J.K. Simmons voice acting shines in this gloomy, filthy horror dramedy from “Doctor of Horror” Rebekah McKendry. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an eldritch demi-god and a sad drunk walk into a rest-stop bathroom. Of course, you haven’t cause Glorious is something else entirely. The second film with director Rebekah McKendry at the helm is a big step up creatively from her previous endeavor, “All the Creatures Stirring,” telling a tale that is as ambitious as it is cleverly contained. See, this was one of the bottle films from the height of the pandemic, but unlike something like Shadow in the Clouds, where that feels distractingly obvious, Glorious is just gloriously weird and thoughtful enough to keep you from realizing it.
The film follows Wes, a man who gets wasted after a messy breakup and finds himself beyond rock bottom in a rest stop bathroom after he becomes entangled in the plans of self-proclaimed god Ghatanothoa (Ghat for short). As Wes tries to escape the restroom and fight against his supposed destiny, he only finds himself getting pulled further into the gears of a long-running feud and dragged way beyond his depth.
Writers Todd Rigney, Joshua Hull, & David Ian McKendry pen a clever and darkly humorous script that doesn’t lay it on too thick with the comedy of it all; after all, the title of the film itself is a gloryhole joke; it could have easily done so and burned any of the tension in the movie. It reminds me a lot of The Color Out of Space & my favorite horror film of 2016, The Void, but on a smaller scale and with a more philosophical slant.
Glorious dwells primarily on what engenders the ever-growing culture of nihilism many people find themselves sinking into, the film running on philosophical fuel with references to Beckett, Sartre, Hobbes, and other greats I probably didn’t even pick up on a first watch scattered throughout this conversation of human nature.
Overall, I appreciate the film for taking one of the key aspects of cosmic horror and flipping it on its head by asking the question: what if one of those unthinking, unfeeling elder gods started to feel and care? And how disastrous could that be? And though its execution is a bit clunky, the twist of the film drives a double-wide trailer-sized knife through your gut as you try to keep up and recontextualize everything you’ve seen and suddenly get washed over with a feeling of ick.
But what of our leads having this conversation? Well, Ryan Kwanten, True Blood alum and the lead of the underrated James Wan vehicle Dead Silence is delightful in this. He portrays the perfectly pathetic end of a relationship and its consequences greatly, and he gets to engage in a lot of actors’ dream roles as the surprisingly complex Wes becomes gradually more and more unhinged through the course of the movie, making you wonder what his choices will be up until the film’s finale.
And of course, do I even need to say it? JK Simmons is the treasure of this film. He gives a wonderful and very calculated performance where his speech mannerisms, down to his choice of awkward words, and the cadence of his iconic and explosive anger. It’s clear that he had a lot of love for the character and the film as a whole and sculpted Ghat through his acting. If you love him as much as I do, and you’ve been waiting to hear his smooth voice since Season 1 of Invincible, you’re pretty much obligated to check this. He kills it here.
In terms of the cinematography, McKendry is clearly not referred to as a Doctor of Horror for no reason. She, alongside Jakob’s Wife DP David Matthews, have a great sense of space and framing that makes the most of their location and helps construct that “out there” vision of the film when it gets particularly bizarre. There is one scene that will make you believe it can rain inside of a bathroom (I know that sounds weird but trust me on this). The movie looks dead to rights disgusting, and if you’re squeamish, you’re going to be squirming thanks to the movie’s styling, which embodies mephitis. It takes a special talent to create a mise en scene that makes you want to hose down with a decontamination shower after seeing it, and it just gets worse in the best of ways as the story continues.
Despite how fun the movie is, it isn’t perfect. I’m not entirely a sycophant for this. Horror movies with big cosmic entities as their main villains rarely get the budget they deserve to portray the titanic nature of these shambling extra-dimensional horrors that make it into their scripts, and that’s no different here. While the practicals we see at the end are very well done, the CGI is clunky and probably could have avoided showing the big bad outright.
The film is also surprisingly short, coming in at very tight 80-some minutes. I think this film will benefit from a director’s cut, so I’d like to see what weird visuals and philosophical dialogue the McKendry’s and company have in the tank if an uncut version turns up.
BOTTOMLINE: This is a short, tightly contained watch with a surprisingly philosophically ponderous plot—you know, given this is a movie about a Lovecraftian horror stuck in a toilet stall. With well-paced humor and some absolutely batshit visuals sprinkled throughout, I’m excited for when this hits Shudder to see other people revel in the curious oddity that is Glorious.
Glorious premieres on Shudder Thursday August 18th.