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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: I LOVE BOOSTERS (2026)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Keke Palmer, , Naomi Ackie, , , , Will Poulter,

PLOT: A gang of shoplifters develop a vendetta against an arrogant billionaire fashion designer and determine to ruin her.

Still from i love boosters (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: For his sophomore feature, Boots Riley takes everything that worked in Sorry to Bother You—absurdist comedy that builds until it approaches surrealism, Oakland grit, an insane third act sci-fi twist, and casually shoehorned-in communist propaganda—and piles it on even thicker. It’s arguable that he piles it so high that the story totters by the climax, but then again, that’s not exactly a disqualifier for a weird movie.

COMMENTS: Fashion—which, as Oscar Wilde quipped, is a form of ugliness so intolerable that it must be altered every six months—is an easy subject for satire. Boots Riley uses haute couture as an entry point to criticize the wider world of capitalism, though he doesn’t skimp on the cheap jokes afforded by crazy attention-getting getups and pretentious gits who value high thread counts more than high IQs. The three (later four) members of the shoplifting consortium known as “the Velvet Gang” are just scraping by financially; Corvette squats in an abandoned chicken shack, and frequently sees herself chased by a giant ball formed from bills and eviction notices. Their crimes aren’t excused so much as minimized compared to the legally-enabled theft practiced by the fashion industry. You root for them like you would for any outsiders fighting against the Man (or, in this case, the Woman).

Everyone in the expansive cast pulls their weight, with Demi Moore’s megalomaniacal fashionista and Will Poulter’s aggressively shallow middle-manager emerging as standouts. But best of all is Lakeith Stanfield, a dreamboat male model who isn’t even given a name in the movie. He’s a left-field oddball in a cast that includes skinwalkers, moguls who work in slanted skyscrapers, and pyramid-scheme cult leaders, and he’s so sexy that whenever the camera tries to focus on him it visibly starts to swoon.

Boots has a message, but he wraps it in laughter and awe. When Eiza González gives a lecture on dialectical materialism in the middle of the movie, it’s integrated into the film’s comic fabric so that it doesn’t seems out-of-place or preachy. You don’t have to buy into the ideology to enjoy the unfolding madness, but Boots wouldn’t be Boots if he didn’t take time out to testify. And just give costume designer  Shirley Kurata her Oscar right now; from Poulter’s color-matched hair and glasses to the swollen with booty shoplifting sweats to outrageous outfits that André 3000 would pass on for being “too much,” she matches Boots’ mania for satire and spectacle. It’s entirely fair to argue that the plot completely loses its bearings by the time the climax at Christie Smith’s eyeball-themed runway gala arrives—some of the details of the capacities of the technology at the center of the plot are so rushed through so that you’re not sure what it’s capable of, and it even gets hard to figure out where the characters are in relation to each other during a chase scene—but that’s a small price to pay to enjoy this explosion of creative spleen. I Love Boosters goes over the top early on, then just keeps soaring higher.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Sometimes, you have to let the weirdos do their thing and we should always let Boots Riley do whatever he wants… It is weird, out there, and you may want to suddenly dress in monochrome outfits for the foreseeable future, but there is so much more to I Love Boosters outrageousness.”–Rachel Leishman, The Mary Sue (festival screening)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HELTER SKELTER (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Mika Ninagawa

FEATURING: Erika Sawajiri, , , Kiko Mizuhara, Nao Ômori

PLOT:  The struggle to keep up appearances and growing pressure from younger models pushes supermodel Lilico’s physical and mental well-being to the breaking point.

Still from Helter Skelter (2012)

COMMENTS: A helter skelter is a slide. A lighthouse-shaped structure that you climb up through the inside to then slide down on a curving ramp nailed to the outside. The Beatles’ song of the same name gives it away in its opening lyric: “When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide.” Regardless of what Charles Manson thought it meant, it’s supposed to be about something that’s fun for a brief moment, but it’s also a reminder that everything that goes up must eventually come back down, and sometimes right quickly at that.

If the higher you go means the faster you fall, then Lilico is about to come crashing down at light speed. She is living her peak life: impossibly beautiful, her face graces countless magazine covers and advertisements. She’s about to branch out into film acting, and every girl in Japan knows her by name. So when she spots a sizeable flaw in her perfect skin, it’s a literal crack in her facade, the augur of an explosive downfall. Helter Skelter is all about that implosion, the slow-motion train wreck of her discovery that perfect beauty has always had an expiration date, and that page on the calendar has finally turned.

