Fantasia Festival 2022 Film Review

Despite endless meditation apps, Kallie Jones is losing the fight against her inner ‘Karen’. Her explosive meltdowns have cost her realtor of the year to the sex bomb sales agent Cynthia Doyle. Completing her misery is her stagnant marriage to the apathetically suicidal Brad.

In desperation, she enrols him in the “alchemised safe space” of Hope Acres clinic. When they extend his stay against her will she is forced to make an unholy alliance with cancelled “Cult Buster” Dale Domazar.

Monster Brawl director Jesse T. Cook’s broad comedy horror is low on budget but high on inventive energy. Benefiting from a lively, and genuinely amusing, script his film scatterguns satire without overindulging in tiresome political posturing.

Cook is a filmmaker who knows the true worth of working with a crew he trusts, and more importantly, one that is committed. Consequently, Cult Hero fizzes with a freewheeling vigour and cast camaraderie that keeps it consistently entertaining.

Naturally, the relationship between the strung-out stress magnet Kallie and the rambunctious one-liner machine Dale is pivotal to the frothy fun and gory games. Our two underdogs have clashing personal agendas and though frequently forced onto the same page they are reading from entirely different books. Yet they bounce off each other with such an abrasive glee that the resulting chemistry plasters over any cracks caused by pulling in different directions.

The excellent Liv Collins imbues Kallie with enough kooky humility, tortured regret, and rigid determination to diffuse her organic annoyingness. It’s a genuinely brave performance that fully embraces the psyche of a woman more than willing to bully kids running a wholesome lemonade lawn stall. Kallie may be a vengeful bitch, but she knows it, and it’s her struggle to become a better person that creates audience empathy. Collins harnesses this with a skilful zeal that adds much-needed dimensional expansion.

Ry Barrett goes all in with his rasping portrayal of the bonkers and blinkered Dale Domazar. Whether he is playing golf in dirty pants outside his festering mancave trailer or dispatching skull-masked murderers without eyeballs he is always relatable. Barrett gives Dale a sense of misdirected but well-meaning self-belief that offsets his delusional meatheaded persona perfectly.

Also superb value is genre stalwart Tony Burgess as the cult leader Master Jagori. He is clearly having a total blast as the guru offspring of a seedy one-night stand between The Dude, Charles Manson, and the lead singer of The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

The jokes range from quotable zingers, cute visual gags, and acerbic stabs at new age fads and cancel culture. Not all of them land solidly, but there is such a relentless flow of silliness that it seems churlish to grumble.

It is at its best though when embracing the mechanics of farce and when it allows the actors a chance to breathe naturalistic life into their roles. The rehearsal of the cult’s impending ascension ceremony is low-key hilarious and the corresponding song is a cheesy blast of brilliance.

There is a fair amount of slapstick violence, mercifully mostly rendered in a practical fashion, played out in a knowingly pedestrian manner that adds to the chaotic whimsy. Shotguns, flame throwers, and even hedge trimmers are thrown into the surreal mix of genre-savvy madness.

Sure it’s a touch agricultural in its production. However, it’s a charming gaucherie that recalls hints of John Waters, the essence of early Peter Jackson, shades of Troma and Astron 6, and dare I say the garish hues of RoboCop era Verhoeven. To its credit, Cult Hero feels like it was birthed by a sense of community creativity as opposed to being crossbred in the sanitised laboratory of film studio economics.

If a slice of bonkers Midnight Movie action is what you crave then you can’t go wrong with this anarchic screen dump of zany enthusiasm. As its title suggests it seems destined to find cult status. Especially amongst those film fans who relish harvesting earthy thrills from the grassroots of independent filmmaking.