Editorials
‘Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls’ – 10 Things We Learned from the Blu-ray Commentaries
If you enjoyed Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls on SCREAMBOX, the Blu-ray is a treasure trove. The horror-comedy is accompanied by three different commentary tracks featuring writer-director-editor-star Andrew Bowser and various crew members, among other special features.
Bowser is naturally funny, seamlessly slipping in Onyx-isms, but he’s also not afraid to get real. There’s a solo director’s track, a commentary focused on the production alongside actress/producer Olivia Taylor Dudley and producer Clark Baker, and a sound commentary joined by sound designer/supervising sound editor Mike James Gallagher.
Here are 10 things I learned from the Onyx the Fortuitous commentaries…
1. The film was intended to start with Bartok removing his eye.
Bowser intended to give viewers a taste of the horrors to come with a cold open that would introduce Jeffrey Combs as Bartok the Great in a scene in which he removes his own eye.
“Originally the movie was like Pumpkinhead, where it opened with something incredibly violent and quick and engaging,” Bowser reveals. “It was Bartok out in a field digging out his own eye and bringing Farrah to life, and then we smash cut to the Mini DV footage of Onyx sitting in his little boy bedroom, and that would whet your appetite for what was to come.”
The sequence had to be cut due to time and budgetary restraints, but its essence remains in illustrations seen later in the film.
2. The film’s lo-fi opening harkens back to Onyx’s viral beginnings.
Bowser always knew that he wanted to start the movie with grainy Mini DV footage to evoke the character’s viral video background. “I wanted to start with something that was purposefully lo-fi to kind of harken back to the viral videos and be a bridge for people that know this character from those videos.
“The idea was always that it would start with this Mini DV audition tape and then bridge into something more cinematic, but then the joke became that the first cinematic shot is also very, very small, in the sense that it’s just Onyx sitting at his computer.”
3. Onyx’s ‘Welcome to the Shadow Zone’ web series helped define the movie.
A longtime fan of Ryan Stanger’s work, Bowser cast him as Onyx’s step-father Todd in Welcome to the Shadow Zone, a web series that ran for eight episodes in 2016-2017. Not only does Bowser consider the series to be a turning point for Onyx, but he also credits Stanger with helping to shape the movie.
“This is one of the only holdovers from Welcome to the Shadow Zone, the web series that we did at Nerdist that really kind of broke open Onyx narratively for me and showed me that I could write a longer narrative story for this character. I remember writing episode 3 of Shadow Zone and being scared shitless because I realized I was out of bits.”
Bowser continues, “In kind of transferring over what I discovered from Shadow Zone to this feature, Todd had to come with. Stanger was actually the guy that said, while we were filming Shadow Zone, ‘You know, you’ve gotta make sure your character actually wins once in a while.’ And I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?”
“I’d never thought of having Onyx win. I’d only ever thought of pummeling him! He’s a character that is kind of a manifestation of so many parts of myself that I am willing to punish, and I don’t know why. I’m in therapy,” he quips.
Onyx does indeed come out on top at the end of Welcome to the Shadow Zone, paving the way for his feature film. “Stanger really implanted within me the idea that Onyx needs to have some victories, and this whole movie is Onyx journeying toward a victory.”
4. Composer Matt Mahaffey’s band impacted Bowser in high school.
In addition to his work in the film industry, composer Matt Mahaffey is known for his alternative pop-rock band Self. The band made a big impact on Bowser during his formative years. He explains:
“Connecting with him artistically through the albums that he put out in the band Self when I was in high school, they literally captured my frustration, my ambition, just a mix of electric energy form that I didn’t know where to put it. I would listen to Self, and I would have a place to put that energy.”
Mahaffey also plays Onyx’s co-worker at Marty’s Meat Hut, Derrell. “Matt and his music, it helped my artistic mind find a lily pad during a time in my life where I maybe thought I was drowning. So the fact that he is not only the composer of this film but he cameos in the film and he’s a collaborator on a very deep level, goddamn, that means the world to me.
“That’s the kind of full circle shit that you just can’t fucking imagine when you’re 13, 14. And the value of it, the weight of it, the worth of it, it’s immeasurable.”
5. Bartok originally took his life in front of his worshipers.
When Onyx and his fellow satanists first meet Bartok, he’s dead on the floor of his mansion, but the initial script had their idol taking his own life in front of them as they enter.
“Initially, when they first meet Bartok, he’s not just dead in the foyer. He kills himself in front of them. It’s pretty dark,” Bowser chuckles. “It was because I saw that movie Hideaway when I was a kid, and it scared the shit out of me.”
He admits to calling his mother to come pick him up after Jeremy Sisto’s character commits suicide. “It was fucking freaky! I tried to put it in the Onyx movie, but it was gonna add so many hours, so I just had him dead there.”
