7/19/21 - Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2020) - 6+/10
Vast in its trippy quadrants and entertaining mental-movie corridors it performs like an Atari VHS Nigerian action Jodorowsky romp - your eyes glued and your head gooed. It’s so unique, so wild, and so surreal in its both its understood subdued and in-your-face over-the-top-ness. A fascinating Kickstarter journey, guerrilla filming in Ethiopia for BatAfro futurist vintage exploitation mind swipe. Referential, re-interpretive, rebellious, and above all, ridiculous.
There is such a ‘wink and nudge’ angle to everything in this “Garth Marenghi’s 80’s Tron Spy Trip by way of Kung Fury”. An oblique level of diffusing artifice to it all, from the array of varied diverse actors but their more standard overdubbed voices. Similarly, Psychobook’s bizarre stop-motion appearance with the paper actor masks on and non-fitting voice acting added a low-fi unreality to the “garage band” Matrix. The funky jazz experimental paired with the synth blended soul cool and nostalgic ambience. It’s such shabby constant fun, being both absurdist surface and pointedly deep existential satire.
This film needs a fertile and receptive brain for it to burrow into and lay its xeno eggs in. But, if you meet it on its wavelength, the cheese-meter fully plugged and oddity pontificator properly primed, batty bliss awaits just a bit further down the highway...
