[Overlook Review] 'Porno' is an entertaining as hell ride with a messy climax

Beware, abstinent teens! Open your bibles. Grab your crucifixes. Cover your innocent eyes (but really, don’t), because the bloodiest, most satanic, literal ball-exploding horror comedy has come to the Overlook Film Festival in the form of Porno…

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​…Playing TONIGHT at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans, Porno is a unique, wildly insane commentary on Christian values that will have you asking, WTFHJD (what the fuck has Jesus done?). Written by Matt Black & Laurence Vannicelli and directed by Keola Racela, Porno is Racela’s feature debut about five teen employees at a theater in a hardcore Christian town who find a film reel in a secret room. When they decide to play the film, it unleashes a seductive succubus (Katelyn Pearce) on them all, testing their Christian values in a torrent of sex and blood.
 
The first thing you’ll notice about Porno is that it absolutely delivers on what you’d expect from the title. Racela’s film opens with Abe (Evan Daves) and Todd (Larry Saperstein), watching outside a window as their neighbors enjoy a hardcore afternoon delight. As we discover through a series of entertaining introductions, these two teens, along with Chaz (Jillian Mueller), Ricky (Glenn Stott), and Jeff (Robbie Tann) are all sexually repressed, in one way or another. The Christian values they’ve been brought up with, along with the cult-like teachings of theater owner, Mr. Pike (Bill Phillips), has infested their minds and filled their heads with ideas like sex is wrong, being gay is wrong, porn is a sin, masturbation is the tool of the devil, and cigarettes are evil (that last one’s actually kind of true, coming from an ex-smoker). These kids are all terribly afraid to give into their human desires, constantly saying CBTL-Christ Bears the Load-as a sort of comfort to fight against their urges.
 
But this is what makes the kids in Porno so damn relatable. We’ve all experienced the confusion that comes with sex and getting older, and the entire cast of kids bring a vulnerability and desperation to be considered “normal” that will have you rooting for them to overcome the brainwashing of the church, and praying that the bastards like Mr. Pike get what’s coming to them. The most terrifying aspect of the film is that these kids have all been damaged in some way by their teachings, afraid to so much as swear, with Jeff using “cheese and rice” in moments of frustration. Fuck that. Porno is all about shattering the chains of that kind of self-repression, and letting it out in the most fucked up, perverted way possible.
 
Porno is a film heavy on style and mystery, like an adult Goosebumps book with an Italian horror vibe. Racela and cinematographer John Wakayama Carey suck us in with Argento-style surrealist colors, foggy theaters reminiscent of Demons, and loads of provocative imagery with an all-inclusive sensibility towards nudity. Like the demon inhabiting the bloody arthouse porno which the kids decide to watch, Porno sucks us in through seductive though violent imagery, and an alluring score from Carla Patullo that sets the mood just right for some satanic foreplay. Porno is actually a lot like sex, for both the viewer and the characters. We, like the characters, are being teased, hypnotized into wanting to see more despite the inherent danger. But the danger of it all is what seduces us and the cast. They’re all so sexually dormant that for them, the “sinful” porno is like an awakening, opening them up to the succubus and her power. Porno is simply spellbinding. 

​Enter our succubus, a demon which steals souls through sex, played with a devilish, daring performance from Pearce. Succubi happen to be a more underrated creature in horror, rarely used and dumbed down to basics. Not the case in porno. While Lilith is unfortunately lacking in much personality, Pearce brings an undeniable presence to the screen. The filmmakers give us a unique take on Succubi, commenting on the repressed nature of Lilith’s victims by having their private parts literally explode, and not the sort of explosion they were hoping for. Porno may be short on the body count, but is wild on the gore, with easily one of the most uncomfortable mangled dick gags I’ve ever seen. Porno is a film that isn’t afraid to get nasty, in every sense of the word.
 
For most of Porno, the film is calculated, mysterious, sexy, funny, and ultra-entertaining. And then we hit the third act, and it all falls apart. The ultra-obscene nature of the film doesn’t pair well with the Are You Afraid of the Dark-type safe ending, but what’s more aggravating is the surviving characters’ inability to change. Porno implies that these kids have all been weighed down by false beliefs of what is wrong and right, yet in the end, they’re still quoting CBTL, they’re still not even swearing, and we’re left wondering what the message is here. Are these kids supposed to have learned that their sexuality is not a sin and that the strict rules of their religion have led them astray, or are we simply trying to say that they were right to be abstinent and that porn is, in fact, evil? Porno isn’t clear on that answer, resulting in a thematically unsatisfying end that seriously hurts an otherwise entertaining as hell film.
 
Despite the mixed messaging and too-silly ending, Porno is an otherwise perverse exploration of sexuality with a tongue-in cheek tone that will have many giving in to its seduction. It may be Hellraiser-light for some, but Porno touches you in all of the right places.
 
Porno is showing at the Overlook Film Festival tonight at 9:30pm. 

By Matt Konopka