6. Bartok’s mansion was actually haunted.
Bowser is from Maryland and has family in Massachusetts, so he wanted to film on the East Coast. His brother-in-law, Luke Adomanis (who appears in the film as a Marty’s Meat Hut customer), researched East Coast locations that could potentially be used for Bartok’s mansion.
On the list was Venfort Hall in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Bowser immediately knew that was the one. “It was Bartok’s mansion: the sires, the shape, the Gilded Age architecture. Writer’s don’t often get to say, ‘That’s the ‘blank’ that’s in my head,’ but literally when I saw it I said, ‘That’s the mansion that’s in my head.'”
Venfort Hall is said to be haunted, even garnering a visit from Syfy’s Ghost Hunters in 2011. Dudley and actress Rivkah Reyes were among the cast and crew members that felt strange presences during the production, while actor Terrence C. Carson was so put off by the study that he wouldn’t enter in it unless the production was ready to roll.
One of the mansion’s rooms used in the film was pre-dressed by Carl Sprague, whose credits in art direction, set design, and concept art include The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Social Network, 12 Years a Slave, and La La Land.
7. Indiana Jones exists in the Onyx the Fortuitous universe.
When it came time to dress the skeleton from which Bartok takes the Talisman of Souls, Bowser wanted him to look like Indiana Jones.
“Officially, Indiana Jones is in the same universe as Onyx the Fortuitous,” Bowser jokes. “Lucasfilm, come at me!”
8. The movie was originally envisioned as “Evil Dead 2 with Onyx.”
Onyx the Fortuitous’ transition from viral shorts to feature film evolved significantly from Bowser’s original concept:
“When I sat down to write the script for this movie, I thought it was gonna be a really gory, like Evil Dead 2 with Onyx. I thought there would be people getting punched in the head and blood flying everywhere. I had an image of Onyx with blood sprayed up on his face and being like, ‘Oh, goddamn!’
“I started to write the script, and I had these five people come to this mansion. I needed them to be kind of disposable, because I needed to get them to a place where I could sacrifice them for the sake of the gore. I’m telling you, 10 pages in I ran out of steam. I remember I wrote this two-dimensional jock type that was really just there to die, and I thought, ‘If I don’t give the ensemble the same amount of respect that I give Onyx as I write them, then what the fuck am I doing?’
“So I rewrote it from the top with an ensemble in mind where each character was based on somebody from my life, and each character was someone that I had respect for, that I saw in three dimensions. Once I rewrote with that principle in mind, the whole movie came to life. I realized this is not a gorefest; this is a movie about Onyx finding his crew.”
The new approach revealed the movie’s theme of finding one’s self. “It definitely changed the personality of the movie, but I think for the better.”
9. If the movie didn’t happen, Bowser was ready to retire Onyx.
During the Kickstarter stage, Bowser went on record saying that, if the film didn’t happen, he’d likely retire the character. The campaign ended up raising over $610,000 by nearly 7,500 backers, proving that demand exists for the movie.
“I am so pleased that the film happened,” Bowser says. “I would be happy if this was the end of the journey for [Onyx] as a character and for my investigation into what he reveals about myself and my personal journey. But I would also love to see what adventures he goes on next. I love him.”
He concludes, “He’s a way for me to find joy, weirdly, in areas where I usually find stress.”
10. Bowser already has plans for a sequel.
Speaking of Onyx’s continuing adventures, Bowser hints at his plans for a sequel several times throughout the commentaries.
He teases an Evil Dead 2-inspired sequence in which Farrah is “tortured in a cabin by all of these things coming to life,” more of Donna Pieroni as Marty’s Meat Hut manager Masha, a live action version of Marty’s giant mascot seen in the end-credit animations, and Sideshow Collectibles-style Battle Katts statues that “play a huge part in the narrative.”
Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls is available now on Blu-ray.
Director Sébastien Vaniček has been set to helm the next Evil Dead movie, and it’s easy to see why with his feature debut, the spider horror movie Infested. Playing like a cross between Attack the Block and Arachnophobia, Infested makes you care about its characters while delivering no shortage of skin-crawling spider horror moments.
Available now on Shudder, Infested follows Kaleb (Théo Christine), a lonely 30 year old who’s estranged from his best friend and at odds with his sister over their crumbling apartment. His dreams of opening a reptile zoo get drastically thwarted when he brings home an illegally acquired desert spider, one that happens to be gravid, and it gets loose. One hatched egg sac gives way to hundreds more, plunging the apartment building into a visceral arachnophobic nightmare.
It’s not just that Infested employs real spiders for many of the skin-crawling horror moments that make it so effective, though that certainly is a factor. Or in the way the spiders’ venom inflicts a painful, grotesque demise. It’s in the constant escalation of the horror and the way Vaniček captures the arachnids on screen. These eight-legged terrors may not exist in the real world, thankfully, but the movements look authentic enough to make you squirm. That authenticity, the high octane energy, and the constant rise and fall of palpable tension as the spiders skitter about and wreak devastation are enough to leave viewers curling into the fetal position.
