Glorious is a Shudder original movie I was rooting for. A wonderfully creative and down-‘n-dirty use of a low budget single location that saves them the money to hire the voice of JK Simmons. That’s smart… and I dig the use of cosmic horror on a bathroom-level scale in this horror/comedy. I just regret the logline was better than the movie itself.

Glorious stars Ryan Kwanten as a distressed guy on the road who pulls into a rest stop bathroom. He quickly finds himself locked in the men’s room with a mysterious voice from one of the stalls. It claims to be an ancient God demanding a sacrifice. Oh, and if there’s a glory hole decorated with a pagan deity in one of the stalls, maybe just ignore that.

It’s clever and creative borrowing of Lovecraftian themes in a dingy, grimy bathroom. It’s budget cosmic horror with a limited and minimalist use of visual FX and maximalist use of imagination. Mostly it’s just Kwanten speaking and JK Simmon’s casual-kindly-gruff talking back on the soundtrack. The flick is occasionally creepy, often grimy, sometimes gory, and often absurdly funny.

But it’s also super short and couldn’t really keep my interest for even that long. This feels like a cool short film in an anthology stretched thin at barely 80 minutes. It hops from enjoyable scene to sluggish, uninteresting backstory and just doesn’t have enough interesting things to say or do.

But, hey, much credit for the attempt. I love the idea, am lukewarm on the implementation. More cosmic horror please, whether it’s in the bathroom or not (and especially if it’s voiced by JK Simmons).

Score: 74