Fuck You Immortality

  Its title later sanitized to the more streaming services-friendly "You Can't Kill This!", Fuck You Immortality is a mockumentary that follows a burnt-out hippie couple (Bill Hutchens and Josephine Scandi) as they try to track down Joe (Brutius Selby,) an old acquaintance that, they slowly come to realize, is immortal.

 For such an oddball indie bit of a genre goof, it's got surprisingly high production values: It looks great, it's well paced, includes fun and very gruesome practical gore effects, and has a bunch of good needle drops. It also scored a huge win with its two leads - Tony is a quintessentially British space cadet sweetheart, and Kacey's preternaturally even-handed and wry. They're both a lot of fun to watch and have an easy chemistry together that's extremely charming; it's easy to believe they've remained a loving couple for years and years.

 It's a shame that the film around them never really manages to find itself. The story is fairly engaging at first, as the couple hit the road with a documentary crew following the scant leads as to Joe's eventual fate - one found by chance, and more later after they set up a website and ask others for information. Then (spoilers for a bit that's a major part of the trailer) Joe suddenly turns up... and the movie doesn't really seem to know where to go from there. It manages some mildly amusing scenes, and remains pleasant for the duration until it settles on an tonally discordant ending that... well, way to harsh my mellow, movie.

 Even before those issues come into play it's clear that the movie is mostly just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, with an extremely episodic nature that allows the central couple to meet various colourful characters and get themselves into crazy situations. Hutchens and Scandi do wonders to prop it up even as the film flails manically with forcedly quirky conceits like having Tony deliver exposition while he plays with rubber ducks in a bathtub, or Kacey sing a song as Tony dances in the background.
 Most of the actors besides them don't fare as well. The various nutjobs they run into run the gamut from mildly amusing to annoying scenery chewers; often both at the same time. That also sadly applies to Selby, who strains a bit too hard to sell Joe's intensity. No one is helped by a script that's a mix of R-rated dad jokes, broad stereotypes, non-sequiturs and cheap shocks. A lot of it is interesting in concept but doesn't really work in practice; I was often left thinking that I should have found a given scene a lot funnier than I ended up doing.

 There are also a lot of asides such as a sizzler reel of the Ninjasploitation movies that Joe was up to in the 80s, or a fun segment that showcases Tony and Kacey's various bloody attempts to grant Joe a final death. The filmmakers clearly had a lot of fun with these, and their love for genre fare is pretty endearing.

This one they call "The Predator"

 It had a few things that made me chuckle, and one actual laugh late in the movie with what's probably the best vegan joke since Scott Pilgrim. But despite its punk-rock title, shock humor and purposefully downer ending, this is mostly an inoffensive, pleasant time waster. I feel bad saying this about a movie that includes a maneuver it calls 'the Fulci' that fully lives up to its name... but to be perfectly honest, this is probably best left running in the background.