Mockbuster (2025)

Unsuccessful Australian filmmaker Anthony Frith decides the best way to rescue his dream of becoming a proper director is to send an E-Mail to crap movie house The Asylum and ask for a directing gig.

The crapmongers agree, and thus the film follows Frith’s attempts at actually making said movie.

This comedic documentary by Anthony Frith is terribly light-weight and uncritical towards basically anything. There’s little care taken with establishing any sense of truthfulness here: for example, how does Frith’s making of a documentary about making a movie for The Asylum play into his actually being hired to make a movie for The Asylum is a pretty obvious question to bring up, one would think. But then, Frith’s planning of the documentary isn’t any part of the movie at all, so we’re probably meant to pretend everything happens by magic? Poetic truth only works when you’ve got more than wide eyes to back the concept up, and Frith is definitely not Werner Herzog.

This disinterest in ask any interesting questions Which fits the pose of faux naivety the filmmaker and star does put on for the whole of the running time, a tone that would even make James Stewart in his most “Aw, shucks” face tell the guy to tone it done. This pose of course also make it easy to play the deeply cynical approach to low budget filmmaking The Asylum’s producers espouse for laughs and not question it too tightly. I can’t say I find a couple of guys who apparently can’t even comprehend to attempt to use their small means to make films that are actually not total horseshit only funny to a very minor degree.

Particularly when you keep in mind what some backyard filmmakers achieve without access to actual professional crews, and on budgets that make these guys look like Marvel. Or look at Roger Corman, who also said he never lost a buck on the movies he produced, while being responsible for a whole lot of classics and for kickstarting the careers of many a talented filmmaker.