Tag Archives: Low budget

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE GREEN ELEPHANT (1999)

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Beware

DIRECTED BY: Svetlana Baskova

FEATURING: Sergey Pakhomov, Vladimir Epifantsev, Aleksandr Maslaev

PLOT: Two ex-military officers are thrown into a prison cell.

Still from The Green Elephant (1999)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Not only does it contain extreme grotesqueries, but it is in essence a comedy of the absurd, and a highly disturbing one.

COMMENTS: Let’s start with a bit of context. A “parallel cinema” emerged In the late Soviet Union of the 80s 1. Within this cinematic landscape an even smaller underground movement was formed, known as necrorealism. With a name parodying the dominant social realism of its country, this alternative cinema showcased decomposition as a metaphor for social decay. Yevgeny Yufit is considered its main representative. Necrorealism’s aesthetic legacy continued into succeeding years through the works of two deeply subversive auteurs: Svetlana Bascova and Oleg Mavromatti2.This work is pivotal for a comprehensive understanding of their style, as Bascova and Mavromati’s  worldviews and creative talent merge: Svetlana directs and Oleg produces. Let’s examine the monster they have created.

The plot revolves around two unnamed ex-military officers thrown into prison for indeterminate reasons. The first act observes them in their claustrophobic cell, as the more loquacious annoys the other with his constant blabber. The stories become increasingly disgusting, hinting at what it may come.

Their prison reveals itself as a hellscape where bodily fluids, excrement, and secretions subvert our characters’ dignity until their total mental and physical annihilation. The deteriorating walls of their cell, the broken pipes, and a dirty toilet bowl mirror their decline. the depravities begin, as in a comedy of the absurd, without a clear reason. The first forty minutes aren’t disturbing in terms of graphic content (yet), but scenes of coprophilia and coprophagia will trigger more than a few gag reflexes.

The second act leaves the dirty cell behind for a similarly dimly- lit room with a sewer-like open trapdoor in the middle. The supervisors bring in the trapdoor to humiliate the prisoners even further. But nobody is really in control here. The dynamic shifts unexpectedly, chaos ensues (violence, gore, rape, necrophilia) and everyone is exposed as equally doomed as this tragic fable comes to its conclusion. If the first half disgusts, the second half is dizzying. This is visceral cinema at its wildest.

This movie doesn’t just attack our senses; it also to deconstructs ideals regarding the military complex and the people that service it. it becomes clear later on that we are in the Soviet Union of the 80s, a few years before its collapse. However, even if the sociopoitical background is specific, the commentary extends to a wider critique against militarism.

From a technical standpoint, this work is amateurish, albeit expressive. The snuff film quality of the shots, along with realistic—for the most part—special effects are discomforting. The extensive use of enclosed spaces creates a certain theatricality.

Of course, despite its political undertones, this movie is not for everyone. If you are a fan of extreme cinema, though, able to stomach ‘s cinema of sepsis, then perhaps it is for you. This bizarre movie has become a cult phenomenon in Russia, inspiring a talk of a sequel, a video game adaptation, and memes. Perhaps it speaks to the Russian psyche.

  1. You can learn more about parallel cinema and necrorealism through the informative essay by Eugene Vasiliev on this site. ↩︎
  2. Mavromatti directs weird movies till today by the way, having  released a hilarious series of vlog-spoofs (in Russian, of course) throughout the last decade. ↩︎
List Candidates

FANTASIA 2026: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DANCE FREAK (2025)

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RecommendedWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Robby Rackleff, Alan Resnick

FEATURING: Robby Rackleff, Megan Koester, Sheila Mears, Jamel Johnson

PLOT: Obie’s crummy life becomes dangerous when a mysterious freak appears in town to murder those caught up in his hypnotic moves.

Still from Dance Freak (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: I’ll pitch this as “The Residents Present: Guy Maddin‘s Jekyll & Hide“, to give you an approximate idea what to expect.

COMMENTS: There are few sacks sadder than Obie. He is timid, depressed, seems to own only one sweatshirt, and cannot build a bird house to save his life, no matter how much coaching—both practical and existential—his teacher provides. To add to his woes, his go-getter girlfriend, Dorty, a young woman with a big heart, a big club, and mayoral aspirations, dumps him. And now, enter the Dance Freak: a humanoid entity whose motion and rhythm crushes the heads of anyone who dares gaze upon its wondrous moves.

