Dir. Kevin Smith | Now Streaming On: Hulu | Rating: 1/5

Are you there god? It’s me, Lonely. Can you tell me what I’m doing with my life?

I had a vivid and sobering realization while watching Tusk. And it wasn’t just that I would risk it all for 20 minutes with Haley Joel Osment and Harley Morenstein. I think I may have officially become desensitized to horror. When I tell you I felt nothing watching this except total annoyance, I mean that. I wanted to turn this off so badly, I almost fell asleep. But for the sake of No Bodies, I finished it.

Tusk has maintained a cult following in film circles for its outrageous body horror and concept. If I can give this film credit for anything at all, I will give it points for committing to the bit. Kevin Smith is definitely the king of committing to bad jokes, so it seems fitting this film is his claim to horror fame.

The whole point of this horror comedy is setting up our main character Wallace as a horrible person so we care less about him being turned into a walrus. Does that count as a spoiler? It’s on the cover of the movie, so I’m going to assume no. We watch Wallace use and mistreat everyone around him, until karma comes back to bite him. In some way, Tusk hopes to address the flaws and dangers of humanity. Of course, that message is hidden so deeply under several layers of misogynistic sex jokes, an ongoing Nazi joke, and what felt like 20 minutes straight of guttural screaming.

This is decently acted and shot, but because this relies so heavily on absurdity I felt entirely disconnected from the body horror, gore, and scares. Sure, the concept of this is horrifying but its execution leans so heavily into comedy, it ruins any chance of it sticking a landing.

I don’t know how to make this clearer – this is about a man being turned into a walrus. I feel like I’m on drugs just typing that. I want to cry just knowing I lost 100 minutes of my life to this and Justin Long as a walrus gets to live rent free in my already dysfunctional brain. Are you happy now filmstagram?

Know Before You Watch: Nudity, sex, body horror, gore, blood, death, animal death.