🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸: NOT Intense.
Directed by Andrew Bowser
Prepare to be entertained! Onyx the Fortuitous, the fan-favorite award winner at the Portland Horror Film Festival, pulls out all the stops to catch your attention, get you laughing, and keeps piling on. It is wall-to-wall zany, filled with scene-chewing characters, fantastic puppet practical effects, an easy hook of a premise, and the frantic energy of actor/director Andrew Bowser, who plays Onyx the Fortuitous, your gonzo lead character in the movie.
Conditional warning! To love this film (like I did), you will have to accept the presence of an over-the-top awkward character. Onyx is an anxious lovable loser, still living at home, and has a VERY affected manner of speaking. His squeaky-voiced cadence is machine gun fast, with curious pauses, and places dramatic emphases on all the wrong beats, (like the last word of every sentence.) Onyx is an arch character who would be comfortable alongside Ace Ventura, Pee Wee Herman, Dewey Finn, or Tommy Boy. He’s THAT guy.
Onyx, being a very awkward young man, is living his worst life as a patty slinger, constantly bullied by the jocks who frequent the burger stand, and is put upon by his uncaring stepfather and his exhausted mother (Barbara Crampton in a cameo appearance). Onyx is infatuated with Bartok the Great (Jeffrey Combs) a notorious devil worshiper. Bartok has posted a lottery for his most loyal worshipers to join him in an unforgettable exclusive ritual with their dark lord at his fabulous mansion.
Lo and behold, Onyx sees his fortunes turn as he receives the proverbial golden ticket to Bartok’s house. It’s the evil version of Willy Wonka.
Arriving at the mansion, he meets four colorful fellow worshipers/fans summoned to participate. They are elegant and metal-sexy Jesminder (Melanie Chandra), the scholarly Mr. Duke (T.C. Carson), the loopy converted house mom Shelley (Arden Myrin), and the curious non-binary and slightly mystic Mac (Rivkah Reyes)… and of course the awkward Onyx the Fortuitous.
If you have been summoned to a private audience with the Lord of Darkness, you might want to consider why you are there. They will be doing a ritual. So, obviously, more red flags. They are going to summon the demon Abbadon. Uh oh. And they have been promised eternal life! BIG RED FLAG. But, they are all eager to put on the cult robes and fezes and to get on with the rituals. It’s time to get down and get evil.
Bartok, of course, has other unstated plans. He and his succubus assistant, Farrah (Olivia Taylor Dudley) start the attendees with a series of rituals to get the summoning process started, and all the guests are up for it. Once Bartok gets the confirmations he needs, the intent flips and the elimination process begins, the evil begins to flow, and the summoned followers will be lucky to get out with their lives and souls intact.
Andrew Bowser must be pinching himself. He has become a viral phenomenon on YouTube, particularly for using Onyx in restructured local TV news stories featuring the “Weird Guy” to great effect. But pulling off a feature film is a whole different exercise. He’s been blessed with a fantastic cast of comic veterans. Jeffrey Combs, of course, is a genre legend, and he gnaws all around the scenery as the one-eyed Bartok, truly reveling in his evilness. The other standouts for me are the rubbery-faced Arden Myrin, a veteran of MAD TV, and T.C. Carson who you may not recognize (he looks like a younger Keith David) but you will know his voice as Kratos from the huge God of War video game franchise. The cast takes this small-budget indie film and gives it some real heft that could pay off when it hits streaming.
The plot is nothing super new. It’s a bit of The House on Haunted Hill meets Satanic Panic, (Which also had Arden Myrin in it) but those are good sources. The familiarity is part of the fun, as the characters are so broad that they color in all the margins. More good news is that the comedy, for the most part, hits big. The audience roared at the biggest jokes, big belly laughs. Sure, there are moments that you see coming, but when they hit just that right note (and I dare not spoil the jokes) it works. And the small character moments show off the comedic experience of the actors and their ability to improvise. Bartok’s mansion is impressive. I believe that this was shot in a big mansion, and not in a studio, but if not, kudos to the set designers.
OK: Characters. Check. Comedy. Check. Sets and Site. Check. Those are all great, but here’s what makes this super fresh: THE PUPPETS. Full Praise to Adam Dougherty, the creature designer and puppet maker put this movie to a whole different level. They are part of the comedy, particularly the transformative ghouls, they were so gloriously wacky, they came out of the Rat Fink school of bulging-eye gonzo artistry. And, the Abbadon Demon is impressive too (the cover image above).
What I hope you take away from this review is that Onyx the Fortuitous, though not a crowning achievement in drama, is a roaring good time, as long as you can enjoy an arch character like Onyx. Trust me, I can’t stand Pauly Shore or Rob Schneider. I even struggle a bit with Adam Sandler. So, I get it. But for me, Onyx is one of us. He is a horror guy. He’s a lovable loser. I looked around the Portland Horror Film Festival audience (a packed Hollywood Theater) and he LOOKS like one of us. You know the type: Sweet, awkward weirdos who love some horror in a major way. Let’s make a movie with one of us in it and make it gonzo. May I present the test sample: Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls.
No official trailer just yet, but there is a clip that Bowser has been using for promotion: