{"id":8193,"date":"2019-06-06T13:19:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T20:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog-proxy.atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/?p=8193"},"modified":"2019-06-06T13:19:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T20:19:19","slug":"overlook-film-festival-porno-review-three-reasons-to-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/overlook-film-festival-porno-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlook Film Festival: \u2018Porno\u2019 Review \u2013 Three Reasons To See It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Keola Racela\u2019s <em>Porno<\/em> is a raucous horror comedy that&#8217;s horny like the Devil (where my <em>Todd &amp; The Book Of Pure Evil<\/em> fans at?). It\u2019s never as sleazy or scummy as the blatant titling suggests, but, in the same breath, lives up to every pound of flesh promised. There\u2019s an unexpected secret ingredient that Matt Black and Laurence Vannicelli bake into their raunchy satanic panic screenplay. A devout thematic engagement to Christianity places focus on virgins submitting to their blasphemous desires, but never once does Racela sarcastically attack or take cheap pot-shots at religion. A horror comedy about averting Christ\u2019s scorn and questing for bare breasts that <em>doesn\u2019t<\/em> aim for the lowest hanging fruits? Pinch me!<\/p>\n<p>In a small, faith-based town near Anywhere, USA, five movie theater employees prepare for their after-hours staff watch. Chaz (Jillian Mueller) and Ricky (Glenn Stott) vote <em>A League Of Their Own<\/em>, while Todd (Larry Saperstein) pesters Abe (Evan Daves) to pick <em>Encino Man<\/em>. That\u2019s when an aggressive vagrant breaks in, eventually chased out by projectionist \u201cHeavy Metal\u201d Jeff (Robbie Tann) but not before opening a hidden and sealed off theater entryway. Upon exploring, Abe finds a film canister with an unknown marking which Jeff reluctantly plays. What starts as some &#8217;70s throwback cult horror flick turns into full-frontal pornography that Jeff nixes, but not before cursed incantations conjure their doom. With the doors locked and no escape until boss Mr. Pike (Bill Phillips) returns at midnight, sexually repressed children of God must battle a sex demon they unwittingly awaken.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NIRro0eIPvY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s no distribution information on <em>Porno<\/em> as of yet, still touring the festival circuit, but here are three reasons to get down \u2018n dirty with this hormonal horror wet dream when it finds release!<\/p>\n<h2>1. Dudes Get Just As Naked And Mangled As The Women<\/h2>\n<p>If there\u2019s one normative practice horror is most guilty of, it\u2019s stripping female characters naked while males stay bundled up in parkas. Women are often squeezed into tight lingerie, or pop cleavage, or inappropriately dressed in favor of skinsploitation. <em>Porno<\/em> does not stand for such bias, featuring just as much male booty as female tush, same for full-frontal on either gender. It\u2019s a refreshing nod that respects how often women are objectified by ogling camera gazes, one that shares the proverbial load as a summoned creature wages sexual warfare against popcorn vendors and ticket rippers fighting for their souls\u2019 purity.<\/p>\n<p>It may seem like an odd bullet point to bring up, but my appreciation also allows for a segue into just how graphic <em>Porno<\/em> gets in terms of nudity and bodily wounds. Women have been shredded and slaughtered throughout horror history to pretty disgusting lengths, but not here. Racela\u2019s effects team will have every male in the audience wincing, reaching downward out of ghost-pain solidarity. There\u2019s a penile moment in <em>Porno<\/em> that\u2019ll 1,000% go down as one of the most memorable and mangled prosthetics in all of, well, whatever year this flick gets releases. My applause recognizes practical SFX brutality and an overall commitment to perversion infiltrating everything from evil\u2019s intentions, to pornographic videos, to churchly damnation.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Over-The-Top Party Horror In The Best Way<\/h2>\n<p>No doubt about it, <em>Porno<\/em> is rated &#8220;R&#8221; for \u201crandy,\u201d \u201crude,\u201d and \u201crad as anything.\u201d Right up there with other supernatural movie theater takeovers like <em>Demons<\/em>. Unleash a sex demon, you mess with the sex demon horns. Between shapeshifting human-on-beast makeout sessions, \u201cHeavy Metal\u201d Jeff\u2019s consistently comical adherence to biblical rules, plus reels of transfixing technicolor blood orgy content, Racela keeps temptation throttled on the highest level. Fears of condemnation scare characters more than mortal wounds, while energies sustain their fully torqued intensity as Lilith (Katelyn Pearce) &#8211; the film\u2019s succubus seductress &#8211; slices and splooges and squashes her way through Mr. Price\u2019s rinky-dink theater.<\/p>\n<p>Robbie Tann\u2019s performance as \u201cHeavy Metal\u201d Jeff is crucial to <em>Porno<\/em> and its party-first genre outlook, from rousing pump-up speeches to high-strung freakouts when rolling fog (yes, in a theater) ushers Lilith\u2019s arrival. Black and Vannicelli enjoy manipulating Christian staunchness, like Jeff\u2019s condemnation of cigarettes (\u201cDo you wanna get to Heaven smelling like ash!?\u201d), while Racela plays the emcee to an apocalyptic &#8220;Birds And Bees From Hell&#8221; PSA. Expect as heavy a lean into hot-as-sin Gothic stripteases as possession aggression. <em>Porno<\/em> is hardcore gruesome, exquisitely immoral, and everything midnight madness cinema should be.<\/p>\n<h2>3. No Need For Crutches<\/h2>\n<p>Black and Vannicelli could have quickly digressed into tired Christian tropes, or better yet, lose wider audience interest to religious divides. Thankfully, character motivations indebted to the Holy Ghost flow naturally into a plot that continually labels masturbators as perverts and fornicators as heathens. <em>Porno<\/em> never feels preachy, or adversely mocking. Racela\u2019s production steps up to a challenge and bashes it out of the park, hinging development on religious Bible-belt enthusiasm while never segregating audiences who might not see eye-to-eye with such strict or guilt-ridden beliefs. It\u2019s not about the corruption of innocence to morph characters into something new, just sexual satanic panic plaguing victims most unequipped to handle themselves.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not to say the script avoids making necessary statements. You\u2019ll witness characters sliding into their rightful sexuality despite church retreats meant to \u201csave.\u201d Rebellious rule-breakers step outside their comfort zones and dabble in emo lipstick and illicit rock music. <em>Porno<\/em> is just as much about coming to terms with the fact that maybe, sometimes, rules are meant to be broken, but never by flipping two middle fingers toward the big man upstairs. Honestly, it\u2019s an ambitious task that\u2019s pulled off with general ease, and only makes the ensuing onslaught of gore-covered, bare body parts a rapturous climax of extreme hellfire mayhem. In a word, \u201cbuckwild.\u201d In a few more words, \u201cPorno knows how to make horror fans scream.\u201d Interpret that sentence how you will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Keola Racela\u2019s Porno is a raucous horror comedy that&#8217;s horny like the Devil (where my Todd &amp; The Book Of Pure Evil fans at?). It\u2019s never as sleazy or scummy as the blatant titling suggests, but, in the same breath, lives up to every pound of flesh promised. There\u2019s an unexpected secret ingredient that Matt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":8212,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,52],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-8193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-review","tag-featuredpage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8193"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8213,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8193\/revisions\/8213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomtickets.com\/movie-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}