I love weird films. Sitting there watching some far out, crazy, fucked up plotline, with crazy visuals and some eccentric characters, even inanimate objects that are characters, is something I find strangely intriguing. Films like Naked Lunch, Chasing Sleep, Brain Dead, Session 9, or the more recent John Dies At The End, find a special way to penetrate my cranium and nest itself upon my pink bloody, man-child brain unlike other films. I will never forget these films, no matter how long it’s been since I’ve seen them. I have been watching horror films for over 30 years and there are only a handful of films…well, actually just those mentioned, that have affected me this way. MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH, written and directed by Don Thacker, shoved it’s way into this category, pleasing my brain which has been lacking this type of film for awhile now and pleasing my love of the bizarre.

Ian is a 30-something depressed guy who loves TV a little too much. He hasn’t ventured from is apartment in 66 weeks. He has his food delivered to him and can’t pay his rent in fear of going as far as the mail box to mail the check, or to take it to his landlord on the other side of the complex. When his TV dies, which he has named Kent (his only friend), it’s time to end it all. After a botched suicide attempt, he finds new friendship in a large growth of mold living beside his bathroom sink. The Mold is going to help Jack, um I mean Ian, get his life together and even help him get the girl that lives next door that he has become infatuated with.

Or maybe The Mold has other plans for him.

Just writing that synopsis makes me giddy. What Hollywood studio would hear that pitch and say “let’s shoot it!”? None, because they’re big moldy pussies themselves.

There is not one thing I can say negative about this film. It crosses way beyond the line of strange allowing Thacker to do whatever he wants, no matter how little sense it makes, or how fucked up it is, and as the writer of this crazy story, he earns that right. Adrian DiGiovanni is splendid as Ian; you can see every emotion from this character illuminating out of him as he comes across these strange characters and fucked up, mind-boggling  situations. The big star in the film though, is The Mold itself. No CGI here folks, the mold is living and breathing in real life, controlled by some amazing puppeteers and reminding me of a smaller, more suave and sophisticated Jabba-the-Hutt. What really brings this character to life is the hilarious voice performance by genre legend Jeffery Combs. I have seen Combs in some pretty amazing roles from Re-Animator to The Frighteners, but this has to be one of my favorites. He brings The Mold to life with some funny but logical dialogue and his line delivery and voice tone made me forget I was even watching a puppeteered piece of rubber.

The film is down-right amazing, I can’t stress this enough. It kept me guessing throughout the film, but it allowed me to form my own thoughts on the ending by putting the pieces of the puzzle together from what I just witnessed. This isn’t one of those films that doesn’t have an ending, it does and a good one, but it also allows you to rethink what you just saw and interpret things how you want.

This one surely soaked into my brain and goes along side some of the craziest, strangest, and greatest genre films I have seen in my 30 plus years of viewing. This is yet another I will never forget and I bet you wont either.

MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH is available now! If you don’t check this one out you may find yourself talking to a strange growing mass on the side of your bathroom sink.

 

MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH – The Mold Abides – Review –