As deranged as it gets when you’re sitting and watching 72 minutes of a shared psychedelic trip of unhinged freaks; All Jacked up and Full of Worms makes Hell feel like a more welcomed allegory of the world. Revolting to the extent that even the overdrawn and repetitive shots of the squiggly worms couldn’t achieve; Alex Phillips’ brand new cinema of the unsettling wrings every bit of comfort out of you with its all-around hideousness.
What may have been the goal of this “Cronenberg on psychedelics” horror that premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival, is just as uncertain as the glaring randomness of every sequence. Its success lies in the sleazy, slimy sac that crushes down the barrier between mental illness and drug-induced recklessness, and blends them into one form of dirt that the psychotropic worms crawl in. Its failure is in the aimlessness that surrounds every incoherent theme that gets whacked down as soon as it peeks its head out.
A chance meeting of two of the most unpleasant and deadbeat men–at a time of their entirely dysfunctional lives that won’t hold them back from indulging in substances–makes space for the arrival of the hallucinogenic worms that reside as Gods over every action that follows. Foretold by a strange old man in a tv set; the worms set out on a mission of ravaging everything that’s sane. We just wish the script had the same kind of determination.
All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms (2022) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis:
In a drugged-up state of a possible threesome that doesn’t come to be, Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello) finds his relationship with Samantha (Betsey Brown) fading fast with Jared (Noah Lepawsky) in the mix. A tv holding as though the secrets of creation itself, being told by the worm-vangelican Angelo (Dodge Weston), is being consumed in the filthy bathroom by the motel sex worker Henrietta (Eva Fellows).
To throw more filth on the stomach-churning discomfort, Benny (Trevor Dawkins), desperate to be “daddy”, buys a “baby” online and is somehow surprised that it’s a pedo blowjob doll. A failed attempt at consummation has Henrietta and Benny on the bed of the sex motel talking about the possibility of the two doing something they absolutely shouldn’t–having a kid.
The worms crawl through Henrietta’s secret cigarette box and make their way into Benny’s messed-up head. In the same afternoon, while cleaning the sticky tub at the motel room, Roscoe meets his destruction-soulmate Benny. The two discuss how fun it might be to actually ingest the filthy invertebrates. Back home, Roscoe’s gasping attempt at saving the relationship ends up with the psychotropic worms being munched on and snorted by the couple and Jared. The trip shows Samantha to be foaming at the mouth and ends with Roscoe running out and throwing up.
Henrietta, now mysteriously pregnant, has Angelo follow and finds Benny at the shore performing the disgusting intended use of the doll which, according to his schizophrenic delusion, will come to life. With the doll floating away in the ocean, arrives a new hope in Benny’s life in the form of ingestion of the worms and becoming one with the earth along with his new friend Roscoe. An insane trip followed by the vision of a giant worm throws them on the path of two other unnamed high individuals having sex on a dumpster. The morose journey of slime and vomit includes Dennis in the motel room of denial and rejection.
Getting picked up by the other drugged-up two leads them to a bait store looking for more worms and stabbing the store owner. Continued mindless violence raised and encouraged by the more unstable couple, has Roscoe kill Dennis with a bear can. Tied up by the lunatics on the motel bed, Roscoe’s worm trip starts showing its disgusting, terrifying side but it all just might be too late.
All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms Movie Review:
Undeniably made for an extremely specific audience that requires precisely this kind of exceedingly pointless experience unbound by the expectations of having any ultimate objective; Phillips’ horror is pretty much what it wants to be–a filthy face of eccentricities that exists only to disturb and disgust. Any crumb of narrative ties or thematic resolution would’ve ended up providing some sense of comfort which is against the film’s style. But the complete absence of the same also results in the film being simply unpleasant with not even enough context that would make the gore-fiends want to continue on this journey of ugliness.
For a movie that intends to thrive on grungy disgust, All Jacked Up and Full of Worms doesn’t cut it with its cringy elements for the bigger chunk of the duration. Roscoe and Benny are as plain as druggie randos come. They’re unpleasant, yes. But at the same time, they’re more annoying morons than sickening bringers of disturbing elements.
What could’ve been achieved had the unnamed couple taken up more space with their deranged lack of sense or limits, gets unacknowledged by the scarcity of better sense on the maker’s part. Only a few shots, praiseworthy for their closeup nastiness, achieve what even the worms couldn’t. The climax, however, somewhat does justice to the abhorrent, singular purpose of the movie. Inside the minds of psychedelic trippers, reality and the worst possible distortion of it, get digested together by the worm’s slimy interior–and produce something that looks to be a disgusting ritual bringing about a new species. One that has forgotten all the preconceived shapes of the world as we know it.
Even a better score could’ve helped the mindless script. It could’ve found what seems to be a completely disconnected series of craziness. Even for the ones enjoying the randomness of it, Phillips’ film would not linger for a second longer than the high of disgust wearing off. The writer-directors feature debut often feels like a try-hard attempt at making you gag. But most likely, what ruins it, is the lack of trying.
All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms Movie Ending, Explained:
Drowning in the bitter end of the trip, Roscoe struggles to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. The menacing couple rejoices at the height of hellish fun when the woman gets on top of Roscoe and stabs him repeatedly. The rest of it is all a trip and its hallucinations going very wrong for both Roscoe and Benny. Static of the tv set changes to Benny tied up to a chair and wondering if he’s really getting tortured or if it’s a dream. The clown-faced man rips into his guts as the woman feels him up. Benny’s intestines get stretched endlessly and wrapped up in it is the couple–laughing at the ghoulish pain.
Roscoe wakes up in his room with Samantha trying to pull him out of the trip. Covered from head to toe with a slimy substance and submerged in a bathtub full of something that resembles the remains of a water birth, Roscoe slowly starts to come back to normal. But every time his head is in the water, he sees Benny and the world of the worm.
Benny imagines Henrietta visiting him in his moment of intolerable pain and telling him the truths of the mind and the world. She tells him that the baby she carries will be born with all the sins of the man that gets absorbed by the dirt and eventually by the worm. His stretched-out intestines become one with the couple and begin turning them into a human-worm hybrid. Ghastly fluid shooting out of their mouths, the couple writhes in pain and aids the birth of Benny’s child.
In the most strange way possible, Benny’s dream of being a father comes true. And it is as though he is the one giving birth. After the birth scream, Benny and Henrietta get sucked up in a massive worm’s amniotic sac. Going back into the womb, now not alone, Benny is reunited with the sex doll which has now come alive.
The ending plays out as Benny’s perverse wishes come true in the form of drug-fuelled hallucinations. It may have been Benny’s own hallucinations. Or maybe even that of Roscoe. In the little, messed-up time the two had spent, Roscoe had come to really care about Benny in his own dysfunctional way. Benny getting his “happy” ending may just be Roscoe’s trip ending on a high note.
