June 7, 2023

Day: 7, Movie: 7

The June Swoon 2 gets really gross today with the horror/comedy film that can be found on Shudder called Glorious. The film was directed by Rebekah McKendry and featured one basic location, a rest stop bathroom.

Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is traveling with all of his stuff in his car. He was depressed and sad and stopped at a rest stop where he promptly begins to drink and burn items from the car. He could not bring himself to burn the photo of Brenda (Sylvia Grace Crim), the woman he had just lost.

Passed out, Wes laid on the ground all night. In the morning, Wes rushed into the bathroom to throw up. When in there, he was engaged in conversation by a voice form the next stall. Not really wanting to start a conversation, Wes tried to get away, but he realized that the bathroom door could not be opened and that the voice had something to do with it.

The voice told Wes his name was Ghatanothoa (J.K. Simmons), a demigod who was trying to hide from his father, a primordial who had accidentally formed the universe, and Ghatanothoa needed a favor from Wes to avoid its father’s detection and, thus, the destruction of the entire universe.

Glorious was bloody, grimy and darkly funny. The dialogue between Wes and the demigod was both ridiculous and informative. Wes’s constant desperate attempts to escape kept turning out to be failures and he kept flashing back to memories of Brenda.

JK Simmons is, as always, great. His voice was the perfect catalyst for the craziness that was going on in this bathroom. The tale was insane, yet you believed what was happening.

There was a hilarious situation involving a glory hole that has to be seen to be believed. Then, the unexpected twist at the end of the film was shocking and completely out of nowhere, challenging everything that we had known up until that point, and yet, made total sense.

Glorious has a down ad dirty feel to it, much like the setting of a rest stop bathroom, and it keeps you off-balance. The end had that Twilight Zone type feel to it. It is a short film (only 79 minutes) but it uses every second well.