It’s hard to work up a lot of pity for someone who is rich, famous, and ridiculously attractive, but Helter Skelter does a solid job in showing how Lilico’s life of luxury is not especially enjoyable. She is monstrous but also desperate, and how her misery expresses itself is the primary source of Helter Skelter’s weirdness. She takes out her rage on her doggedly loyal assistant Hana through sexual abuse and humiliation, and starts to have out-of-control hallucinations at inconvenient moments. The fact that she is being tracked by a pair of detectives who resemble the cast of a Japanese reboot of “The X-Files” is appropriate, because Lilico herself is otherworldly. These moments of panic and cruelty are so outlandish, so extreme, that the biggest surprise is that we are expected to view them realistically. Perhaps tales like The Substance have trained us to expect a supernatural element, but Helter Skelter offers no twist. The film straightforwardly insists that Lilico’s beauty has a scientific (if illegal and amoral) explanation, and that her behavior is all her own. The arrival of her very own Eve Harrington, the naturally stunning Kozue, who achieves success despite expressing apathy toward the  fashion business, reinforces that point. Kozue doesn’t expect to be beautiful forever, and while she knows some regurgitation goes with the job, she plans to give it up someday. By contrast, considering everything Lilico has done to secure her position, her fear of decline and the collapse of her enhanced body utterly short-circuit her.

Japanese culture is both fascinated and repelled by celebrity, and Helter Skelter enlists exactly the right people to delve into its darker side. Director Ninagawa was a fashion photographer herself, and she films with the barely controlled energy of a wild photo shoot. Sawajiri also knows the world, having been a successful model before turning to acting. (She gained notoriety for a press conference where she was viewed as disrespectful to reporters and her castmates alike, so audiences in Japan would experience art imitating life in Lilico’s ultimate, disastrous encounter with the media.) Their bona fides are beyond reproach, and there’s no question that the team produces a motion picture with a unique sensibility, bringing their personal experience to the story. The thing is, while Helter Skelter is a beautifully crafted film, a certain sameness creeps in as the story seems to be building toward something cataclysmic, but never quite gets there. Lilico’s fate is inevitable—it is painfully obvious that she is going to crash—but given the many omens of doom and the explosive nature of Ninagawa’s camera and Sawajiri’s volcanic performance, the impact ultimately feels blunted. Lilico’s fate can’t quite live up to the drama of what precedes it.

Helter Skelter is based on a popular manga by Kyoko Okazaki, and it feels like it. It jumps storylines and techniques like a page turning, and the bold and vibrant colors and off-kilter angles feel like they could have jumped straight out of the pages of a comic book. The film’s most striking image, when Lilico faces a room full of popping camera flashes, has the veneer of illustration. But like fashion itself, the movie is successful at delivering style and attitude but quickly moves on to the next new thing without imparting a message beyond the surface. It’s a fun, fast ride, but it’s just a ride. Then I get to the bottom and I see you again.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a feverish character study about fame, vanity, and the terrifying fragility of manufactured perfection… The visuals never settle into a comfortable place. Scenes are filled with exaggerated color palettes and surreal staging, making the environment feel beautiful and suffocating. It’s a world built entirely around image, and Ninagawa constantly reminds the audience how artificial that image really is.” – Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews

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

Helter Skelter

Helter Skelter

  • This lurid body horror, based on a manga by Kyoko Okazaki and directed by Mika Ninagawa (Sakuran), is a candy-colored nightmare!

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Apocryphally Weird

55*. IN FABRIC (2018)

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“The idea came from shopping really, specifically at second hand stores. You’re immediately aware of death. There is a haunting there; you can find stains on clothing, sometimes you can smell the areas of outfits. It’s a weird thing because you’ll never really know what that person looked like. It activates the imagination and it lent into things I wanted to explore through these visceral reactions whether it be body dysmorphia or fetishism.”–Peter Strickland

“Nothing attracts attention like a little red dress.”–Laura Bush

DIRECTED BY: Peter Strickland

FEATURING: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Fatma Mohamed, Leo Bill, Hayley Squires, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Richard Bremmer, Jaygann Ayeh, Gwendoline Christie

Still from In fabric (2018)

PLOT: Sheila, a divorced bank teller, gets ready for her first newly single dating experience by visiting the local department store and splurging on a red dress; a series of unusual, life-threatening occurrences ensue, all seemingly related to the dress. While attempting to return the outfit to the store, she learns that the model who wore the dress for a promotional catalogue was later killed in a traffic accident. Later, the frock finds its way to meek appliance repairman Reg and then his assertive fiancée Babs, both of whom have strange encounters with a mysterious sales clerk and a pair of inappropriately nosy bank managers.

