Fantasia Festival 2020 Film Review: Fried Barry
Fried Barry is an insane, fevered tour of life on Earth
Our coverage of 2020’s Fantasia Film Festival begins here! With Fried Barry, director Ryan Kruger expands his hit short film of the same name into a feature length fever dream of violent and near-pornographic absurdity. Not everyone will vibe with the film’s provocative vision, but Fried Barry is anchored by a mesmerizing performance from Gary Green and a rollicking improvisational momentum. Minor spoilers ahead…
From its opening credits - which labels the film as “a Ryan Kruger thing” - Fried Barry demands that you be on its wavelength. Within minutes, you’re either completely on board with this crazed exploration humanity’s dirty, seedy underbelly, or you’re turned off entirely. Centered around degenerate heroin junkie Barry (Gary Green, Escape Room), the film’s opening makes it clear that you’re not supposed to like him: Strung-out and zoned out, Barry shoots up dope and saunters home, only to split when his beleaguered wife pleads with him to get his act together, if only for the sake of their young son. Making his way to a bar, Barry continues his bender with drinks and more drugs, but his saga of substance abuse is unexpectedly interrupted when he’s lifted into the air by a beam of glowing red light.
In what can only be described as a sequence that recalls the colorful surrealism of a Panos Cosmatos film, Barry is bathed in extraterrestrial energies, zapped by lasers, and probed with invasive modules in a graphic procedure, all of which is capped off by twisted hallucinatory visions. By the time he’s deposited back on the streets of Cape Town, South Africa, it’s clear that the Barry we know has vacated, making way for a dead-eyed presence that is now inhabiting his body. Has Barry actually been body-snatched? Or is it all just a metaphor for his drug-addled self-destruction? The answer to that question is obviously left to the audience, but what follows is a fevered tour of the weirdest that humanity has to offer, all through the eyes of a supposed alien tourist.
“From its opening credits - which labels the film as “a Ryan Kruger thing” - Fried Barry demands that you be on its wavelength.”
Fried Barry didn’t shoot with a traditional script in place, and it shows. More akin to improvised performance art caught on camera, the film is light on coherence and heavy on atmosphere, jumping from deranged vignette to deranged vignette. It isn’t the easiest task to get with Fried Barry’s incredibly specific vibe, but once you’re on its wavelength, you’ll be gripped by a cavalcade of demented set pieces - there’s copious amounts of sex, grisly violence (some of it involving chainsaws), an armed breakout from a mental hospital, and even some graphic alien birthing. It’s an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that shouldn’t really work, but the film rests on the shoulders of its single masterstroke: Gary Green as Barry. Green is a revelation: Bug-eyes in sunken sockets and mouth frequently agape, Green carries the film by conveying a silent alienness with complete dedication. It’s a genre-slash-horror performance for the ages, and it instantly recalls icons such as Michael Berryman, Derek Mears, and Doug Jones. And with Green’s performance also comes a surprising tenderness you wouldn’t expect from a film that reaches into the pits of depravity - with grace notes of hope and salvation, Fried Barry takes its allegory for addiction and self-destruction full circle.
Fried Barry has a niche appeal that won’t sit well with everyone, but it’s undeniably fun, even if it feels like you have to take a shower after soaking in it for 99 minutes. A look at the dirt and grime of the human condition through a wild genre lens, Fried Barry is a captivating encapsulation of what Fantasia Festival is all about, and a hell of a way to raise the curtain.
