Full of Worms

This is the last movie that I got to see at Nightmares Film Festival. One of my favorite time slots is the midnight movie even though I'm normally exhausted. I got to see the Midwest premiere of this one as well. Other than that, I came in blind.

Synopsis: this follows Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello), a seedy motel caretaker, after discovering powerful hallucinogenic worms and meeting Benny (Trevor Dawkins). They fall in love making worms together before embarking on an odyssey of sex and violence.

Much like the other movies I've seen in this timeslot of the festival, this is difficult to talk about. As our synopsis said, we follow Roscoe for the most part. There is also Benny though. He sees a prostitute that he's in love with by the name of Samantha (Betsey Brown). We get to see that Benny wants to be a father. He even buys a sex doll that is small like a baby. This was creepy to be honest. Benny does what he can to care for it though.

Benny sees Samantha and tells her about what he wants. She doesn't seem interested. He cannot get it up so she offers him a worm. She claims that they get you high. He declines at first but relents. This is when he runs into Roscoe and they do them together. This leads to terrifying nightmares and encounters with a ruffian by the name of Biff (Mike Lopez). It is then a fever dream of what is real and what's not.

Now I know that I went lighter with my recap here, but I think that gives you enough heads upabout the characters we follow. There is a good part of this where we have characters eating and snorting worms. This causes them to hallucinate and making us as the audience wonder what we are seeing. It is interesting to watch this as tired as I was, because I'm sure I nodded off a couple of times and came to not necessarily sure what was happening. I think being in that state of mind adds something here.

As a story guy, I do have issues. There is quite a bit that isn't explained. If you follow my reviews, then you know that I don't necessarily need everything fleshed out or given to me. I was curious if these worms were different from me digging out in the grass by my house. Are they just normal earthworms or is there something special there. I think by just giving me that would help. To spin this into a positive, I do like the allegory to drug use that we get here. Roscoe seems like a good guy who just works hard until he tries this. It then causes his life to spiral out of control. Benny is a bit weird, but he has a good heart. Getting into worms causes them to fall into the seedy underworld.

There is something else that I want to shift over here and it involves Samantha. We see her first encounter with Benny and he is unable to get it up. It is funny that he wants a child but having this issue. Samantha seems to like him enough. She is a prostitute so part of that is her job. She knows that he's harmless. She ends up pregnant and claims it is his. There is a moment where he questions this, but since he wants a baby, he goes along. I did find this an interesting commentary on a woman making a claim for the best candidate to help her. I also don't fault her completely. She is taking advantage still.

Where I want to go then would be with the acting. I thought that Botello and Dawkins were solid. They play well off each other. I also think they did a solid job as playing high. It was interesting to see them lose control as well as they get hooked on worms. It felt real. Sammy Arechar was solid as Dennis. He's a funny character with his introduction. They get me to like him so seeing his fate made me feel bad. Brown was good. I also thought that Lopez and Noah Lepawsky rounded this out for what was needed.

That brings me to the last things which would be with the filmmaking. I did think that this was well-made. It feels like a fever dream which is good since our characters get high. It makes this disjointed, but that works with the subject matter we are dealing with. There are effects that we get. They looked to be practical which is good. I'm assuming there is a bit of CGI to go along with that. I had no issues there. Other than that, I'd say the soundtrack fit for what was needed.

In conclusion, this is an interesting movie. It is perfect for that midnight movie time slot at a film festival. I did want a bit more from though. There is just a bit lacking for the story for me to fully get into it. For what they give to us, this feels like a fever dream that goes from different set piece to the next. I do think that this is well made. The acting is fine. I'm not sure if I would come back to it, but I enjoyed my time with it.

My Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

Budget was clearly a big factor in why this just didn't work, but it's not the only one. I like that it tried something different but that doesn't automatically make the movie good - just unique.

But characters seem to come from some alternate reality where nobody says things humans would say and do things humans wouldn't do. Entire stretches of time consist of nothing happening too, like pretty frequently.

So it's shot well and shows promise and the title is a great one - but the writing just needs to be better. If the director ever refined his writing and got a real budget, he could do something pretty watchable. But this isn't it.

Sometimes we learn about films because someone makes an offhand reference that, however unlikely, points us directly toward something we've never heard of otherwise. Sometimes such films are unexpectedly great; sometimes they're pointless and terrible. 'All jacked up and full of worms' is one such movie, specifically because the name and premise fits in neatly with a topic of recent discussion - and I have to say, from the outside looking in, it sounded fun. Unfortunately, as soon as we begin watching, all our hopes are swiftly and summarily dashed against the rocks rolling around in the head of filmmaker Alex Phillips.

