The Power to Destroy the Universe

The childlike wonder of youth meeting up against fantastical adventures is a tried and true formula in Hollywood. You can find many examples of it, the most popular (among Gen X and Millennials) being The Goonies, the story of kids diving into an underground series of caves to find a lost pirate treasure. The film helps to set a template that many other films have toyed with, from the Harry PotterFirst released as a series of books (starting in the UK before moving worldwide), the Harry Potter series gained great acclaim before even becoming a series of successful movies. Now encompassing books, films, a prequel series, and a successful two-part play, the series even now shows no end in sight. series (which is really just, “kids discover magic is real, and then go on adventures”) to the recent Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same. TV series, Skeleton Crew.

I’ll hazard that you could create a whole genre of “Like The Goonies but…” films. Hell, you want The Goonies but with classic monsters? How about The Monster Squad? Maybe you’re looking for a little sci-fi and time travel in your film. If so, try out Flight of the Navigator. And, of course, just about anything Chris Columbus has directed (including Harry Potter) has a certain aura of connection, since he was also the writer on The Goonies. He knows how to bring that kind of childlike wonder to a Hollywood production.

And then, of course, there’s the films specifically parodying that specific vibe, creating films meant for the adults that once used to be children, who still remember what it was like watching those films and feeling that childlike wonder, only to also enjoy seeing it perverted in ways only adults can appreciate. We covered one such film a while back, the weird and delightful Turbo Kid. Now we have another, a weird, monster carnage trip of a film hailing from the cold, cold tundra of metropolitan Canada. A weird little film called PG: Psycho Goreman.

The film focuses on two kids, Mimi (Nita-Josee Hanna) and Luke (Owen Myre). Mimi is the younger sister, but also the more aggressive and athletic of the two. When playing a game in their backyard (Crazy Ball, a game where they seemingly have made up all the rules and all it really leads to is utter chaos) they two discover a buried gem, glowing with strange light. Since Mimi won the game, she gets to take the gem, and when she holds it she unlocks the power of the alien creature sealed in a vault by the gem: the Arch-Duke of Nightmares (performed by Matthew Ninaber, voiced by Steven Vlahos), who Mimi immediately renames Psycho Goreman.

The kids decide to hide Psycho Goreman (PG for short) in an abandoned warehouse near their home, and they then start hanging out with him daily. He wants nothing more than to kill the children, and everyone on Earth, but the power of the gem limits him. While Mimi holds it, she controls him. Various forces, though, want to steal the gem from her and use it to either control PG or kill him. This includes the Templars, led by Pandora (Kristen MacCulloch), who banished PG to the backwater planet (Earth), sealing him away, and now that he’s back she wants him dead, once and for all. This could lead to a battle for Earth itself, with these two kids at the center of it all.

PG: Psycho Goreman is an utterly strange, at times pretty disturbing film. On the one hand it’s clearly modeled after childhood adventures of old. The kids, Mimi and Luke, stumbled into an adventure they couldn’t possibly have dreamed of, gaining power over an ultimate weapon, in effect. This does mirror ideas from films like Flight of the Navigator and The Last Starfighter, two classic adventures of the genre. But the kids are also spoiled and selfish (especially Mimi) and instead of using this power for good, or for learning and growing, caring and sharing, they just use it to have fun, damn the consequences.

That then leads to the other hand, where the film is a pretty grotesque story of an ultimate evil, with a good splash of body horror thrown in. The Archduke of Nightmares, in another film, would be a HellraiserBorn from a short story by Clive Barker, this series introduced a new kind of killer to the burgeoning 1980s Slasher scene, a demon from Hell with the promise of pleasures for those who opened a puzle box. Those pleasures, specifically, were: gore, screams, gore, terror, and gore. or Wishmaster style threat, someone that takes what you say and grants exactly what you asked for in the most perverse way possible. He kills and tortures freely, turning people into disgusting piles of meat and viscera, putting the “gore” into his Goreman name. It’s disgusting but also hilarious, and the film gets a lot of mileage over just how sick and twisted it can be.

It’s a real tonal flux between the two sides, with the kids seeing unspeakable evil pretty regularly and not being phased by it in the slightest. I think it’s hilarious how the film plays it, letting all these awful things just wash right on past, horrifying the audience while the characters in the film barely remark on it at all. A different film would have the characters see the horror and be freaked out by it, but not this film. This movie plays it for laughs as well as scares, riding a tightrope to get both sides even as it careens back and forth wherever the story takes it.

Of course, that also means this is a film where, by and large, you don’t really like the characters. Mimi is a little sociopath, motivated by her desire to get whatever she wants and ignore everything her brother wants. Luke’s a pushover who can’t fight for himself, and the few times he throws up resistance he gets steamrolled and backs off. You wish the kids would be better, more interesting people, but then if they were they likely wouldn’t end up in this kind of adventure with the Archduke of Nightmares at all. They would have run screaming into the night instead.

But while you might not like anyone in the film, it’s hard to deny that the gore and special effects are great. The film does use CGI regularly, especially for a number of fantastical backgrounds out in the far reaches of space. Most of the time, though, it relies on gross and effective practical makeup and special effects. These have that lived in, gooey quality that makes great horror special effects sing, feeling properly tactile and real. The film is slopped with blood, viscera, slime, and gore, and it makes no bones about it. You came to watch a film called PG: Psycho Goreman and it absolutely intends to deliver on the gore for the Goreman.

That’s what makes it fun. This is a disturbing but hilarious movie playing in the childlike wonder genre while absolutely lampooning it as well. It’s a loving parody of all the films adults grew up with, melded into a package absolutely dripping with blood. It’s not going to be for everyone, but those that can enjoy a sadistically dark comedy absolutely should check this film out. It’s worth it.