Main cast: Ryan Kwanten (Wes) and JK Simmons (Ghatanothoa)
Director: Rebekah McKendry

Anyone old enough may remember the series True Blood, which infested the airwaves in the early 2000s and had everyone acting like they had never seen bare flesh on small screen before.

I personally thought the whole thing, which was a loose adaptation of Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries, wasn’t any worse or better than the hot trend of that time, which was vampire and werewolf  porn-y soap opera, but I wouldn’t dare mention it unless I wanted a bunch of angry wine moms threatening to smash open their empty Cabernet Sauvignon bottle and use a shard to carve the name of their favorite werewolf or vampire on my forehead,

It amuses me so much that Glorious could easily be a sequel of the life of Ryan Kwanten’s man-ho character from that show.

Wes, in this show, is drinking himself into a blackout after a hideously messy breakup with his now-ex Brenda, so much so that he finds himself throwing up in a restroom. There’s a gloryhole on one side of the cubicle. In the next cubicle is… something that calls itself Ghananothoa, a cosmic entity created by his father to destroy all existence.

Ghananotty doesn’t want to, as he’s become quite fond of humans, but he has to shed his physical form to hide in the ethereal plane. What is this, Dungeons & Dragons?

At any rate, the only way he can do is if Wes would, ahem, offer Ghananotty some, uh, pleasure through that glory hole.

No, before anyone thinks that this is a set-up for some pornographic film involving messy slurping and schlepping through various openings on walls and what not, please take note that Glorious is a cosmic horror film with tinges of dark humor here and there.

In fact, I respect the dedication of the people behind this thing to the art of Cthulhurotica, even if they never delivered the sexy in the end. I mean, look at the gloryhole.

How could anyone say no that thing of beauty?

Sure, the premise may seem ridiculous—Wes is trapped in a restroom and he can only be free if he gave the guy in the next cubicle what that guy asks for—and indeed in some ways it is, but there is an underlying air of cacophonous madness and claustrophobia that keep things gripping. Wes’s sanity is already unraveling at the start of the movie, and it’s all downhill as the rest stop becomes increasingly soaked in blood and… other stuff.

Throughout it all, Ghananotty’s soothing, sane timber is a striking contrast to Wes’s increasingly deranged demeanor, even if that timber is asking, even demanding Wes to do crazy things, supposedly to protect reality from his even more monstrous father.

This isn’t a horror movie, though, at least not in a conventional jump scares and gore galore sense. It’s more of an exploration of fragmentation of the psyche, the end of existence, and the courage it takes to shove one’s pee-pee through a gloryhole.

In fact, one can argue that perhaps there is no actual monster here. and that maybe Ghananotty is just Wes’s personal demon that has taken shape as a result of Wes’s worsening madness. After all, those two bond and discuss many things that show how much they have in common, such as their daddy issues—perhaps the fact that they both have so much in common may not be a coincidental quirk of nature.

Oh, and Ryan Kwanten is so hot. I’m proud to say that I’ve liked looking at him before True Blood came to be, and I actually find him easier on the eyes now that he’s older and sporting that facial hair.

If I have any issue with this movie, it’s that perhaps this movie, which isn’t very long in the first place, can feel a bit too long, especially in the middle act, when things start to slow down and even meander a little.

I also wish that they haven’t shown Ghananotty. That thing… man, it’s just not something that will make anyone proud to show off.

Still, this movie is an interesting, often mischievous exploration of how, perhaps, even the most destructive entity in the world deserves a chance at redemption. Even then, there is no nobility in such a redemption—no accolades, no happy ending, just perhaps a fading thought that perhaps one has done the right thing, right before the void claims them.

It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the meaning of heroism and valiance in the form of the great uncaring void. Indeed, this quirky movie has demonstrated an understanding of cosmic horror that is absent in the last few that I’d seen, and for that, I have to give this things two thumbs up.

Sure, Ryan Kwanten may be wearing too much clothes here, but who cares, when the result is exactly as the title says!