ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS at CIFF

My review of ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS, which screens at the Chicago International Film Festival this weekend, appeared at Cinefile Chicago today:

Alex Phillips’ ALL JACKED UP AND FULL OF WORMS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday, 9:30pm
This batshit-crazy body horror/black comedy is the reason why “After Dark” sidebars at film festivals exist. It may not have a lot on its mind, aside from the desire to provoke visceral reactions from adventurous viewers, but seeing it with a boozy late-night crowd should be fun. ALL JACKED UP begins with bearded weirdo Benny (Trevor Dawkins) mail-ordering a plastic baby sex doll aimed at the pedophile market—one of the more disturbing props in contemporary cinema—to satisfy his earnest desire to become a parent. After sex-worker Henrietta (Eva Fellows) turns him on to eating earthworms that possess hallucinogenic properties, Benny teams up with motel employee and fellow worm enthusiast Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello), and the duo embark on an absurd and violent crime spree. This microbudget psychedelic odyssey, which boasts a fair number of gruesome and impressive practical effects, may not ultimately “mean anything” but it does possess a certain scuzzy integrity. The cast, led by Dawkins (a veteran of Chicago’s Neo-Futurist Theater who first proved his transgressive cinema bonafides in Spencer Parsons’ BITE RADIUS [2015]), certainly gives it their all; and, formally, the story becomes increasingly non-narrative as it progresses in order to correspond to the disintegrating mental states of the characters. By the final scene, it feels like the film itself is tripping. (2022, 72 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]