Dance Freak is a masterful example of the possibilities encountered when creativity slams into the wall of zero resources. Obie’s town is a ghost town, populated by quietly angry people (or, in the case of the Salad Gang, loudly angry). Obviously animated birds attack and peck at the protagonist, and mist permeates the peripheries. Special effects crumble and melt into themselves and into each other, reflecting not only Obie’s fractured mind but also the “just add another layer” attitude that runs throughout the production. The Dance Freak itself is nothing more than co-director, co-screenwriter Robby Rackleff (who, incidentally, was wearing the Dance Freak’s khaki slacks on the film’s opening day); if you’re looking for something below Z-grade for your monster, you can’t do better than have one of the filmmakers just jamming his unchoreographed body onscreen to the unheard strains of a famous piece of pop film music.

The one professional actor (the directors words) is Sheila Mears, playing Dr. Dilly Gorgul. She earns her fee and then some as an evil scientist who exemplifies the excitement that draws someone to expanding knowledge in the first place: science is cool, especially mad science. Her giddiness is a refreshing novelty amidst the trip-wire tempers and hyper-caffeinated visuals. Most importantly, she still fits in with the milieu as a slightly plus-person alongside all the other heightened townsfolk, from father-issues Detective Gittit to Megaman, Obie’s manager who suffered from a filthy childhood that interfered with his one true love of drinking clear water fresh from the tap.

Rackleff and Resnick thread a tricky needle in this microbudget bit of madness: for the story of Dance Freak, there needs to be hyperbolic imagery and acting, but also enough relatability to keep the viewer invested. For the look of Dance Freak, there needs to be consistent “otherness” that doesn’t break the bank. And while not every movie needs to have a moral, Dance Freak opts for one, taking on itself the further task of showcasing the three possible paths we face when our life is in a rut: keep digging in, break something, or build something. We would do well to remember that there is a potential Dance Freak in all of us; will we dance for destruction—or creation?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“100 minutes of pure irreverent nonsense in a gorgeous visual package that utilizes what appears to be old-school compositing, direct animation, and trippy transitions to augment some gnarly distortions, repurposed glue guns, and an out-of-body skin suit that’s as much a prison as it is a home… Would I watch it again? No. Should you watch it once? As long as you’re prepared to wonder whether you’ve had a stroke.”–Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage (Fantasia screening)

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CAPSULE: CITY WIDE FEVER (2026)

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DIRECTED BY: Josh Heaps

FEATURING: Diletta Giuglielmi, Nancy Kimball, Hugo Alexander-Rose, Angelica Kim

PLOT: A film student discovers evidence of a forgotten Italian director and, in the course of making a documentary about him, gradually loses touch with reality.

Still from City Wide Fever (2026)

 

COMMENTS: Initial reports on City Wide Fever described it variously as a , a giallo tribute, and definitely not a giallo nor a tribute. The film’s strange tone must account for this confusion. IMDB classifies it as a horror comedy; though if there’s humor here, I suspect I’m not interpreting it as the director intended. The script attempts to walk the line between genuinely engaging with giallo tropes and simultaneously condemning them for offending contemporary sensibilities. Whether City Wide Fever is a send-up of the giallo resurgence or an honest homage (or both), it liberally takes from the genre its trademark ambiguity, stylization, and mood.

While wandering around New York City, Sam happens upon a USB drive in a gutter. She takes it home and finds a trove of files relating to Saturnino Barresi, who just happens to have directed a slew of giallo films, one of her favorite genres. Barresi apparently went missing, or stopped making films, under mysterious circumstances in the 1970s. His final film, City Wide Fever, was never completed. Though she’s never heard of him before, nor actually seen any of his movies, Sam decides to track him down and make a documentary about her search (a very film student thing to do, as the movie self-reflexively acknowledges).

Her quest takes her to the home of a creepy film professor, a creepy Times Square porn shop (where appears in a brief cameo), and a creepy Gowanus warehouse filled with mannequins (what else?), until she reaches the creepy house of a former giallo actress, before it all culminates in—her mother’s uptown apartment (?). Along the way, a masked knife-wielding killer (who else?) shows up to off Sam’s contacts and friends. Or is she just having nightmares, having succumbed to “the fever”?

