the movie’s concepts, but their ingenuity allows for a richer and more exciting cinematic experience.
Obviously, there is a lot going on in Psychosis—-we haven’t even gotten into the hypnotically-induced hallucinations, or the Batman-like LoneWolf character prowling about. While there is some “is he hallucinating or not?” ambiguity—heck, the title suggests as much—Psychosis doesn’t lean into that motif, but treats its world as if it were a genuine alternate reality, one where advanced mesmerists have almost magical mind-control powers. This means the struggles of Van Aarle (and LoneWolf) have real stakes—that punch to the gut hurts, that knife slashing at him is no metaphor, and the villain may really kill our hero, or drive him insane. A few scenes drag, and not every stylistic embellishment feels utterly necessary, but overall Psychosis is an insanely ambitious debut film that nails the madness of a man whose mind is in the process of being shattered.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
CAPSULE: JOBE’Z WORLD (2018)
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DIRECTED BY: Michael M. Bilandic
FEATURING: Jason Grisell, Theodore Bouloukos
PLOT: A rollerblading courier is given the task of delivering a bespoke drug to his favorite actor, and his tenuous grip on survival is violently wrenched when the thespian overdoses.
COMMENTS: You’re clearly in a bad spot when staring down a three-barreled bazooka wielded by a PTSD-stricken drug user, particularly when he blames you for the death of his all-time favorite actor. But either through mellow disposition—or mind-numbing desperation—Jobe takes this turn of events in reluctant stride. His evenings all kind of suck anyway, having landed a career of sorts as a drug courier, rollerblading his way around downtown New York City, supplying various oddballs with their various fixes.
Jobe’z World unfolds with a grim breeziness, beginning with a foray in the further-flung cosmos as the protagonist regrets existing in the one tiny pocket of the universe where anyone cares. He’s a chill guy, or wishes he could be. And his journey through a momentous NYC night is lit with shadows, through a camera which overlays a plastic, off-colored palette. Writer-director Michael Bilandic creates a world slightly unmoored from time, and sets his protagonist on a gauntlet through minor terrors and once-removed personal tragedy.
The MacGuffin here is a fading actor in the tradition of Orson Welles, who would have been considered a relic thirty years prior. For drug users and washed-up celebrities, perhaps time becomes meaningless (the actor greets Jobe with the line, “What’s your name? You know, like that Depeche Mode Song”—managing to make a dated, obscure reference out of a dated, obvious one); and for Jobe, a drug dealer, time shrinks and stretches, always in the opposite direction he would like.
This is a small-gauge film, with small tragedies, small perils, and almost a hiccup of a conclusion. By the end of Jobe’s trial-by-night—New York style—his lingering earnestness is lathed away. While this might be viewed as unfortunate, it is, at least, easier. Around halfway through we learn that Jobe peaked some twenty years prior, having burnt his chances at professional rollerblading. Like the actor he’s blamed for killing, he is better off fading into the hazy background alongside the motley burnouts to whom he delivers drugs.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![Jobe'z World [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51xbEs0VuQL._SL500_.jpg)
- Region Free Blu-Ray