phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2022

Glorious



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 19m
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: After a breakup, Wes ends up at a remote rest stop. He finds himself locked inside the bathroom with a mysterious figure speaking from an adjacent stall. Soon Wes realizes he is involved in a situation more terrible than he could imagine.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Not as weird as it thinks it is, not as deep as it thinks it is. The script isn't insightful enough for the subject matter, and it's a little too self-aware to be zany fun. The dialogue needed a lot of editing. The direction and short runtime save it from being a complete loss, though. For a movie taking place entirely in a rest stop bathroom, I was impressed with the visual diversity. Though I found everything fairly uninteresting, it at least wasn't boring. Also, I called the twist before the title card showed up.


Outside Reviews:

Christy Lemire
2.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

The back and forth between these two characters, and between reality and fantasy, comprise the majority of director Rebakah McKendry's darkly comic horror film. But even at a brisk 79 minutes (including credits), "Glorious" feels like an intriguing idea that's been stretched thin to feature length. The weird and witty script from McKendry's husband, David Ian McKendry, along with Joshua Hall and Todd Rigney, might have packed more of a punch as a short or an episode of a "Twilight Zone"-type series. But the performances in what is essentially a two-hander remain intriguing, and you'll never be able to predict where this story is going.


Peter Debruge
A Very Mixed-Up Man Finds Salvation in a Haunted Glory Hole

It's just that, even at 80 minutes, "Glorious" feels four times too long for what it is. Though the movie's premise (hatched by Todd Rigney, then fleshed out by Joshua Hull and Fangoria veteran David Ian McKendry) may seem juvenile, director Rebekah McKendry navigates by an inexplicable parallel-dimension sense of "good taste": She makes it a point to avoid the transgressive shocks one might expect from the concept — like what would happen if a "customer" should put his eye (or any other orifice) up to the hole — instead treating this outré encounter as some kind of cosmic judgment day.