Directed By: Alex Phillips
Starring: Phillip Andre Botello, Sammy Arechar, Betsey Brown
Plot Summary: Roscoe, a janitor for a scuzzy love motel, whose girlfriend has brought another man home for strange rituals, drifts through life until he discovers a hidden stash of powerful hallucinogenic worms. Guided by visions of a giant floating Worm, he encounters Benny, a moped enthusiast trying to manifest a baby from an inanimate sex doll. They fall in love with doing worms together on a downward spiral into the primordial ooze.
With a title like All Jacked Up and Full of Worms, the marketing does a lot of the heavy lifting. It certainly was a title that was a standout during its festival screenings earlier this year. Alex Phillips, who is making his feature film debut, really crafts a movie that is as weird as its title would suggest. Indeed, Phillips seems to be channeling a mixture of Quentin Dupieux and early David Lynch. For the casual film audience that isn’t used to this kind of surreal and loose narrative, they will find it alienating and probably a little frustrating. Thankfully, this film doesn’t appear to be weird for weird’s sake. In regards to the meaning of the film Phillips says, “All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is a dream that is impossible to break from autobiography. It’s about expressionistic maggots born in real wounds–maggots growing into big worms, too fantastical and deranged to be real, despite feeling heavy, wet and alive.”
This isn’t so much a celebration of the outsider but more of a reclamation of them. Underneath its slimy coating, Phillips is making his artistic stance on topics such mental illness and feeling empty inside and the things we do to fill the voids in us. So, getting high off of worms is maybe taking this concept to its very extreme. These characters for the most part are all longing for something and trying to find that thing that makes getting out of bed just a little easier. This goes a long way into helping you relate to these characters even though they are basically cartoon avatars of actual human beings.
One problem with the film is a weird, repetitive through-line where Benny (Trevor Dawkins) lets multiple people know (even a random stranger on the street) that he never messed with men (using a term that has been reclaimed, but I won’t repeat it here), but all gay guys are horny and therefore makes the conquest easier. This wouldn’t have been an issue had it been an arc for his character. Towards the end, Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello), tripping on worms, decides to take Benny up on his assumed offer. However, Benny of course, has a gay panic moment, saying this is a bad time for him. This moment is not extremely offensive but still slightly cringe. Why was this included? Without any context or arc it just comes off as reductive.
Phillips cast this project incredibly well with a highlight of this film being its actors. Phillip Andre Botello has been coming up in the indie scene and surely will be soon noticed by bigger studios. Botello has an “it-factor” that is hard to describe fully, but you know it when you see it. Not only does he fully commit to this insane project, he oddly enough helps keep things grounded, not unlike his creepy crawling pals. Trevor Dawkins gives a pretty manic yet very well thought out performance for Benny Boom, who is one of the most interesting and complex characters of the film. Dawkins never appears afraid of going to some very absurd places and, much like Botello, this actor could go far with the right breaks.
What I found most surprising is that there is a tenderness and hope that shines through all the blood and organs. Truth be told there are still some aspects of this movie that are utterly baffling, but at a brisk 71-minute runtime, there is no room for boredom. While it does suffer from some sloppy through-lines, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is a crusty, bold, and fascinating film that makes me excited for what Alex Phillips will come up with in the future.
All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is currently playing in select theaters, and it is available on VOD platforms and Screambox.
All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is a crusty, bold, and fascinating film
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GVN Rating 7
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Big film nerd and TCM Obsessed. Author of The Ultimate Guide to Strange Cinema from Schiffer Publishing. Resume includes: AMC’s The Bite, Scream Magazine etc. Love all kinds of movies and television and have interviewed a wide range of actors, writers, producers and directors. I currently am a regular co-host on the podcast The Humanoids from the Deep Dive and have a second book in the works from Bear Manor.