BACKGROUND:

  • In Fabric was Strickland’s fourth narrative feature. We have previously reviewed two of those, The Duke of Burgundy and Berberian Sound Studio, as well as the follow-up, Flux Gourmet. Mohamed has appeared in all of his movies.
  • An early draft of the script featured six people receiving the fateful dress and facing the consequences. Strickland realized this would require a six-hour film to give each character their due. In order to secure studio support, he trimmed the screenplay accordingly.
  • The setting of Thames-Valley-upon-Thames is modeled after Strickland’s hometown of Reading. The fictional Dentley and Soper’s department store was inspired by Jacksons, a Reading retail mainstay for more than 130 years until it closed in 2013.
  • Winner of the 2019 Méliès d’Or, awarded for outstanding achievement in European science fiction, fantasy, and horror films.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Strickland successfully dodges the silliness factor associated with trying to showcase a demon-possessed piece of clothing. As it flutters in the rafters, creeps under doors, and swirls about in erotic delight, the dress reads as dramatic rather than laughable. But when it comes to outrageousness, the garment takes a back seat to the craziness going on at the store that sold it. After the doors close for the evening, the saleswomen begin the delicate process of bringing the mannequins to the back of the house, removing the clothes, and gently bathing the dummies with sponges and tongues. The intensity ramps up as the fake human is revealed to have a very realistic pubic mound, and eventually it begins to menstruate. It’s a sight that moves the proprietor to indulge in full self-gratification. One does wonder what goes on in the store’s sporting goods department.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Prepping the mannequin; the erotic power of washing machine maintenance

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: We are always up for a movie about a homicidal haunted object. A haunted house, a haunted bed, even a haunted tire have all earned a spot in our august halls. (Haunted bulldozers and motorcycles, not so much.) So a haunted dress is totally welcome to join the party, but it has to bring something extra. In Fabric delivers two such elements. One is the bizarrely creepy department store that is a portal to hell, watching over its customers with an attitude that is both patronizing and carnivorous. The other is an earnest sympathy toward its characters, neither of whom have class  privilege or easy socialization, and who turn to retail to give them a lift. In Fabric knows that these are decent folks looking for a break, and turns their exploitation by retail and advertising into a horror show.

Original trailer for In Fabric

COMMENTS: Sheila could use a win. Her ex-husband has taken up Continue reading 55*. IN FABRIC (2018) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

346. LIQUID SKY (1982)

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” I’ll tell you something, too, that’s starting to annoy me about UFOs: the fact that they cross galaxies or universes to visit us, and always end up in places like … Alabama. Maybe these aren’t super-intelligent beings, you know what I mean? ‘Don’t you wanna go to New York or LA?’ ‘Nah, we just had a long trip, we’re gonna kick back and whittle some.'”–Bill Hicks

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anne Carlisle, Otto von Wernherr, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas, Bob Brady

PLOT: A tiny alien flying saucer lands on top of the Empire State Building, directly across from the penthouse where drug-scarfing New Wave fashion model Margaret spends her nights bedding partners of both sexes. A German UFO scientist who has tracked this manifestation takes up residence in an apartment across from Margaret, spying on her through a telescope. Margaret’s sex partners begin to die off as the aliens harvest the endorphins released during their orgasms.

Still from Liquid Sky (1982)

BACKGROUND:

  • Slava Tsukerman was a Russian Jew who trained as an engineer before switching to filmmaking. He made a mostly documentaries in the Soviet Union and Israel before emigrating to the U.S. to make features. He began developing Liquid Sky after funding for a sci-fi film that would have starred and fell through.
  • Co-writer Anne Carlisle, who starts as a fashion model in the film, was a fashion model in real life. Most of the actors were art-scene punks drawn from bohemian casting director Bob Brady’s acting classes, and most played some version of themselves.
  • Many repeat the claim that Liquid Sky was chosen as the title of the film because it was slang for heroin, but according to Tsukerman he encountered the term as a metaphor for euphoria in his research, and junkies only began to refer to the drug as “liquid sky” after the movie became a cult hit.
  • Made with an estimated budget of half a million dollars, Liquid Sky grossed more than $1.7 million in 1983.
  • In a 2014 interview Tsukerman announced his intentions to make Liquid Sky 2, but no news has emerged on that front since.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: New Wave fashion shows? Neon sculptures? Flying saucers hovering in front of the Empire State Building? Margaret’s fluorescent face paint under a blacklight? All excellent choices. But we had to go with alien-eye-vision, rendered through technology that looks like a cross between malfunctioning army ranger night-vision goggles and News at 11’s stormtracker radarscope, but with a Day-Glo color scheme, and often looking like it’s peering through a microscope aimed at a dividing zygote.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: UFO/heroin connection; spontaneous hateful beat eulogy; prayer to the Empire State Building

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Liquid Sky is like an alien’s attempt at making a film set in the No-Wave Greenwich Village art scene in 1982, if their only previous exposure to movies was the works of , , and Rinse Dream. Neon, nasty, and occasionally tedious, but there’s nothing else quite like it.


Original trailer for Liquid Sky

COMMENTS: Liquid Sky is about aliens, and it might as well have Continue reading 346. LIQUID SKY (1982) →