GLORIOUS: A Funny Horror Movie that Lets the Jokes Lead the Way

The two genres that tend to fit easiest into a single-location movie are comedies and horror films. The former are essentially reliant on character wise-cracks and quippy banter which can be heightened by two opposing personalities having the ‘deal with each other’ while the latter can take advantage of claustrophobia, entrapment, crippling isolation, and psychological meltdowns that tend to shape the boundaries of an enclosed space for humans.

While Rebekah McKendry Glorious doesn’t quite stay in the same place the entire time, it does combine both horror and comedy to their strengths as genres. The ambiguity of the premise of the movie, the hidden cards that it doesn’t reveal until the end have to be given weight and definition if they’re going to sustain for the payoff. This is where the movie’s comedy, the banter between its main subjects, helps to bolster the entertainment value as well as give us characters that we begin to relate to.

Listen to the Voice

The story starts with Wes (Ryan Kwanten), a young man who just recently lost his girlfriend to an unnamed accident. He keeps a teddy bear she got him as a remembrance. Wes, whose depression turns him to drinking and waking up in unknown locations, eventually finds himself locked inside of a public bathroom inside of a park. But this incidence of being woken in unfamiliar surroundings is not a consequence of drinking.

Fate brought him here, or so says a strange voice who calls himself Ghat coming out of a locked bathroom stall voiced by Academy Award-winner J.K. Simmons. He says that Wes ended up here to help Ghat save the world. He relays a rather vague history of the creation of the universe and that his dad is searching for him to destroy him. Wes spends most of this time freaking out and trying to escape his predicament.

Odd-Couple Horror

McKendry works with a Saw-like premise that incorporates “odd-couple” hijinks that keeps things affloat. The comedy is really what sets Glorious up to maintain its rather flimsy horror premise. This movie rides aptly on the shoulders of J.K. Simmons’ voice which delivers the energy of a snarky philosopher who you can’t tell if he’s pulling your chain or not. Ryan Kwanten works alongside him perfectly, being a hot-head with little patience and a mysterious troubling past.

He doesn’t have time for Ghat’s games and explanations but he ultimately relents because there’s simply no way out. McKendry concentrates on the grimy surroundings of the bathroom and keeps the muck and rust in focus at all times, making us smell the surroundings as much as feel them.

Conclusion:

If there’s a complaint to be made here, it’s that the movie tends to pick the low-hanging fruit in its horror. Utilizing shifts in volume of Ghat’s voice, jumpscares peppered in, and some gruesome blood-splatter, but not delivered in any way that really surprises anyone. This is why comedy is the star of the show. It works both as a catalyst for character development and a nice distraction for McKendry to eventually pull the rug on when the movie comes towards its surprise ending. If you don’t mind a movie teasing you for a good hour before getting to the good stuff, Glorious will prove to be a fun movie that has much more on its mind than you would’ve thought.

Glorious was released for streaming on Shudder on August 16th, 2022.

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