Mark Reviews Movies: PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 21, 2021

The admirably silly PG: Psycho Goreman is cheap and cheesy, and writer/director Steven Kostanski clearly wouldn't have it any other way. The film is a mishmash of genres and ideas, most of them stemming from movies that were plentiful in the 1980s. We get a science-fiction story about a battle for control of the universe between aliens that are either puppets or people dressed up in rubber suits. We also get a pretty nasty bit of shocking, over-the-top, and gory horror, such as when the evil alien overlord awakens on Earth and proceeds to rip off the heads of two murderous thieves.

Tying this pastiche of story modes together is a fairly familiar tale, in which kids make an impactful friendship with and learn important lessons about life from an out-of-this-world visitor. The extraterrestrial visitor, though, is a megalomaniacal, blood-thirsty alien, with a desire to rule over the entirety of the universe and a penchant for eating his fallen foes whole. Meanwhile, the main kid just happens to be a sociopath, who doesn't want anyone else to play with her new "toy."

The lessons are, well, a bit confused, like when the girl's father relates a story about a stranger in a windowless and how trusting the weirdo led to him seeing a most impressive collection of baseball cards. One character's main takeaway is about the power of love—which he proceeds to use to devastate an entire city.

Obviously, this isn't for everyone, but Kostanski wouldn't have it any other way in this regard, too. It's bloody, amoral, and even a bit nihilistic, but Kostanski plays the material with a diabolically amused grin, plenty of winks and nudges, and a commendable command of the movie's throwback special effects. It's fun, although, to be clear, it's a very specific, very niche kind of fun.

Some time ago in a distant galaxy, a great evil was defeated, detained, and dismissed to a realm where he could no longer cause any harm. On Earth in the 1990s or thereabout, Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and her brother Luke (Owen Myre) accidentally dig up the coffin-like vault containing this dastardly creature in their backyard (The brother lost a made-up ball game, and his punishment, according to the demented sister, is to be buried alive). Mimi takes a glowing gem atop the sarcophagus, unwittingly unlocking the tomb in the process.

The freed monster (voiced with growling, stoic deadpan by Steven Vlahos and played by Matthew Ninaber, under a slimy rubber suit), known only by reputation as the "Archduke of Nightmares," plans his moves to return to the world-conquering business. He's stopped, though, when Mimi and Luke track him to an abandoned factory (where he has beheaded two thieves and locked a third in a paralytic state of unending pain).

The gem, as it turns out, gives the alien his power. By possessing the stone, Mimi has the power to control this new friend, whom the kids dub "Psycho Goreman"—or "PG" for short. The Archduke of Nightmares, obviously, isn't too pleased with this arrangement.

There's a pretty direct parallel to this central story (either the one film about a friendly extraterrestrial trying to get home that you're thinking about or one of many that have ripped offs/paid homage to it), but Kostanski's film isn't a direct parody of anything in particular. As a result, there's no sense of safety or security in just how far he's willing to take this story.

The filmmaker doesn't tone down anything. PG (The nickname seems like a meta-gag about the film rating system, with the premise existing as a kid-friendly affair but the actual content being anything but) remains a barbarous monster, constantly threatening to kill Mimi when he's free of her control and randomly exploding a child who dares to make fun of how he looks when the kids take their "plaything" for a stroll around town.

Mimi, who at first seems like an irritating but relatively innocent brat, turns out to be an egotistically cruel bully. She has PG transform her crush into a slithering, tentacled blob, and there is, of course, a musical number, in which the makeshift band of misfits help the girl to sing about how she's "the heckin' best." There's a fashion montage, too, as PG tries on outfits to help him blend in, and the kids' constantly arguing parents (played by Alexis Kara Hancey and Adam Brooks) disagree about the influence this monster has on their children, as if the alien is just a rebellious kid or a mischievous relative.

The film displays some imagination, too—not only in the satirical take on a familiar story, but also in creating PG's world. He has enemies, namely the robotic warrior Pandora (Kristen MacCulloch) and a board of sniveling rubbery aliens, and allies-turned-foes, in the form of a band of generals who have become content ruling a single moon in PG's absence (The most intriguingly designed of these is a sentient metallic vat of heads). PG tries to regale his child captors with stories of his great conquests, rising from a laborer to a power-hungry maniac, and while the kids are bored with the tales, Kostanski's use of models, stop-motion animation, and other in-camera trickery highlights the film's turned-on-its-head nostalgia.

Admittedly, some of this isn't quite as funny or subversive as Kostanski believes it to be. It is, basically, a one-joke premise, but PG: Psycho Goreman is devoted to the gag, in terms of exploring it, expanding upon it, and making fine use of its on-a-budget effects. In other words, the film is just funny and subversive enough, but more importantly, it's clever enough, too.

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