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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)

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CAPSULE: THE WAVES OF MADNESS (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Jason Trost

FEATURING: Jason Trost, ,

PLOT: Agent LeGrasse is charged with investigating a distress signal from an ocean liner which has veered off course into the center of the Spacecraft Cemetery.

COMMENTS: A throwaway line at the start of The Waves of Madness reveals a great deal in hindsight. Ambling drunkenly to the bar on a massive ocean liner, a passenger seeks a final drink for the night—some Scotch—and is mistakenly served rum. No matter, he assures the embarrassed bartender, “It’s all going to the same place.” Little does our tippler know: it is indeed. Every single passenger, all of them doomed.

Jason Trost wastes no time laying down the story and style in The Waves of Madness, a tight little bit of Lovecraftian adventure that appears to be the launch of his next recurring movie universe. We quickly meet Agent LeGrasse, a professional working under the direction of an unspecified global organization. “The Elders of the Sea” (an ominously christened vessel if ever there was one) has an emergency—one so dire that its distress signal explicitly advises against anyone coming to the rescue. Despite this, LeGrasse boats over, docks his craft, and explores the floating derelict with nothing but his handgun, a few flash-bang grenades, and backpack stuffed with “Plan B.”

Anyone familiar with survival horror video games and  side-scrollers will immediately observe Trost’s inspiration. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen lateral camera movement packed so densely anywhere else. Trost nails ‘game logic,’ too, adding to the experience. LeGrasse discovers an in-g̶a̶m̶e̶ -movie clue about how light can stop the menace, and before a pivotal bit of actioneering, counts aloud to determine how many seconds he has to enact a tricky maneuver. There’s even what appears to be a escort mission (and like most gamers, LeGrasse wants nothing to do with that); but this ends up being part of an underlying ambiguity explored more thoroughly through the three timelines that concurrently unfold as our jaded agent delves deeper into the mystery.

Trost knows his roots in the gaming world—and has now provided evidence beyond the delightfully ridiculous foray into epic levels of DDR in his FP saga. The Waves of Madness isn’t groundbreaking. We’ve seen most of these pieces before: lost cruise ship, strange cult doings, mysterious eldritch entities, hard-boiled gunman, and so on. But the director (and screen-writer, and producer, and one of the soundtrack musicians…) has distilled his various inspirations into a pleasingly particular experience, which will click on all the nostalgia switches for many viewers—and hopefully inspire others to investigate what it is Trost is celebrating.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…as the strong-jawed, eye-patched, laconic Legrasse wanders through this seaborne hellscape as though he were trapped in a Thirties horror adventure or a surreal noir – even though he comes with technology (mobile phones, digital downloads, a portable ‘nuke’) very much from our own age – his own past, present and future become similarly confounded…The highly mannered nature of Legrasse’s experiences on the ship has the viewer too constantly questioning their reality… this is hokey retro fun, turning one man’s trauma into genre-bound pandemonium, and reinterpreting cinema’s fantasy worlds as (un)safe spaces for drifitng pyches [sic] to explore.”–Anton Bitel, Projected Figures (contemporaneous) 

The Waves of Madness

The Waves of Madness
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CAPSULE: FP 4EVZ (2023)

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FP 4EVZ is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

Recommended*

*: Frrlz

DIRECTED BY: Jason Trost

FEATURING: Jason Trost, , , Leigh Myles, Mike O’Gorman

PLOT: The wet shit threatens to 187 the FP, and so JTRO and CHAI-T must B.E.A.T. into the futuredoo with their daughter to save the nowsies.

COMMENTS: Let me be abundantly clear: there is no reason for this movie to be this good. No, we are not talking love-child of and Harron—that’d be a real masterpiece. FP 4EVZ, a passion-continuation of Jason Trost’s lifelong FP passion-project, is not high cinema, or even middle cinema. But it’s a refreshing blast to the face, made in the difficult style of haute stupidité. The premise is idiotic—as it has been, it seems, for over a decade now; for those of you not in the knowsies, Trost has been exploring the intersectionality of dystopian living and DDR (re-named in this universe “BEAT”, probably for legal reasons, but also because “Balance/Expeditiousness/Aggression/Tempo” is a delightfully silly sum-up of that whole arrow-stomp-dance nonsense) for his entire professional career.

I have not seen the first three parts of the FP franchise, but that’s okay: this chapter begins with a thorough recap of the machinations so far. Space Ducks once lorded over humanity, which was saved by a visitation from a cosmic entity who brought with it a comet-ful of booze. Civilizations have risen, and fallen. Humanity—or at least, sober humanity—is hanging on by its finger-nails. JTRO, the scion of a BEAT bloodline, is married to the warrior queen CHAI-T, and their daughter CHAI-LATTAY is the chosen one. Chosen to what? Dance. Dance at the direction of flying neon arrows.

There are many flying neon arrows. And countless examples of dum-dum “modern” speak rips and dialogues. No other framework could allow a destiny child be praised as having “the body of a mortal—but the blood and soul of a duck.” Or for a long-dormant thinking machine to not only insist on being referred to by name (“Monsieur Computer”), but sport a stupid beret on its Frenchie AI head graphic.

I eventually gave up on scribbling down the saga-style exposition, the pun-soaked quips, and the genuinely heartfelt speeches, all of which were crafted in an hilarious pastiche of idiotic slang from the past decade. It was all delivered ably—and delivered in all seriousness. And that is the main reason why FP 4EVZ works as well as it does: it never winks at the audience. All the DDR combat, the plot-twists, the CGI desolation: never once did I disbelieve. So take my recommendation with a few grains of salt, perhaps, but Trost’s latest outing is something to revel in—preferably, as they themselves advise before the feature, with at least a few drinks in you.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…Z grade in the best of ways. Damn near every shot takes place in front of a green screen, with some cheap After Effects to populate the space. But it’s clear they’re going for a certain aesthetic. It’s all cheese, all the time. There are never any weird elements fading in and out; the effects are well-executed, just a little strange and cheap.”–Tyler Nichols, JoBlo (contemporaneous)