The killer wears a variety of masks, many of them knit ski masks in bright colors, similar to Pussy Riot, also recalling masked serial killers from classic horror films. Red and blue lighting appears whenever Sam’s delusions and reality merge or fracture. Despite this, City Wide Fever never gets really weird. Even though Sam may be hallucinating some of the events depicted, they never stray too far from typical giallo violence, and only a few frames are outright surreal.

Perhaps it’s weirdest feature is the portrayal of Sam by two different actors, for reasons that remain unclear; this conceit could use the aid of more character development. All we know about Sam is her obsession with giallo. So, is she an American who imagines herself as Italian due to her fixation? Is she an Italian who imagines herself in the role of the amateur investigator, who is often a foreigner in Italian films? Or is this simply emblematic of the lack of narrative logic that’s repeatedly emphasized as a defining characteristic of these films (or maybe a nod to )?

Obviously limited by a low budget, the scenes shot with a cell phone actually look higher quality than the rest, which is shot on video. The documentary aspect of the narrative makes the visuals somewhat excusable. It looks exactly like the type of student film it purports to be.

Similar films from earlier in the century, like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears and Berberian Sound Studio, interrogated giallo’s complexities through sophisticated dissections of imagery and sound. For those interested in a very 2020s take on the giallo, City Wide Fever may do the trick, though it really can’t compare to those earlier films. As other reviewers have noted, ‘s producer credit seems to be more an endorsement of Heaps’ directorial potential than anything else. Here’s hoping Heaps gets thrown more money for his next picture, and keeps heading off the beaten path.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a real oddity. On the surface, it’s a small DIY thriller that looks shot on the cheap, which already narrows down its appeal. But if you get on its wavelength over the course of its very brief 70 minutes (sans credits), you might even start to feel a small twinge of nostalgia. . . this movie tries to go for a surreal, artsy vibe that makes the protagonist question her own reality, though the attempt is hampered by a limited budget. “–Ernesto Zelaya Miñano, Screen Anarchy (contemporaneous)

City Wide Fever [Blu-ray]

City Wide Fever [Blu-ray]

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Capsules

CAPSULE: MOEBIUS (2013)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Cho Jae-Hyun, Seo Yeong-ju, Lee Na-ra

PLOT: The wife of an adulterous husband takes revenge on their son.

Still from Moebius (2013)

COMMENTS: Families are dysfunctional in Asian Extreme Cinema. A typical example is‘s infamous Visitor Q (2001). There are even more transgressive movies to be found, however, like Moebius perhaps the most disturbing piece in Ki-duk Kim’s   provocative filmography. Here, the South Korean auteur further develops his pessimist worldview on human relationships and family dynamics. Let’s dare to take a closer look.

The story is divided into three acts. The plot revolves around an archetypal family including the Mother, the  Father and the Son. When the Mother can’t stand the Father’s extramarital affair—with a woman played by the same actress—anymore, she takes revenge on their Son, castrating him. The events following this criminal act play out like a symbolic Freudian coming-of-age tale, showcasing the Son’s attempts to cope and the Father’s guilt and attempts to help.

Kid-duk nods to Euripides’ “Medea” from the beginning: Mother uses her child to punish the husband. This is only the beginning, however, not the climax. The events of this perverted family saga and boyhood tale include gang rape, kinky sex, masturbation with rocks and knives, and even a bit of incest. Despite the surrounding chaos there are touching moments of tenderness to be found in the way the altruistic Father tries to support his Son. But the tragic finale cannot be avoided.

Buddhist spirituality is portrayed as a means to redemption. In Ki-Duk’s masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and… Spring (2003) an old monk dictates that lust is sinful because it brings jealousy and therefore crime, while a monk’s lifestyle brings comfort. Moebius further develops that thesis through a darker parable, and can be viewed as an origin story of sorts for a monk with similar convictions.

