Concurrently highfalutin and down-and-dirty, “Glorious” tells its single-location story within the trippiest, ickiest approach. The execution doesn’t at all times match the creativeness, however “Glorious” actually deserves a credit score for originality.
Cease me in the event you assume you’ve heard this one earlier than A despondent man finds himself locked inside a distant relaxation cease toilet, the place a mysterious voice within the subsequent stall makes a portentous proposition. Sure, the person speaks by means of a glory gap—therefore the title—however, he doesn’t have something prurient in his thoughts. Moderately, the destiny of the whole universe is at stake.
The forwards and backward between these two characters, and between actuality and fantasy, comprise nearly all of director Rebakah McKendry’s darkly comedian horror movie. However even at a brisk 79 minutes (together with credit), “Glorious” appears like an intriguing concept that’s been stretched skinny to function size. The bizarre and witty script from McKendry’s husband, David Ian McKendry, together with Joshua Corridor and Todd Rigney, might need packed extra punch as a brief or an episode of a “Twilight Zone”-type sequence. However the performances in what is actually a two-hander stay intriguing, and also you’ll by no means have the ability to predict the place this story goes.
Ryan Kwanten stars because of the matted, middle-aged Wes, who pulls over to a quiet relaxation space within the woods to maintain from dozing throughout a daytime highway journey. His automobile is crammed together with his belongings, together with a teddy bear and a mysterious crimson field. Over the course of the evening, he’ll stay there, burning everything he owns in a drunken rage. When he awakens the subsequent morning, hungover and pantsless, he staggers into the toilet to vomit, solely to be disturbed by the sound of a pleasant voice coming from the adjoining stall. It belongs to J.Ok. Simmons, and he says his identity is Ghat. Their banter is playful at first, which is surreal given the squalid setting. Simmons, whom we hear however by no means see, makes use of the complete variety of his wealthy resonance. He’s variety and inquisitive, even a bit of hokey in his humor, till he turns into extra sinister and insistent. And he retains us guessing together with Wes: Is that this an actual individual? An inebriated hallucination? The satan himself?
Kwanten, in the meantime, is tasked with creating this character whereas primarily performing alone in a cramped area, and he rises to that bodily and emotional problem. We all know Wes is needy and unstable, however, he additionally has to take care of some thriller. And right here’s the tough part of these one-location motion pictures: learn how to develop a personality inside such a restricted setting. Lean and imply thrillers like “The Shallows” or the current “Fall” present simply sufficient again story to ascertain their heroines’ skills and clarify their survival expertise. The issue with “Glorious” is that there’s not a lot to Wes, regardless of a number of flashbacks, and there can’t be till the very finish. That makes it troublesome for us to care about whether or not he makes it out of the toilet alive—or a minimum of together with his sanity intact. And Ghat’s mythology, whereas dense, isn’t all that attention-grabbing.
However, McKendry makes use of the area in creative methods, from the colorful mural across the glory gap which grows animated to depict Ghat’s historical past to the straightforward use of dramatic pink lighting to point to impending cosmic doom. And for these of you who’re squeamish about such issues, not solely is the inside of the toilet a frightful mélange of bodily fluids, however, the eventual blood and guts on the show may even flip your abdomen. Should you watch the newest season of “Stranger Things” with the closed captioning on and also you’re nonetheless traumatized by the frequent descriptions of “wet squelching,” there’s an entire lot of that right here, too.
In the end, this gives an intelligent idea and a cool performing train, however, it falls wanting glory.