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366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: AFAR (2025)

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“Cinema’s death date was 31 September 1983, when the remote-control zapper was introduced to the living room, because now cinema has to be interactive, multi-media art.”— Peter Greenaway, 2007

DIRECTED BY: Jason Trost

FEATURING: Jason Trost, voice of

PLOT: A private detective is tasked with finding a contestant from a doomed reality gameshow in the heart of the Australian wilderness.

Still from Afar (2025)

COMMENTS: A strange saturation fills the spectrum, bringing unearthly hues and twitches in the transmission—and I’m not just talking about Aurora Australis. (Those are the Southern “Northern Lights”, if you will; I know this, and you know this, and so does depressed-and-intrepid private detective, Brian Everett.) Jason Trost is a product of his times, and like so many of his (and my) generation, he has a strange nostalgia for the objectively inferior media formats of days of yore. Videotape can radiate the warmth of bygone familiarity, even while harnessed to augment creepiness.

And there’s creepiness, mystery, and tracking-issues aplenty in Afar, a film which takes multiple viewings to get a full grip on, because Trost has cut the story up into different kinds of journeys, selectable on-screen by the viewer. Do you want Brian to Run or Help? (One of those may kill him.) Do you want him to investigate the River Bed, or the Mysterious Ruins? (One of those will kill him, while the other only might…). And so on. Every few minutes or so, you will be presented with a choice to be made. There’s no “saving” your progress, but the director is good enough to allow a re-think on occasion after a jagged font informs you that Brian has snuffed it thanks to your poor decision.

Having made it this far into the review, I presume you wish to continue. Afar is a neat little movie, and I say that in no way to sound dismissive. Jason Trost has, once again, crafted something new and nostalgic on his own terms, staying true to a guiding ambition, and the result is both intriguing and entertaining. Presuming you enjoy Trost’s screen presence (which is something of a must, as he’s in the frame perhaps nine tenths of the time, as a cross between Tex Murphy and Henry Jones, Jr.), you’ll have a fine time digging around the various clues, back-stories, and pathways tucked within his interactive horror film. And while I enjoyed Afar on its own merits, I am hopeful that it will eventually stand as more of a “proof of concept.” I’d be most pleased to experience a grander, deeper, and more labyrinthine narrative interaction, even if it results in many more “You are dead” cut-screens.

The film is available to download on Steam (that’s a first), or to buy on DVD from Kunaki, There’s also a tie-in choose-your-own-horror paperback.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Afar appears to have been aiming more towards the trashy thrills of shot-on-VHS shlock than any serious kind of scares, and it still manages to nail the eerie survival horror vibe that really makes this kind of adventure worth experiencing.”–Luis H.C., Bloody Disgusting (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: PHANTASMATAPES (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Annie Choi, Joseph A. Ziemba, Norman Earl Thompson (The Revenge of Dr. X), (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die)

FEATURING: James Craig, Tota Kondo (Revenge of Dr. X); , (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die)

PLOT: A double-feature of The Revenge of Dr. X and The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, presented as if it was taped off of a local TV broadcast complete with VHS tracking errors, amateur commercials, and more surprises.

Still from Phantasmatapes (2025)

COMMENTS: OK, so TV stations used to broadcast cheapo horror films late at night (especially weekend nights), interrupted by badly acted commercials for local pizza parlors, shoe stores, and video rental joints. If you never experienced this phenomenon—or if, for some sick reason, you want to relive this insomniac entertainment—the retro-weirdos at Bleeding Skull have come to your rescue.

Thankfully, they don’t recreate the experience faithfully, but instead imagine the broadcast as it might have appeared if you were dead tired and fading in and out of consciousness, or if you had the flu and had taken a greater than recommended dose of Nyquil before tuning in. First off, the movies are heavily edited, to fit into a brisk 72 minute total runtime, including commercials, station IDs, and a few other intrusive surprises I won’t spoil. The ruthless edits are not a problem with the -scripted Dr. X, an extremely dull and padded Frankenstein variation about a NASA scientist who decides to spend his vacation in Japan engineering a giant, mobile Venus flytrap. In fact, this crap still drags a little when cut down to about 30 minutes. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die moves much faster, and is still relatively coherent in the edited form, but they unfortunately cut out one of the WTF-iest moments (the catfight scene). The nearly-coherent editing exaggerates the surreal elements of the originals, while jettisoning a lot of blah filler. (Watching Dr. X unedited is recommended to cinema masochists only.)

Secondly, the two movies are not only edited, but manipulated. First off, synthy new 80s vintage soundtracks have been added— a pipe organ patch with a Casio keyboard beat underneath, that kind of thing. The digital doodling is more profound in the colorful Dr. X. Tracking errors and faded color are kept (and new ones are added), along with overlaid images: sometimes from other scenes from the original film, and sometimes from outside sources, so that suns and galaxies and landscapes and abstract dust storms occasionally play over the duller imagery. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is less altered than Dr. X—it plays straight for most of the time—but there are a few fun stylizations. One motif is that, in the more delirious second half, the mad doctor’s assistant is always shown in a different “film stock,” which looks like they played a battered VHS tape on a particularly staticky cathode tube TV set, filmed it with a cheap camcorder, and re-edited the new footage into the movie. Another cool idea is that when Jan’s severed head is monologizing, the “camera” does a slow zoom to focus directly on her mouth. Along with the soundtrack, these experiments supply the new reimagined content. I only wish they had pushed things even further. (The trailer is actually a little misleading, implying more video manipulation than actually shows up in the finished product.) The concept of using public domain B-movies as canvases for -type experiments is a thrilling one, and that potential is barely scratched here. Hopefully they will push the conceit further with the promised “Phantasmatapes 2.”

The Blu-ray includes uncut versions of both features, in VHS full-frame scans complete with lousy sound and picture quality. The Blu-ray wraps the whole package up with a commentary track from Choi and Ziemba and three nostalgia-themed shorts: a mini-documentary on the “Max Headroom” pirate signal broadcast from 1987, a supercut of “Casper the Friendly Ghost” scares, and another mini-doc on the early 80s moral panic around the Dungeons and Dragons game. All in all, this compilation will resonate strongly with a certain demographic—you probably have already decided if you’re in it—and is at least worthy of a gander for others.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

No other critics’ reviews located.

Phantasma Tapes: Volume One [Blu-ray]

Phantasma Tapes: Volume One [Blu-ray]
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