All Jacked Up And Full Of Worms

Cast View all

	Carol Rhyu	Kelsey
	Dodge Weston	Angelo
	Phillip Andre Botello	Roscoe
	Betsey Brown	Samantha
	Noah Lepawsky	Jared
	Trevor Dawkins	Benny Boom
	Eva Fellows	Henrietta
	Chris Cascarano	Delivery Guy
	Coco Wallace	The Worm Baby
	Mike Lopez	Biff
	Yulie Rose Wnorowska	Young Henrietta
	Brandon Daley	Worm Eater
	Ben Gojer	Lucky Bingo
	Sammy Arechar	Dennis
	Kevin Michael Wesson	Worm King Puppeteer
	Evelyn Govea	Drive Thru Cashier
	Todd Jambois	Bait Shop Clerk
	Alex Phillips	Worm King

Crew View all

Director	Alex Phillips
Writer	Alex Phillips
Producer	Veronica Barbosa, Georgia Bernstein, Ben Gojer, Spencer Parsons, Alex Phillips, Jennifer Stoffel
Musician	Cue Shop
Photography	Drew Angle

Trailer

Edition details

Personal

Notes

My quick rating - 3.2/10. Sometimes you watch a movie because it looks great. Sometimes, because the trailer is intriguing. And sometimes you click play simply because it’s short, it’s a horror movie, and it takes place in Chicago. That was my entire decision-making process for All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. Seventy-one minutes? Horror? Chicago setting? Sure, why not?

Seventy-one minutes later, I had the opposite reaction. Why not something else?

All Jacked Up and Full of Worms follows Roscoe, a maintenance worker at a sleazy Chicago motel who stumbles across a stash of hallucinogenic worms. Naturally, the logical next step is to start eating them. Because that's what you do. Once Roscoe and his buddy get hooked on their new form of recreational activity involving worms and their mouths, the story takes a bizarre turn into drug trips and questionable decisions.

And when I say uncomfortable, I mean it.

At one point the two leads decide the next phase of their worm-induced enlightenment is attempting to manifest a child using a sex doll purchased online. And yes, before you ask, the doll is an infant. If you’re wondering what level of depravity the movie is aiming for, well…it aims high and gets there quickly.

To be clear, shocking material alone doesn’t automatically ruin a horror film. Plenty of movies have gone into dark territory and made it work. The problem with All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is that it feels like that shock value is the entire plan. Once the initial “what did I just watch?” factor wears off, there isn’t much else holding the movie together.

The story wanders all over the place like someone just gobbled a handful of hallucinogenic worms themselves. Plotlines pop up, drift around, and then vanish, leaving us wondering what the point was. It plays like a manic fever dream that has no idea what it wants to be.

Writer-director Alex Phillips clearly has some strange ideas rattling around in his head, and occasionally that weirdness almost works. The camera work is occasionally quite solid, and I did catch some genuine filmmaking ability behind the lens. I also found myself appreciating the practical effects more than anything else in the movie. Those moments at least had a little bit of creative spark.

Unfortunately, I got slighted on the Chicago setting. Since All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is set in the windy city, I was hoping for some gritty alleyways or recognizable city scenery for a little nostalgia. Instead, most of the film is trapped in and around a rundown motel that looks like it rents rooms by the hour and probably sells worms by the pound.

I’ll probably keep an eye on whatever Phillips does next. I saw enough bizarre creativity here to suggest something better could be coming.

All Jacked Up and Full of Worms feels like the kind of movie that would fit perfectly on a late-night Svengoolie broadcast. You know the one, where halfway through the rubber chicken flies across the screen and everyone starts making jokes about the motel being located in Berwyn.

Come to think of it, that version might have been the more entertaining cut.

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