Tubi Tuesday: Wowzers (2019)

Equal parts grindhouse and experimental horror, “Wowzers” is a bold, abstract short that blurs the line between dream logic and depravity.

Something is very wrong with Jacqueline (Sam Fox). Haunted by a strange, recurring dream with no apparent meaning, she spends most of her time staring at her own reflection, seemingly trying to keep her whole sense of self from shattering. Her odd mood doesn’t seem to affect her boyfriend, Hale (Doug Noble), all that much, at least until she tries to goad him into hitting her before smashing a vase over his head.  

So begins Wowzers, a 40-minute experimental short horror trip directed by Ace Thor, co-written by Thor and Fox.

Trying to find some meaning to her dream, Jacqueline leaves her comfy existence and ends up in the titular locale, a liminal space that seems to exist somewhere between the physical and the subconscious. 

There she meets a host of oddballs, including the sexually frustrated proprietor Mr. Dimms (Sam Ball) and the sweetly innocent Kayla (Sarah Jo Marson), hoping that this strange place will help her understand her dream. Whether that actually happens might be in the eye of the beholder. 

Wowzers was released by the very straightforwardly named Boobs & Blood, an L.A.-based organization that runs a horror film festival and breast cancer awareness fundraiser, which is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. Their web presence is sparse, so I’m not sure if they’ve released more films under their own name besides this one, but it seems like they’ve got their hands in all kinds of different things, from films to zines and beyond. 

Wowzers is very much on the arthouse end of the spectrum, favoring a more expressive approach that pushes its horror past the point of abstraction.

David Lynch is referenced in the poster’s pull quote, and he feels like an obvious influence, from the film’s calculated strangeness to the mysterious door lit by a buzzing red neon sign.

Thor and cinematographer Cosmo Wolski often frame their shots so that the terror is just off-camera; one instance, an early shot of the heroine seemingly being choked by an unseen force, is visceral and disturbing.

But for all its artfulness, there’s also a prurient streak running through the film, one that likes to revel in kink and fetish, with a fair degree of humor to offset its more cinematic aspirations. Ball in particular is a lot of fun as the peevish, slightly menacing Mr. Dimms, and his expletive-laden monologue feels like as good a thesis for the movie as any.

It’s sort of hard to know what to make of it all together, if it’s meant to be a piece of throwback grindhouse sleaze or an artfully deconstructed horror story, or something else entirely.

At times, like in the dream sequence that drives Jacqueline to seek out the club, sound and image are so distorted as to lose all meaning and connection, brief snippets of recognizable figures or screams popping out of an amorphous mass.  

Wowzers seems designed to support any meaning that the viewer wants to place on it, rather than offer too much to tip it in one direction or another.

For me, the film’s deliberate conflating of sex and violence, especially Mr. Dimms’ desire to be destroyed in order to finally reach orgasm, feels like a bit of meta-commentary on the audience’s own desire for what’s come to be expected in a horror movie. 

Plenty of horror movies have implicated the viewer for their thirst for violence, so this might not be the most novel interpretation, but the movie does eventually deliver the two things promised by its distributor.

Giving Mr. Dimms what he—and the audience—wants seems to be the thing that allows Jacqueline to break free.

This approach might not resonate with viewers who prefer a more straightforward path to Boobs & Blood’s two main offerings, but for those who enjoy arthouse weirdness, it just might be worth the trip.