Fantastic Fest Review: All Jacked Up and Full of Worms

All Jacked Up and Full of Worms (2022)

Directed by Alex Phillips

Written by Alex Phillips

Starring Phillip Andre Botello, Trevor Dawkins

Playing at Fantastic Fest in Austin Texas through early October

It’s important to go into a movie with a title such as All Jacked Up and Full of Worms with the right mindset. You can’t approach All Jacked Up and Full of Worms with the same expectations you may have for a normal mainstream movie. That might appear to be common sense but you'd be surprised how often movies like All Jacked Up and Full of Worms suffer from criticism from people whose mainstream tastes go with them wherever they go.

I approached All Jacked Up and Full of Worms with the same open mind with which I approached the Tommy Wiseau starring Best F(r)iends movies. I didn’t expect a classically mainstream, straight-forward entertainment. And I was prepared for something that may not make much sense but did so with stranger, more transgressive intentions. All Jacked Up and Full of Worms met my expectations. It also is just what it advertises, all jacked up and full of worms.

The plot, such as it is, centers on two characters on their way to becoming best friends and never seeing each other again, all in one wild, drug fueled day. Roscoe (Phillip Andre Botello) and Benny (Trevor Dawkins), bump into each other by bizarre chance. Roscoe is cleaning a hotel room where Benny had just been having an encounter with a sex worker. He came back to the hotel room to see if he could buy some hallucinogenic worms that the sex worker had offered him and he’d declined.

Lucky for Benny, after failing to sell the worms, the sex worker had left them in the hotel room. Benny explains to Roscoe what the worms are supposed to do but then leaves without taking them. So Roscoe takes them home where he and his girlfriend and the guy his girlfriend is sleeping with take the worms and have a nightmarish but exciting trip. Roscoe especially enjoys the newfound high and is eager to get out and share that high with others.

That’s when Roscoe finds Benny alone on a beach. Why Benny is on the beach and why he is crying is the dividing line between potential devotees of All Jacked Up and Full of Worms and those who may consider walking out of a theater or regretting their choice of streaming rental. It involves a baby doll and that is all I will say. I found it incredibly offensive but also horrifying in a way that I must admit was entertaining.

Beyond the horror of Benny’s stomach churning backstory, He and Roscoe eat the worms and trip balls and go looking for more worms and more friends. Along the way, they fall afoul of a serial killer and his girlfriend, both of whom are also worm enthusiasts. That’s when All Jacked Up and Full of Worms takes a hard turn into horror gore of the Herschel Gordon Lewis variety and once again, you must decide if you can stand it long enough to find out how it all ends.

I have a twisted sort of admiration for All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. The low budget aesthetic and the practical effects gore are fun to watch in a day and age obsessed with the perfection of CGI. That appreciation is NOT a tacit or implied co-sign for some of the choices made in All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. I want that to be clear to anyone who gets offended by an aspect of the character of Benny. It’s an openly offensive, intentionally transgressive bit of provocation that is not necessary and I really didn’t like it but I did enjoy being shocked by it.

Shock, real shock of the John Waters style, is not easy to pull off and most filmmakers don’t see a reason to try. Writer-director Alex Phillips wants to shock and appall and it worked, I was shocked and appalled and I kind of admired how audacious and over the top it was. It’s a shocking idea that is pulled off with shocking, disgusting, vile, visuals. There are no punches pulled and in a way I admire the bravery of that, if not the idea itself.

It also contains a baby doll that is a deeply cursed image that will haunt me for days and weeks to come and it delights me to know I can still be moved to such astonishing levels of disgust from something I have seen in a movie. Obviously, not everyone is going to feel the same way. I just ask that you not judge me for enjoying shock and disgust. And for saying I kind of like All Jacked Up and Full of Worms for being exactly what it promises to be.

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