Wow! is the word that stuck with me after watching surreal arthouse wrestling horror experience, Mr. Reset and the Society of Turnbuckle & Bone. Written and directed by Jedediah Kodzewski (Free the Narrative), this sets out its story like an instructional video, never once straying from its intentions. The question is, would this be kayfabe or death?
The sublime five minute prologue introduces you to the all powerful organisation of 'Turnbuckle & Bone'. A montage presentation likens this secret society to the Illuminati, with the group controlling the world fate of wrestling from behind the scenes, with the power to make or break wrestling careers. The film itself is set out as showing the rigorous initiation process that new members must partake in. It does this by following small time wrestler, Power Punch (real life wrestler Vinny Pacifico), someone who is a potential new member, who has travelled to the secret headquarters to get a chance to make it into the wrestling big leagues.
This film had a very cool aesthetic to it. The editing throughout was near perfect. If my review had been based purely on that five minute introduction, then my final score would have been 10/10. Amazingly edited and produced, with perfect sound design. Off topic, I have recently been playing video game Marathon, and the editing style here really reminded me of the style from that game. There is a pirate TV gonzo feel, combined with a nightmarish mash-up of perfectly chosen moments and images.
The film is narrated by an on-screen narrator, who like everyone else in the film, wears a simple and somehow unsettling white paper-maché type mask. With his clipped posh British voice, he gives a matter of fact feel to what he says. It is hard to properly explain what watching this arthouse movie felt like, it gave me a vibe of the in-game episodes that play on TVs throughout Alan Wake. Voice work is often distorted heavily, with key lines of dialogue also appearing in bold on screen. There was a feel of a video game to much of this, flashback sequences and examples of the rise to making it big in wrestling represented by pixel art animations. When the protagonist, Power Punch appears, he even gets his own screen showing his stats.
There were two main mini-stories going on within the instructional. The bigger of these is Power Punch being so eager to join the society that he signs the leader; Mr Reset's (Kodzewski) contract without really considering that the small print states his wife will be taken as collateral should he underperform!
The smaller story concerns a wrestler who goes by the name 'That Dude' who struggles with playing a heel role, when in real life he is a good person. He is contrasted against Ryzin (Rob Ryzin), a heel who delights in his role of chaos. Both try to give fables about the psychological and physical hardships of being a professional wrestler.
Both of those sections culminated in wrestling matches, like the rest of the film, much of this is shot in black and white. The matches are exciting and it is obvious the wrestlers know how to actually wrestle. With everyone wearing those creepy expressionless masks, and that twisted ending, there was a definite horror vibe here, though mostly it stays as darkly surreal. At just over an hour long it effectively teaches its lesson. The kinetic fast paced editing and super-cool feeling unhinged style did get a tiny bit exhausting at times. Still, there really is nothing else like this, a wonderfully bananas horror arthouse that, as mentioned throughout this review, really did have some amazing production to it. Mr. Reset and The Society of Turnbuckle & Bone is available now on Apple TV, Google Play, and YouTube TV.
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