In short: Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls (2023)

Bedraggled and just plain weird burger flipper Marcus (Andrew Bowser) is trying to reinvent himself as occultist Onyx the Fortuitous, following the teachings of YouTube occultist, rock star, and Satanic fitness video guru Bartok the Great (Jeffrey Combs). Onyx, let’s use his chosen moniker, is not very bright.

So he is exceedingly happy when he is one of the five Chosen invited to help Bartok with a ritual that will gain everyone involved immortality. Obviously, Bartok’s plans are mite more sinister than he’s letting on, and Chosen might actually be short for Chosen Sacrifices.

Andrew Bowser’s Onyx etc is a bit of an acquired taste, to say the least. Or really, if one is in the wrong headspace for it and particularly its high maintenance protagonist who never shuts up making noises with his very unpleasant voice, this could be a bit of a chore. Particularly during the film’s first half, Onyx the character is just a bit much, and his “funny” loser shtick never really loses those quotation marks. But then, I’m not a great candidate for appreciating this kind of awkwardness-based comedy at the best of times, and Onyx is really, really awkward. The situation isn’t helped by the sluggishness of the beginning of a film that takes ages to get to its early and most obvious beats.

On the other hand, even the film’s early stages are well shot, and well edited, and, even if you don’t like the tone it is going for, clearly well acted – it featuring Barbara Crampton, Olivia Taylor Dudley and Combs certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

Once the preliminaries were finally through, Onyx actually won me over, though. Suddenly, ideas became silly but clever instead of completely obvious, character relations were rather more interesting than they at first looked, and the film demonstrated a likeable, big heart, while still having fun with movie Satanist clichés. Even the jokes in the later stages hit better – there’s nothing that isn’t funny about a seduction scene in form of a fake Meatloaf video with not-Thundercats.