Saw this at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
"Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls" is a story about fledgling occultist Onyx and a group of worshipers attend a once-in-a-lifetime ritual at their idol BARTOK THE GREAT'S mansion. Based on Andrew Bowser's character named "Onyx the Fortuitous", the film is meant to be a throwback of cheesy 80s horror film and fun non-serious halloween film. I haven't seen much of Bowser's work besides his work in "The Mother of Invention" which I thought was pretty good. However, this film was painfully awful and annoying to watch.
It's clear the film is trying to be non-serious but the problem is that the film's humor and writing feels extremely forced as if it was trying too hard to be funny which ultimately ends up being pretty cringy. The story feels like something from Scooby-Doo but instead of being clever, it's filled with unfunny humor, extremely annoying characters and an all over the place scenario.
Most of the humor feels like humor you will find in terrible modern comedies about toilet humor that is annoying. None of the performances were good and were all pretty bad. I can not stand the character of Onyx the Fortuitous and every other character feels like flat out rejects from a terrible Nickelodeon show. It almost feels like I am watching something from terrible YouTuber films like "Space Cop, Smosh: The Movie, Airplane Mode, and Not Cool". The production designs feel cheap, the dialogue is purely awful, and it never was boring but I felt more annoyed rather than bored.
The only good aspect about this film were the special effects especially the uses of puppets and costumes were good. Overall, it was painful and highly unfunny. But better than most Youtuber films I guess.
Rating: D.
"Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls" is a story about fledgling occultist Onyx and a group of worshipers attend a once-in-a-lifetime ritual at their idol BARTOK THE GREAT'S mansion. Based on Andrew Bowser's character named "Onyx the Fortuitous", the film is meant to be a throwback of cheesy 80s horror film and fun non-serious halloween film. I haven't seen much of Bowser's work besides his work in "The Mother of Invention" which I thought was pretty good. However, this film was painfully awful and annoying to watch.
It's clear the film is trying to be non-serious but the problem is that the film's humor and writing feels extremely forced as if it was trying too hard to be funny which ultimately ends up being pretty cringy. The story feels like something from Scooby-Doo but instead of being clever, it's filled with unfunny humor, extremely annoying characters and an all over the place scenario.
Most of the humor feels like humor you will find in terrible modern comedies about toilet humor that is annoying. None of the performances were good and were all pretty bad. I can not stand the character of Onyx the Fortuitous and every other character feels like flat out rejects from a terrible Nickelodeon show. It almost feels like I am watching something from terrible YouTuber films like "Space Cop, Smosh: The Movie, Airplane Mode, and Not Cool". The production designs feel cheap, the dialogue is purely awful, and it never was boring but I felt more annoyed rather than bored.
The only good aspect about this film were the special effects especially the uses of puppets and costumes were good. Overall, it was painful and highly unfunny. But better than most Youtuber films I guess.
Rating: D.