Whatever this flick sounds like from an outside perspective, in actuality it's a rotten, incohesive, inane, vacuous mess. Whatever potential there may have been in the concept is wasted because ultimately it is employed as nothing more than a variation on the dull, juvenile stoner comedy, with more dramatic or horror-laden elements on the edges. That, it should be said, is the best "comedy" that the title has to offer, and the most "sensible" that the viewing experience gets. Elsewhere the writing is even more boorishly puerile as it takes cues from sex comedies that are big hits among 12 year old boys, replete with female nudity for its own sake. For good measure add in quizzical expression of homophobia and pedophilia. This is to say nothing of outrageously bad dialogue specifically amidst writing that, broadly, is perfectly scattered and sloppy - and direction so awful, forcing the cast into such small and insipid corners, that I'm fairly certain I just watched Phillips destroy their careers with a single feature.

Yes, there was potential in the concept. There are workable notions herein, including a broken sense of reality, but because Phillips flounders so much as both a storyteller and a filmmaker, that notion as it presents comes off not as imaginative and forward-thinking, but slipshod, feeble, and worthless. By one means or another there are some inclusions - whether a contribution of those operating behind the scenes, or a thought that could have been latched onto as a unifying force, however offbeat - that share in that potential. Yet because Phillips was just haphazardly throwing ideas at a wall for seventy-one minutes to see what would stick (nothing does), nothing herein amounts to anything. At length the only objective aspect of 'All jacked up and full of worms' that does not abjectly deserve criticism, and subsequent entombment within a concrete sarcophagus at the bottom of the deepest salt mine in the world, is the playfully oddball, unexpectedly dynamic original music of Cue Shop.

Weirdly enough, though, music is not enough to salvage a picture of any nature, not any more than the wildly, uselessly disparate assortment of ideas that the so-called "filmmaker" dubiously cobbled together. 'All jacked up and full of worms' could have been something wonderfully bizarre, creative, subversive, and memorable. What it is, instead, is total rubbish that I spent seventy-one minutes regretting; the only hope this had would have been if Phillips shared his root thoughts with another filmmaker who then took on all the responsibilities of writing and direction. By all reason I should have stopped watching right away, but I will watch almost anything, and I commit to it. Suffice to say that Phillips is making me reevaluate the decisions I have made in my life. However it is you stumble onto this 2022 putrescence, please take my advice and just avoid it.

In recent years, the shock and sleaze genre has waned, with fewer films daring to provoke visceral audience reactions. B-movies and grindhouse-style films have a unique magnetism, showcasing rarely seen images that evoke both fascination and revulsion. Many renowned directors, like Coppola with Dementia 13, started in this realm. Damien Leone's Terrifier series made headlines for causing physical reactions in theaters, yet Alex Phillips' All Jacked Up and Full of Worms strives for a similar impact but ultimately falls short. Centering on characters who find euphoria in consuming hallucinogenic worms, the film introduces Roscoe and Benny, who bond over worm-fueled highs and relationship troubles. However, the plot, cluttered with cannibals, sex dolls, and televangelists, struggles to hold coherence.

While the film has its moments-particularly in the gross-out sequences that evoke the era of exploitative shock cinema-it lacks a cohesive narrative. The outlandish concept of worm-induced euphoria is intriguing, but the storyline loses focus amid scattered, provocative scenes. Betsey Brown stands out in her role, yet her character is underutilized. Though the film revels in its own bizarre premise, it misses the opportunity to delve deeper into its twisted exploration of addiction and depravity, leaving viewers intrigued yet dissatisfied. All Jacked Up and Full of Worms teeters on the edge of exploitative horror, but its chaotic delivery ultimately dampens its impact.

While working at a remote hotel, a cleaner and his girlfriend stumble upon a strange batch of psychedelic worms left behind and indulge in the offerings which turn the entire relationship between them and several other residents in the hotel into a bizarre trip no one may come out alive.

This was a weird and generally bizarre effort. That this one offers a near-endless stream of over-the-top images with the outcome of the drugged worms offering the kind of ooze-filled visuals that denote a drug trip is really all it has going for it. The endless amount of times that someone is getting high off the strange worms through the highly unusual methods featured here and then undergoing a series of highly unconventional drug trips that provide the kind of bizarre format that gets a lot of its power through these unconventional concepts by putting those on the forefront of the scene. It gives the scenes a different nature and has the most to like here. Beyond that, though, there's not much going on with the film. The imagery isn't overtly scary but rather weird and that makes for the potential to be bored senseless with the endless repetition of different effects being utilized one after another. That's also due to the lackluster story that never once goes for anything resembling a coherent storyline since what goes on here is played off like a series of illogically connected sketches loosely assembled into a feature-length running time. Very little of this comes off with any kind of foresight or logic and it tends to be incredibly frustrating as a result which all combine together to lower this one significantly.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity, and excessive drug use.