Worth: $8.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Andrew Bowser, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Rivkah Reyes, Ralph Ineson, Jeffrey Combs, Terrence C. Carson, Barbara Compton
Intro:
Plenty of jokes are fired but it is truly astounding how many miss the mark.
“Notice me senpai! Notice me!” Yeah, we notice you.
In yet another instalment of transforming an amusing internet meme into a full feature-length film, the ‘Weird Satanist Guy’ does battle with Satan.
Marcus (Andrew Bowser), self-titled ‘Onyx the Fortuitous’, is a socially inept, nervous geek in a dead-end job that attaches his identity to the occult teachings of Bartok the Great (Jeffrey Combs). Just when he is about to give up on life, his prayers are finally answered with an invitation to a once-in-a-lifetime satanic ritual to be performed by his idol. Joining a crew of dedicated geeky occultists, Marcus straps in for a weekend at a haunted mansion where Bartok the Great may have more nefarious means for this gathering than promised.
It must be stated that creator, director and lead actor Andrew Bowser had very honest intentions here. It is made perfectly clear that he is trying to pay tribute to an era of B-movie horror with Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls. The nostalgic tone, the inclusion of Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs in an outrageously silly outfit and the wild monster designs that look like they were pulled out of a 1980s Sam Raimi film, all speak to that intent.
These ingredients should work, but the trouble is, when you centre these ideas around the one-note joke of an internet meme (a socially clueless geek) and flog it for a shockingly long runtime, you get a movie that very quickly loses steam. Plenty of jokes are fired but it is truly astounding how many miss the mark.
Marcus’s antics were certainly amusing on the internet, but that was because it tried to base itself in the real-world as a weird viral news interview. When you take that away and set it in a completely fictional world, with demons, ghouls and magic crystals, Marcus quickly becomes insufferable.
It would be acceptable if this was short, but Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls somehow stretches this joke close to the two-hour mark. The new characters certainly don’t help with originality either, with all of them blank slates, and Jeffrey Combs and Olivia Taylor Dudley (The Magicians) are notably underutilised.
There is certainly an attempt to make a comment on nerd culture and how attaching yourself to fictional worlds and characters can help hide real-life traumas, but it’s so glanced over, it barely makes an impact.
All this negativity aside, there is an attention to detail with the monster designs that is undeniably charming. The ghoul masks, Abbadon and the Demon Box are beautiful hand-crafted creations. There is also a musical number around the halfway mark, which provides a genuine laugh.
