IR Film Review: FRIED BARRY [Shudder]

The aspect of a first person shooter in most games is to see how much pain, abuse and literal lifeforce a character has before he expires. Like "Hardcore Henry" at TIFF a few years ago, the gist of "Fried Barry" premiering on Shudder is one and the same. Said person Gary at the beginning of the film is already pretty much burned out before he seemingly is abducted by aliens and fed back to the Earth in his home in South Africa. Gary Green who plays Barry looks like death warmed over on purpose almost like the dead guy Hellboy carried wit him in the Russian tundra in the first film of that franchise. Through and through despite the wild and crazy elements that happen, most of the encounters that happen in this film are never Barry's own fault but he also doesn't refuse it.

He is a reactor but it depends how he functions at various points. He doesn't have a purpose until the final moments but even that has a caveat. Conscience is not necessarily the right idea or term to use since the aliens probably don't have a conception of that. The bridge points of the film also don't necessarily make sense Green is mostly screaming at the moon as it were but certain sequences like in a hospital take on a kinetic quality. Green looks the part but the balance might have been how much acting he could muster or if he was simply a vessel of progression. A good question though is that "is this a trip in Barry's head?" The forced perspective at times leans into this as well as certain journeys into places that are more nightmarish but others just odd. Plus before all this happened, he was tripped out with a buddy. When he emerges at black and white at one point, there is a juxtaposition that doesn't make sense.

Of course a lot of the film doesn't but it is mostly a midnight journey that is created for the experience. Director Ryan Kruger who seems to have financed and done a lot of the film on his own, overdoes some of the clichés but doesn't pull back on the body horror or general visceral nature of the proceeding which is admirable. There are moments of genuine humor thrown in with a gallows flair but it never picks up enough speed in that direction to become tongue in cheek like "Evil Dead". One specific car ride even ventures into "Natural Born Killers" territory but then abruptly shifts which makes again no sense in the story structure. "Fried Barry" is a trip. That's for sure...more for the instance of how fried Barry is versus any path he might be on. C

By Tim Wassberg