“You got a soul, don’t you? Or did you spend that upstairs too?”

Justin’s rating: The owls are not what they seem

Justin’s review: Some days you sit down on the couch and think to yourself, “I deserve a good movie — nay, a great one! One with solid acting, a gripping story, thrilling special effects, memorable quotes, a skilled director, and a surprising twist or two! I will treat myself!”

And then there are the days when you plop down into a puddle on the floor with all the self-loathing in the world and go, “Hit me with a Full Moon picture. I am not worthy of anything better.”

You don’t go to Full Moon to feel good about yourself and your life’s choices. You go because it’s cheap, it’s entertaining, and it’s available — even if it’s garbage most of the time. But it’s creative garbage, sometimes even well-made garbage, and we are not above that.

Well, this garbage had my full attention right from the start. Netherworld begins with an 15-minute exploration of a seedy Louisiana bar that’s housing a brothel — but when a man ventures deeper underneath into Louisiana’s non-existent basements, he finds room after room full of disturbing discoveries. There’s no explanation to any of it, and there never will be, but it’s delightfully creepy and weird.

With that question mark in the back of our minds, we meet Corey (Michael Bendetti), a pretty boy who’s come to the south to inherit his late father’s estate. While he wants to find out more about the absent father he never knew, all he learns is said father left him a quest to help raise his dead body from the grave. That coupled with the wall-to-wall weirdos that Corey encounters on the estate should’ve made him beeline for the nearest interstate heading north. But no, he stays, and Bad Stuff happens. Eventually.

It’s kind of one of those films where there’s no clear and present threat, just the ominous promise of something waiting in the wings for an eventual reveal in Act 3. Everything’s off-kilter and foreboding, but not “elevators gushing with blood tsunamis” foreboding, so Corey sticks around. There’s a cute girl, after all. Oh wait, she’s underage? Well this got uncomfortable, quickly.

Directed by David Schmoeller (Tourist Trap), Netherworld smacks of a guy who was deeply impressed by Twin Peaks and wanted to give that format a go. Every character is quirky in tone and mannerisms, there’s danger lying behind bright and well-lit spaces, there’s a brothel with sinister secrets, and there’s this ongoing obsession with birds and bird symbology. Oh, and we bump into a flying hand from time to time that made me think of the razor balls from Phantasm.

All of this seems to point at the bar-brothel, Tonk’s Place, because everyone won’t shut up about it. It’s even literally in Corey’s backyard, so if he didn’t go there, it’d be pretty weird.

Southern Gothic voodoo goofiness ensues, and we enjoy a smattering of creature effects and the ongoing yet always unanswered question, “What’s this movie trying to do, anyway?” Your guess is as good as mine. Sometimes films get away from their directors, and that’s when a director stubbornly doubles-down on the attempt instead of backing off and regrouping. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s happening here.

It reminded me a bit of the voodoo-mystery-New Orleans tone of that classic 1993 Sierra adventure game, Gabriel Knight. That game had a much better researched and written story, but it’s nice to have that mental association.

Netherworld gets high marks for atmosphere and characters, but it’s a mess of a slow-burning story that figures if it keeps throwing more and more birds into the mix, you’ll think it’s pretty profound. But it’s really just a silly (if cool-looking) film with a flying hand that gives people feathers, and that’s all you need know.

Intermission!

• Extreme prejudice against a shot glass!
• I would not attend a bar with both live chickens and snakes on the floor and a back railing that empties right out into a swamp
• “I came to get some!” “Sugar, if you can’t say it, you can’t get it.”
• That’s one very tacky KEEP OUT! sign
• I thought there couldn’t be any downstairs basements in Louisiana because of the water table
• Mask dude made me jump
• A man-bird! Some fates are worse than death.
• Maybe don’t trust lawyers with fingerless gloves and long sharp fingernails and can’t shake hands?
• This movie has a definite bird thing going on
• “That’s jailbait, Mr. Thorton. Good for 10 to 15 years with little possibility of parole.”
• His dad was really, really obsessed with sex
• Crazy swamp man with a vision knife and a… feather behind his ear? Or something?
• I do like the big tree in the middle of Tonk’s Place
• “I wanna dance with the boy.”
• Angry chicken plucking! For some reason! Over a still-beating chicken heart!
• How many times are they going to put this bird screech into the soundtrack? Because it’s like every 30 seconds.
• Did that bird just talk to him?
• She would do just about anything for him… despite meeting him 24 hours ago
• You can’t say that this girl had blue eyes as the film shows her very dark brown eyes
• Crucifix dagger? Where do you buy those?
• The director is the bartender who keeps spinning a bottle on his finger
• Is she really Marilyn Monroe? I’m going to wager that she’s not.
• People whose heads keep turning around to be different heads are delightful
• Always weird to wake up with a feather growing out of your head
• “Don’t you recognize me?” Dude, he never met you!
• OK now we’re at the point of the film where you’re kissing your dead dad on the mouth
• Well that’s a goofy-looking parrot puppet: “NEVER!”