Tyler Cornack's BUTT BOY arrives for Easter Sunday. And, no, it's not a gay porno film.

It is, however, just about everything else you can imagine, should you decide you mash one genre into another into another into another until you've exhausted the field, yourself and perhaps your audience, as well. 

BUTT BOY, the new film directed and co-written (with Ryan Koch) by Tyler Cornack (who also co-stars) is an utterly weird combination of (all deadpan) comedy, workplace/business satire, fantasy, family movie, kidnap thriller, police procedural, and neo-noir featuring kinky-sexual-pleasure. There's no science-fiction, however (even if the publicity material suggests there is), because there's absolutely no science present here, just some bizarre fantasy.

Mr. Cornack, shown at right and in some of the stills below, has created something different, all right, and for a good portion of this 100-minute movie, his initial quiet, suggestive style -- perhaps due to a very low budget not allowing for many special effects, which he saves in any case for his finale -- keeps us guessing and often in thrall.

The story here takes us into the seemingly tired, boring workplace and marital life of a man named Chip (Cornack, below), who, during a routine visit to his urologist/proctologist. experiences something so life-changing that he discovers he is able, and so begins, to suck various items -- these grow larger and larger -- up his butt. When a local child goes missing, things come to a halt and suddenly it's nine years later, when Chip's s addiction re-surfaces.

Oddly enough, the movie Butt Boy most reminds me of is the very recent film, Swallow, in which a newly-married and wealthy housewife begins swallowing small-but-dangerous items until something needs to be done about this.  The style and theme of both films are quite different however, but the premise of a woman who inserts odd objects down her mouth and a man who does this up his butt seems bizarrely similar. (Even one or two of the swallowed/sucked-up objects are rather alike.) 

Swallow is a serious film, while Butt Boy is anything but, and so, for a while, the deadpan comedy -- as a suspicious detective (Tyler Rice, above) tracks our non-hero -- helps keep things afloat. How and why this detective has managed to put together his theory is neither intelligent nor believable (one single clue is all it takes?), but once past this point the movie opts for total fantasy and then, during the final third, the special effects kick in and the film becomes downright silly/crazy.

One must  give Butt Boy, along with Cornack, credit for doing something original, at least, even if his movie goes on for ten to twenty minutes too long. With this kind of thing, less is definitely more. And during the first half of the film, Cornack's elliptical, suggestive style works well with his deadpan humor; then the too-muchness takes over.

Those who prefer "too much" may embrace Butt Boy more easily than did TrustMovies. Either way, this is pretty much a one-off kind of film -- something you might have seen in days of yore from Troma Entertainment, but handled with more taste and subtlety (for awhile, at least.) And the film's final "they are risen!" moment makes it a shoo-in for coverage today, Easter Sunday.

From Epic Pictures and running 100 minutes, the movie makes its debut -- now that theaters seem a thing of the past -- via VOD, digital streaming and Blu-ray disc, beginning this Tuesday, April 14. Click here to learn how you can view.

Childhood sexual abuse meets the cult of American macho in Travis Mathews' DISCREET

Possibly as dark, dismal and depressing a movie as you are likely to encounter, DISCREET, the new film from Travis Mathews (writer and co-director of Interior. Leather Bar.) is also worth seeing for a number of reasons -- starting with the fact of its remarkable subtlety. 

Mr. Mathews (shown at right) doesn't slap us in the face with anything. And considering the subjects he's dealing with -- childhood sexual abuse, revenge, murder, suicide, prostitution, group sex in blindfolds, and homosexualty trying its damndest to disguise itself as the activity of really macho men -- this is quite a feat. Instead, Mathews parcels out his information via visuals and sounds, memories and current activity that come to us in small, oblique shards that we must piece together.

Piece them we do. And, boy, is the finished product ugly. 

The movie's non-hero, Alex (played in properly dark, if one-note fashion by Jonny Mars, above), is carrying around a load of traumatic memory. Instead of trying to work this out via more usual routes -- a therapist, perhaps -- he has taken to arranging oddball group sex sessions between men (below), while simultaneously stealing their money;

hiring a young man to do who-knows-what with the very fellow, now old and infirm (Bob Swaffar, at left, below), who molested Alex in his younger days; fellating and/or jacking off a local wealthy Hispanic man in his sauna (João Federici, shown at left, two photos down); and then onwards to actions that are much, much worse.

The breadth (if not the depth) of the despicable goings-on here is near breathtaking, and yet Mathews gives it to us as though these were merely every-day events. (Perhaps, for those engaging in them, they are.) This makes it seem all the more awful. Intercut with the degradation is the interesting web site of a young and pretty Asian woman with whom Alex seems to want to connect.

Yet despite this tiny morsel of hope, along with the attempt of Alex's mother to share her son's life in some small way, our boy is dead set on a course of major destruction. Throughout, the filmmaker never strays from his oblique style, dark content and refusal to provide us with one bit of the usual positive spin. The result is one of the more unnerving, queasy-making movies in recent memory. And yet, due to Mathews' subtle, indirect approach, TrustMovies does not remember a single moment of overt violence, blood nor gore to be seen. Yet all of this is present, somehow, via the unspoken "threat."

Discreet opens this Friday, June 1, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 and simultaneously will be available via VOD. The movie is certainly worth a look -- if you're ready for something strange and about as far from feel-good as you can imagine.