Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS [Fantasia International Film Festival 2022 - Virtual]

The texture of a trip is bathed in the aspect of whatever people are addicted to that allows for an expansion of mind. In "All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms" [World Premiere/Underground], the trajectory takes on a psychotic small town mentality ratcheted by violence, loss of control and just general mayhem. The one who is the most screwed up but the filmmakers want to create an empathy to in some way is Benny (Trevor Hawkins) who just can't connect to anyone and just has all the wrong ideas about everything. Concurrently Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello) is getting messed up with his would-be girlfriend trying to find the next high to take it further. Another guy Biff (Mike Lopez), a psychopathic clown man or similar hangs out with his Asian girlfriend on the street looking for the fix that will take them farther. All at the same time or in different stage the characters find out they trip eating worms which is sort of impractical but is what fuels the story. The film is most the motley display of images with the background of an industrially bereft town seemingly rotting from the inside.

Nobody seems to be getting out and simply swirling in a toilet bowl of their own fetishes and desires, whether than means family, connection or violence. Love is tempered it seems for these people by extreme hate. And as the film reaches its climax it is lost in a context of body horror mixed with again a guttural primal reaction caused by these worms which are seemingly just worms. Writer/Director Alex Phillips creates a visual style that mixes Alex Cox with certain visions of "Natural Born Killers" but more jagged. The synth score helps but with the exception of the end which is very clear in its metaphor, there is a lot of disconnected (or at least unconcerning -- or disconcerting as it might be) bedlam just for the sake of itself. And that kind of vision for sure has a play if these people are living in abstract world where something is happening on the other side or if they are simply drowning in their own misery. Whether or not that happens here is up to the individual viewer. But by the outset, "Jacked Up & Full Of Worms" is a journey of sensory input at times lost in its own shenanigans. C

By Tim Wassberg