Fried Barry

 Barry (Gary Green) is a waste of skin - a strung out old junkie who only lives for his next heroin fix and mistreats everyone around him, including a wife (Chanelle de Jager) and a young son. So when said skin is taken over by mysterious aliens who want to hijack a local to experience life in Cape Town, it's no big loss. It's sort of like Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin, but in this one the alien gets injected into Barry's body through his uretra. Complete with an explicit shot of (a prosthetic) lil' Barry.

 Alien Barry walks around Cape town for the next few days encountering the seedy side of town's Troma-like misfits and miscreants. He quickly discovers drugs and dance clubs - a combination that gets him laid almost immediately. It's good that he has some moves, because... well, because he looks like this:

Minus the blood, of course. Though I wouldn't be surprised if that was also a turn-on for the ladies in this film.

 It's a shaggy dog story, one where the metaphorical dog spends most of its time metaphorically licking its anus for our benefit. It's not nearly as skeevy or exploitative as it could have been if, say, Lloyd Kaufman and friends had told the story, but it's nevertheless sleazy and willingly confrontational; Most of the humour consists in Barry being confronted with some bizarre situation (usually involving sex or drugs) and then... barely reacting. It's pretty funny, if you click with the film's rhythms and sensibilities. Later things escalate to a couple more involved, sillier and stranger encounters, but the film never really goes completely nuts; it's more subdued than you'd think. And it's got a not insignificant thread of humanity running through it, which keeps it from collapsing into a nihilistic mess.

 Writer/director Ryan Kruger expanded his own short (called... Alien Dick) to feature length, and while it has all the problems that tends to bring with hit he's successful in keeping things varied enough that the film remains mostly enjoyable to the end - it could have done with some tightening, but the film's rambling nature is an integral part of its... well, let's call it charm.

 Most of the acting is fine if you consider most are probably non actors, and there's a heavily improvisational vibe to the whole endeavour. Gary Green is a good foil for everyone around him going full ham - At least going by IMDB, the guy seems to be mostly a stuntman, so good job Ryan Kruger for getting him an actual role. The other person who stands out is Chanelle de Jager, who acts as if she was in a Cassavetes family melodrama - which of course makes the jokes funnier, and imbues her eventual arc with an odd sweetness. A few other characters make an impression - a motormouth friend (Sean Cameron Michael) and a surprisingly convincing psycho (Jonathan Pienaar) in particular.

 It sounds great, with the band Haezer providing a pulsing techno soundtrack that goes well with the action (the mix is a bit off at times, though) and it looks pretty good for a near 0-budget production, too; Kruger and cinematographer Gareth Place scoring some fairly cool-looking shots. There's next to no special effects, barely any bloodshed, and the couple of action scenes are serviceable but pay more attention to, say, a guy shitting on the floor than to the shootout around him.

 And that is, I think, the film in a nutshell in a nutshell. Someone running around some hallways taking potshots with an automatic rifle, but the most important thing in the frame is some random dude taking a dump on the linoleum. The same director and some of the cast got to remake 80's oddity Street Trash last year, and they all seem like a perfect fit for the material; Can't wait to check it out.