Movie Review: GLORIOUS

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: August 19th, 2022 / 11:26 AM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Ryan Kwanten, J.K. Simmons, Sylvia Grace Crim, André Lamar, Tordy Clark
Writers: Joshua Hull and David Ian McKendry, story by Todd Rigney
Director: Rebekah McKendry
Distributor: Shudder
Release Date: August 18, 2022

For a while, GLORIOUS seems like it may be priming us for a cosmic horror dirty joke. After all, the fate of the universe hinges on action largely set in the men’s room of a rest stop.

To the great credit of director Rebekah McKendry, screenwriters Joshua Hull and David Ian McKendry, working from a story by Todd Rigney, and lead actors Ryan Kwanten and J.K. Simmons, GLORIOUS turns out to be, if not exactly its title, a genuinely good movie.

We meet Wes (Kwanten) in what turns out to be the midst of a bad dream, having fallen asleep at the wheel. He pulls over to the nearest rest stop, a quiet little cement building surrounded by grass. Wes winds up getting blind drunk and burning a bunch of photos in the outdoor fire pit.

Wes wakes up the next morning to find that he’s also evidently burned up his pants – don’t worry, he’s wearing boxers – and his wallet.

Wes lunges into the men’s room so that he can be sick in one of the two toilets. The stall he uses has quite a mural on one wall. The wall also has a hole in it of the type sometimes called “glory.” Hence, GLORIOUS.

Wes finds out that the other stall, its door closed, is occupied. The voice is male, friendly, calm. The voice’s owner says he’s been stuck here for a long time and is very lonely. He introduces himself as Ghatanothoa (Simmons).

We’ll pause a moment in case the reader either recognizes the name or wants to Google it. Either way, we’ll soon deduce that we’re in the midst of the Cthulhu Mythos, although this is not stated directly.

Ghatanothoa mostly remains polite, but becomes quite insistent that Wes talk with him. Wes wants to leave; Ghatanothoa won’t allow this.

Wes’s experience is increasingly hallucinogenic. It could be his troubled, starved, alcohol-blitzed brain playing tricks, or it could be real. Either way, he’s in deep trouble.

Movies based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft tend to be either dead serious and scary (THE BANSHEE CHAPTER) or over-the-top looniness (THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE and the adaptations by Stuart Gordon).

GLORIOUS has its own tone, wry and dry (despite all its gore) and deadpan funny. For this, actor Simmons can largely be thanked. Although we never see the performer (we do see Ghatanothoa), Simmons’s thoughtful, careful performance is spot-on. Although he can be beguiling and sympathetic, he never cedes authority. There is nothing camp in his moments of command and rage, making Simmons fully credible as who and what his character claims to be.

Kwanten has the task of largely carrying the onscreen aspect of GLORIOUS on his back. He makes Wes likable but mercurial, so that we buy what we learn about him as the film unspools. His reactions to the building bizarreness are fully on target.

Sylvia Grace Crim, André Lamar, and Tordy Clark all contribute invaluable supporting turns.

Director McKendry admirably treads the tightrope of letting the bathroom setting imply much, without making it so disgusting that we can’t bear to look. She and her VFX artists also uphold a strong aesthetic when it comes to monsters and blood.

GLORIOUS is enjoyable, and has a few unpretentious things to say about value and perspective. Given how cold and alienating Lovecraft’s works and adaptations thereof often are, GLORIOUS is also surprisingly companionable.

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The men’s public restroom of the Cthulhu Mythos

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