Movie review: The Fanatic (2019)

The movie that I'm going to be going over today is one very few of you probably have even heard about. I wish I was in your shoes, but whatever lovecraftian entity is watching over us didn't have the mercy to keep me from this abomination. Honestly, the fact that this movie exists is just god damn baffling, considering the fact that it stars John Travolta and was written as well as directed by none other than Fred "I pack a motherfuckin' chainsaw (What?)" Durst. I honestly thought he had probably OD'd by butt chugging a mixture of gatorade and krokodil, and wasn't even aware he was still alive until I found this movie. Instead, now he's attempting to write and direct thriller/drama movies. Life is fucking bizarre sometimes. I only heard about this film right before it was about to be pulled from its limited theater run, where it made a whopping total of $3,153. 

There is just so much that is absolutely abysmally wrong with this god damn movie. I'm not even sure where I should start at because there's just so fucking much to go over. I'll be up front and say that this movie is hilariously bad, it's certainly the type of movie you watch with friends and alcohol if you don't wanna feel like you've wasted 88 minutes of your time while feeling like Fred Durst is diddling you and causing you to develop retina cancer. But, fuck it. Lets just hop into this trashfire raw with no rubbers, baby. 

The movie starts and we quickly learn that our main characters name is Moose, who is played by John Travolta. From literally the first line of dialogue from our main character, you know this movie is about to make your dick absolutely flaccid and shriveled. And, that's not an exaggeration by any means. What's the first line of dialogue you ask? I'll give you a moment to prepare yourself for the imminent creaming of your pants...Here it is, baby.  "Can't talk long, gotta poo." Now, that is an absolute fucking banger of a line. I honestly believe fucking Beetleborgs has better writing than anything throughout this entire movie. There isn't a single line in this entire movie that doesn't make you feel like you're shoving a used condom into your ears. It is just some stinky ass, to say the least. 

Throughout the entire film pretty much every choice that any character makes is the wrong one. You know how you get frustrated when characters are put into a horror movie just to make a bad choice and die? It's like that, but if you injected it with a concoction of meth and monster energy. (You know, like what Hideo Kojima consumes to make things like Death Stranding.) It isn't frustrating here so much so as it is just fucking baffling how they've written all the characters. Neither the protagonist or the antagonist are people you can sympathize with, unless you're a turbo virgin incel or a diaper wearing man child fighting with people on twitter because they have different opinions. But, back to my point. Basically, you just don't care for or feel anything for the characters in this film, making it disconnected from the audience. 

Besides the horrible characters and dialogue, the acting is also incredibly awful in this movie. Devon Sawa plays beside Travolta as the antagonist (I guess?), and he is the only one who doesn't suck incredible amounts of stinky ass at his role. And, while everyone in this film gives bad performances, Travolta really takes the shit covered cake away with his performance as Moose. I laughed so many god damn times at his acting in this movie, I have no idea what he was trying to channel exactly. Imagine if you took Nic Cage, made him butt chug 3 pounds of cocaine and then lobotomized him and that's about what you get out of Travolta in this film. While his acting is pure fucking shit, it was at least entertaining with how terrible it was, so I'll give the movie that. 

And, speaking of being lobotomized, the film certainly think that all of its viewers must be brain dead lobotomite's finger blasting their assholes to maroon 5 while they watch. Because, my fucking god, does it beat you over the head with a limp dick with some of the most terrible narration ever done inside of any form of media. For some reason they have a very unimportant side character doing it as well, and I still don't understand why. The narration itself also sounds like it was written by an edgy 13 year old writing fan fiction or some shit. One line in particular just made me bust out laughing at how terrible it is, "He didn't just cross the line...HE FUCKING NUKED IT." I could have ripped ass into a microphone and had my computer translate it and still come up with better narration lines for this movie. 

Often seen with the terrible narration are these strange transitions using chalk paintings of characters in the movie. They sort of work as a way to tell you which act of the movie you're in. I personally think these are done about as well as if someone were to load some paint into a porn stars dilapidated butthole and have them fart it out onto a canvas. Perhaps some of you might enjoy the transitions, but I personally think they're very out of place and unneeded. They just make everything feel disjointed and don't add anything to the movie besides wasting an extra 1-2 minutes of your time. 

One thing I feel that I must mention is that this movie shows perhaps one of the most blatant and hilarious metaphorical self dick sucking's to ever befall a movie screen. Fred Durst had the fucking gall to write a scene where Devon Sawa's character is driving and begins playing some of Limp Bizkits music and telling his son how much of a fat boner the music gave him back in the day.  It basically shows us that Fred Durst thinks he is a gift from the minecraft gods to all of a man kind. So, lets all form a line and begin the ball sucking for our sultan of suck, Fred Durst. I genuinely was shocked and couldn't help but laugh and rub my eyes when I saw this shit. Fucking hell. 

I can't really talk about the ending of the film without spoiling some shit, so STOP READING HERE IF YOU'RE PLANNING ON WATCHING THIS DUMPSTER FIRE OF A MOVIE. 

Finally, the last thing I want to touch on is the ending of this fucking nightmarish journey of a film. John Travolta's character breaks into Devon Sawa's home and takes him captive while he's asleep. He spends several minutes basically fucking with him in unintentionally hilarious ways, which was some of the best parts of the movie. He finally breaks free, and then claps cheeks on Travolta's character. However, Travolta begins to channel Butters from South park during that episode where he got a ninja star in his eye, and I just burst into laughter for several minutes. I don't think I've seen a performance where someone is supposed to be gravely injured and in pain, where I couldn't help but crack up from the absurdity of the acting. It's just fucking majestic. He eventually leaves, and then the police show up and arrest Devon Sawa's character for a previously done crime. He doesn't try to defend himself and explain things, and just lets them arrest him even though there's tons of evidence online in the film showing he's had a stalker breaking into his home. The ending is the most nonsensical shit I have seen in years and makes absolutely no god damn sense. 

ALRIGHT. I'M DONE SPOILING SHIT NOW. BACK TO THIS DUMB ASS REVIEW. 

As far as positives go for this movie, I can't really think of too much I would say made me feel like my nipples might just start popping up. The cinematography isn't terrible, but at the same time it isn't very stylized or boner inducing. There was one shot towards the start of the movie where Travolta's character Moose is waiting in a line, and the way they did that shot was pretty neat. While it's not really directly related to the film, I was glad to see Devon Sawa in something again. The last time I remember seeing him in something was SLC Punk and Final Destination. I thought he was probably hiding out as a manager in Walmart somewhere, lost to the sands of time and screams of Karen the antivaxxer soccer mom who wants to return her coffee maker. So, yeah...There's the positives of the film! 

Overall, I definitely have to say this movie while absolutely fucking terrible has some unintentional entertainment value to it. I'm not going to be going back and rubbing my nipples to this or anything, but occasionally when I have people over I might bust it out with some alcoholic drinks and sit back and enjoy making them watch a shit fire in motion. I wouldn't quite put it up there with films like Birdemic or The Room, but it's pretty god damn bad and unless you want to try and reenact the torture scenes from Hellraiser, I wouldn't recommend you watch this film on your own. Save it for a time you yourself can torture others with it :) 

Until next time, dood's. 

Later!