All Jacked Up and Full of Worms

When I stumbled upon the 2022 movie "All Jacked Up and Full of Worms" by random chance here in 2024, I was immediately drawn in by its odd cover. And with it being a movie that I had neither heard about before and much less even watched, of course I opted to sit down and watch what writer and director Alex Phillips had to offer. The storyline in the movie was bizarre. So very, very weird. I wonder if the script for this movie was written while the writer was spacing out on something. I have watched my fair share of odd movies, no doubt about that, but "All Jacked Up and Full of Worms" definitely is a contender for the top three of bizarre movies that I have sat through, well partially sat through. Suffice it to say that I wasn't familiar wit the actors and actresses on the cast list in the movie. But it should be said that the acting performances were good, despite the fact that the script was so far out there. "All Jacked Up and Full of Worms" is definitely not a movie that will find an appeal with a wider audience, as it is very much something of an acquired taste to sit through. Some of the scenes throughout the course of the movie were every bit as bizarre and strange as the contents of the storyline, so that seemed to go hand-in-hand. And some of the music in the movie was definitely also strange enough to compliment the bizarre storyline. This movie was simply beyond the scope of what I find to be adequate entertainment, and I have to admit that I gave up on watching it 38 minutes into the ordeal. The movie just didn't make sense and I found little entertainment value in the strange contents that writer and director Alex Phillips had put together. And believe you me, when I say that I am not returning to attempt finish watching "All Jacked Up and Full of Worms". But I am sure that there is an audience out there, space out enough to find entertainment value in this movie. My rating of "All Jacked Up and Full of Worms" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

Magandang pelikula!

Magandang pelikula!

source: All Jacked Up and Full of Worms

Budget was clearly a big factor in why this just didn't work, but it's not the only one. I like that it tried something different but that doesn't automatically make the movie good - just unique. But characters seem to come from some alternate reality where nobody says things humans would say and do things humans wouldn't do. Entire stretches of time consist of nothing happening too, like pretty frequently. So it's shot well and shows promise and the title is a great one - but the writing just needs to be better. If the director ever refined his writing and got a real budget, he could do something pretty watchable. But this isn't it.

Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello) is in a weird place in life. He's a janitor for a scuzzy love motel ad his girlfriend has brought another man home for strange rituals. But he does have a stash of powerful hallucinogenic worms, visions from a floating worm that is speaking directly to him and perhaps a new friendship with Benny (Trevor Dawkins), a moped enthusiast who is trying to manifest a homunculus baby from a sex doll. Manifest a baby from an inanimate sex doll. Basically, a Hallmark movie for the kids. Director and writer Alex Phillips said that this movie is "a meditation on psychosis. The only accurate way to convey insanity is to disregard the literal truth. All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is a dream that is impossible to break from autobiography. It's about expressionistic maggots born in real wounds - maggots growing into big worms, too fantastical and deranged to be real, despite feeling heavy, wet and alive." I found it right up my alley - a gore-filled take on loneliness, connection and love that will make fans of movies like Society stand up and cheer through their tears and normal folk retch in their popcorn. That's a standing ovation in my world.

... but I'm not sure why. I guess to get the most out of my ScreamBox free trial? Maybe to support independent film making? Maybe I'm just on worms ... I'm really not sure any more. The plot: a bunch of people start taking earthworms, which are apparently psychedelic, but moreso in a PCP kind of way than a psilocybin kind of way. It all starts when a sex worker offers Benny, who is obsessed with having a child (having ordered a very bizarre and disturbing sex doll), some worms to get high after he fails to perform with her. He turns them down, but then winds up doing them anyway when his neighbor and motel room cleaner finds them. They run around tripping out, convincing others they know already, or have just met, to do worms until they encounter a murderous couple that are also into to doing worms and join up to ... do more worms. And murder. The rest unfolds in a weirder-than-Lynch series of disjointed trippy, gory imagery. As a hobbyist videographer/editor, I respect the production, effects, and editing, but throughout kept wondering why I was still watching, and even finished watching this. Even though I'm a big horror fan spanning a range from quality to over-looked gems, to campy to avant-garde, this one threw me for a loop. If you're still interested after reading this, by all means, press play.

While working at a remote hotel, a cleaner and his girlfriend stumble upon a strange batch of psychedelic worms left behind and indulge in the offerings which turn the entire relationship between them and several other residents in the hotel into a bizarre trip no one may come out alive. This was a weird and generally bizarre effort. That this one offers a near-endless stream of over-the-top images with the outcome of the drugged worms offering the kind of ooze-filled visuals that denote a drug trip is really all it has going for it. The endless amount of times that someone is getting high off the strange worms through the highly unusual methods featured here and then undergoing a series of highly unconventional drug trips that provide the kind of bizarre format that gets a lot of its power through these unconventional concepts by putting those on the forefront of the scene. It gives the scenes a different nature and has the most to like here. Beyond that, though, there's not much going on with the film. The imagery isn't overtly scary but rather weird and that makes for the potential to be bored senseless with the endless repetition of different effects being utilized one after another. That's also due to the lackluster story that never once goes for anything resembling a coherent storyline since what goes on here is played off like a series of illogically connected sketches loosely assembled into a feature-length running time. Very little of this comes off with any kind of foresight or logic and it tends to be incredibly frustrating as a result which all combine together to lower this one significantly. Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity, and excessive drug use.