This is Kim Ki- Duk’s boldest piece not only because of the grotuesqueries he presents, but also because of the way he directs the actors. There isn’t a line of dialogue in the whole film. Characters communicate physically, through violent or sexual acts, grunts of pain and pleasure—or both simultaneously—and tremors. They become wild animals and in the most intense moments. When the three characters confront each other, their positions recall sculpturess from the Hellenistic Period, like the famous Laocoön Group.

All in all, this is a difficult film to recommend because of its graphic scenes and heavy subject matter. It is essential, however, for Kim Ki -Duk completionists, and perhaps the work from his late period that stands out the most.  Moreover, it will appeal to fans of film parables that aren’t afraid to confront the darker corners of the human psyche and sexuality, in the vein of ‘s Antichrist (2009).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: 

“Moebius is almost weird enough to be a creation myth, and that’s no small accomplishment.”–Sherilyn Connelly, The Village Voice (contemporaneous)

Moebius

Moebius

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CAPSULE: TOUCH ME (2025)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Jordan Gavaris, , Marlene Forte

PLOT: 27-year old underachiever Joey and her troubled trust-fund baby pal Craig spend time at the retreat of an alien, becoming addicted to the heroin-like touch of his tentacles.

Still from Touch Me (2025)

COMMENTS: I don’t think Gen-Z’ers are really afraid of, or attracted to, alien tentacle sex. What the characters in Touch Me are deeply afraid of is a life devoid of purpose, or even of a reasonable infrastructure to be able to pursue their dreams. Joey is unable to advance her journalistic career, a slave to student debt and just-over-minimum-wage barrista and bartender gigs. Craig’s privileged background and philosophy degree put him no closer to finding dreams; in fact, they’ve left him depressed and unemployable. Meaningless sex, drinking, New Age-y spiritual exercises, and, eventually, the blissful, numbing touch only an alien can deliver offer them relief from their anxieties. Heck, even procrastinating alien Brian can’t get his act together to either take over the world, or to save it from itself. As the characters struggle to find a place in society, the alien’s euphoric touch serves a metaphor for the distractions and temptations of co-dependent romantic relationships and, more explicitly, drug addiction.

The acting is remarkable for a low-budget indie horror. Olivia Taylor Dudley is a revelation: dreamy in a languid, damaged way, remaining likable even when engaging in vile drug-seeking behaviors. She begins the film with an 8-minute monologue about her first meeting with a track-suited, environmentally responsible alien with hair that’s the “good kind of wet.” It’s not quite a tour-de-force, but it is the kind of thing that makes you sit up and jot down the actress’ name. Veteran character actor Pucci is also sexy as the complicated, hip-hop dancing alien who might be a cosmic narcissist or might be a well-meaning but clueless visitor who can’t comprehend human relationships. Gavaris is believable, if mostly relegated to comic relief (although his friendship with Joey plays a crucial role in the movie’s emotional makeup), and Forte puts in fine work as Brian’s unappreciated human assistant resenting the presence of younger and more attractive visitors.

On the other hand, director Addison Heinmann’s tonal shifts and unnecessary stylizations can pose a challenge. Joey’s panic attacks are accompanied by swarms of picture-in-picture popups, and a flashback is done as a Japanese silent movie but with spoken dialogue. These bits sometimes aren’t deployed purposefully, taking us out of the story. Furthermore, the attempts at comedy don’t always arise cleanly out of the more serious themes. Henimann throws a lot of absurdity at the screen, and not all of it works (one thing that does work are Brian’s dance scenes, which are both fun to watch and endearingly quirky). The hazy, neon-lit interspecies sex scenes are also a blast; they’re almost tasteful.

Because of the undisciplined approach, this is an odd movie, as well as a weird one. That said, Touch Me is nowhere near as alienating as its miserable current 4.8 IMDb rating would suggest. Most of the negative sentiments seem to come from people who were hoping for a more straightforward live-action hentai sci-fi horror, and are along the lines of “this was a little too out there for me.” Regular readers of this site will likely find this on the low-to-average end of the weird scale, and uneven, but far from boring. You’re invited to Touch Me: you might enjoy it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The cherry on top of this admittedly weird cocktail is a strong streak of genuine sensuality – if it’s your first encounter with tentacle sex on screen, you might be surprised how appealing Heimann and his cast have managed to make it seem.”–Catherine Bray, The Guardian (contemporaneous)