6/19/2023 0 Comments Talisman of souls![]() ![]() This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Ĭulturess: The film features constant references: character names, lines lifted straight from the movie, and obviously we see a head get decapitated. We got the chance to (virtually) sit down with Bowser and co-star/horror icon star Barbara Crampton (who plays Onyx’s mother, Nancy) to talk all things Onyx, Re-Animator, and what it’s like taking a film to Sundance. Though it may not be the first genre that comes to mind when you think ‘Sundance’, the festival has been the launching pad for dozens of now-iconic horror titles: The Blair Witch Project, Cube, It Follows, Hereditary, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Halloween, just to name a few.Īmong this year’s titles is Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, a horror-comedy adapted from writer/director/editor Andrew Bowser’s viral internet character of the same name. It could even be a franchise, if the part of Marcus gets a little polish or possibly a whole new actor, but Peter Jackson needn’t be looking over his shoulder just yet.Every year, the Sundance Film Festival gathers cinema’s best and brightest new titles – and horror is no exception. Whether there’s a mainstream audience for this is by the by Bowser has an internet following that supported the film on Kickstarter, and the casting of horror-circuit staples Combs (star of the Re-Animator movies) and Barbara Crampton (star of everything) suggest he knows exactly which festivals it will be heading to next. Surprisingly, the stakes are actually quite high, and despite an ill-fitting gothic-musical interlude (Meat Loaf crops up a lot), Marcus become unexpectedly easy to root for. ![]() Here, though, the thrills are supernatural all the way, as Marcus, more by accident than design, stumbles on Bartok’s real plan. Though the plot is obviously conceived as vehicle for its writer-director, whose style can be (very) generously described as a Jack Black/Ricky Gervais hybrid, it stands up rather well as a Knives Out-style ensemble piece (a fair comparison is the British old-dark-house comedy The House in Nightmare Park from 1973, which pulled off a similar undertone of the credibly macabre). Somewhat predictably, Marcus is designated the virgin of the quintet. One is a queen, one a Viking, one a werewolf, and the other a mystic. Carson), a professor of mysticism, who salivates at the sight of a book known as The Grand Grimoire: “All the unholy knowledge in the world,” he says, “bound in the skin of a fallen angel.” Each is then assigned a character type for the ceremony. The new characters immediately bring much-needed gravitas to the project, notably the impressive Mr. Their first test is to bring him back to life, which somehow they do, although there is immediately something of the charlatan about this sleazy Anton LaVey lookalike. Which is why he has his heart is set on winning a kind of Satanist lottery: Marcus’s spooky idol, Bartok the Great (Jeffrey Combs), is to pick five of his followers to join him at his mansion, where they will perform a ritual to summon the ancient god Abaddon.Īgainst the odds, Marcus is picked to join the group, three women and a guy, and they arrive to find Bartok lying dead on the floor. Despite his avowed interest in the dark arts, Marcus is actually good-hearted sad-sack who desperately craves a change in fortune. In reality, he lives at home with his mother and stepfather in a child-like bedroom filled with BATTLRATTS lunchboxes and figurines while making a meagre living as a burger flipper. Trillbury, an amateur occultist who styles himself as the mysterious Onyx The Fortuitous. Augusto Góngora Dies: Acclaimed Latin-American Journalist & Subject Of Sundance-Winning Documentary 'The Eternal Memory' Was 71īowser plays Marcus J. ![]()
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