While Infested offers no shortage of arachnophobia-inducing moments, from tiny shoebox origins to giant garage encounters, we’re counting down six of the most skin-crawling moments of spider terror. Warning: some plot and death spoilers ahead…
6. Shoe Babies
Poor Toumani (Ike Zacsongo). He finally gets a shiny new pair of coveted sneakers after wearing his to the point of falling apart, only to get bit by a spider when he tries them on. It’s a move straight out of Arachnophobia. Director Sébastien Vanicek draws out the tension in this unsettling scene; the audience knows there’s a spider somewhere in that box as Toumani struggles with the light switch (hell, foreshadowing) before finally giving up to test his new kicks on the stairwell. That his sweet canine companion is with him heightens the suspense as we wait for the metaphorical shoe to drop. Vanicek doesn’t give his audience a reprieve when Toumani smashes the culprit behind his bite, though. A second look inside the shoe reveals the spider had a host of small babies that skittered across Toumani and inflicted even more spider trauma.
5. Air Duct Infestation
Madame Zhao (Xing Xing Cheng) is introduced as the tough building custodian who tirelessly works to get the crumbling building in order, which is no easy task. That makes her one of the first to notice the infestation as she carefully picks up a smashed spider and arms herself with bug spray, and she notices telltale signs of webbing. Zhao uses caution when handling the carcass and even more when attempting to clear the vents with her spray. In a normal world, the pesky spider problem would’ve been handled or at least slowed until professionals could show up. But this isn’t a normal spider situation and the moment Zhao pokes her head up into the vent to check the aftermath, she’s face hugged by a venomous arachnid. Vanicek ensures this terrifying moment comes with maximum suspense. We know what’s going to happen, and that makes it all the more excruciating to watch.
4. Never Put Your Face in a Spider Hole
Vanicek paints a visceral picture of what happens when you put your face in a spider hole in the film’s opening sequence. That brutal lesson lingers as Infested unfurls one of the most intense spider invasions on film in a long while. Seeing the consequences of an illegal trapper getting face hugged in the intro makes what happens to Moussa (Mahamadou Sangaré) all the more skin-crawling. His attempt to squash a giant spider lurking on his bedroom wall creates a hold in the wall, and Vanicek again slows time to an unbearable degree to let Moussa discover the hard way why some dark crevices, holes, and hidden spaces are better left alone.
3. Prime Time TV Watching
When the infestation has fully taken root, and the dire situation has convinced the protagonists to finally flee, Kaleb insists they also attempt to save the long-term residents that were there for him and Manon (Lisa Nyarko) when their mom died. It heralds a harrowing montage that demonstrates the physical and emotional devastation the spiders are causing. Most unsettling of which highlights the fate of Claudia (Marie-Philomène Nga), a parental figure to the siblings. Kaleb and Mathys (Jérôme Niel) enter her dimly lit apartment and find her seated in front of the TV. Though she appears to be sleeping peacefully, Vanicek terrifies with the sudden burst of spiders from the back of Claudia’s head. A quick shot later reveals that Claudia was infested from the inside out, and the image is pure nightmare fuel.
2. Bathroom Attack
Lila (Sofia Lesaffre) is deeply arachnophobic, so she understandably freaks out when she spots a giant spider while she’s using the bathroom. She screams for her boyfriend, Jordy (Finnegan Oldfield), to rescue her, who gallantly brings a glass to collect it. Of course, it doesn’t go well. Jordy eventually gives up and smashes it, scattering the babies on its back everywhere, just in time for dozens more to bubble up from the shower drain. Vanicek dials up the intensity of this scene from the start by showing the audience that there are far more spiders lurking about than an oblivious Lila knows. Keeping her in the dark lends unpredictability, but the anxious screaming from everyone, including nervous friends in the hall, only increases the stress of the unexpected attack. The constant misdirection and frenetic camerawork ensure this sequence gets your heart pumping out of fear.
1. Bad Timing in the Webbed Corridor
Early foreshadowing made it clear that the building’s broken timer on a crucial light switch would become a problem later. And boy does it. When the protagonists come upon it in their bid to escape, they find it now transformed into a webbed tunnel filled with an obscene amount of venomous spiders. The only path forward is through it, but the faulty timer leaves them vulnerable to death when the lights go out. Naturally, Vanicek wrings as much dread from this scenario as possible, leaving Manon (Lisa Nyarko) very nearly caught. The group hits a dead end, forcing them right back into the webbed corridor, which leads to one of the film’s most emotionally painful scenes. Everything about this particular hallway is a skin-crawling nightmare, from the close brushes with spider bites to the dizzying way Vanicek captures the sheer scale of the infestation within this hall alone.
Infested is now streaming on Shudder.
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