Anomaly Film Festival 2025 Coverage
Anything That Moves review
The director of All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is back with another weird one.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Anything That Moves
Directed by Alex Phillips
Written by Alex Phillips
Starring Hal Baum, Jade Perry, Jiana Nicole, Paul Gordon, Ginger Lynn Allen, Trevor Dawkins, Jack Dunphy and Frank V. Ross
Anything That Moves Review
The late night feature of Anomaly Film Festival’s Saturday offerings was the next movie from the director of All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. If you click the link I hopefully remembered to add on the last sentence…you’ll find that I had some issues with that movie. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see what Alex Phillips. You make wild stuff…I’m going to be interested in watching it. Even if it’s not my cup of tea…or can of worms in this case…you’ll always have my attention. I’m happy to report that I liked Anything That Moves a lot more than All Jacked Up and Full of Worms.
Before the 18+ only screening of Anything That Moves got underway…we were treated to a short film called Star-Crossed. Star-Crossed is the story of a dating app hookup that goes very well…until it goes incredibly wrong. The app that connects the characters is supposed to be very exclusive…and for good reason. One of them is lying about who they are…and the result is…explosive. This was a fun short film that, like all shorts chosen to accompany features, fit thematically enough with Anything That Moves to understand how it was put in this position. Namely…they’re both stories that incorporate sex into the narrative. Honestly, despite Anything That Moves containing a consistent stream of sex scenes in a movie that is purposely weird…Star-Crossed had the weirdest sex scene of the night. For as briefly as it lasts, at least. One worth looking for.
Then it was onto the main event. I’m assuming that Anything That Moves takes its title from a line in Blue Velvet. Villainous Frank Booth proudly proclaims in that film that he will “fuck anything that moves”. You may be familiar with it from a line in one of the Jay and Silent Bob movies…but that’s where it comes from. Maybe Phillips took it from that movie instead. Or just from hearing the phrase in conversation. I don’t know why I wrote a paragraph about this. I have no idea where he got the title from. I just like referencing David Lynch’s work whenever I can.
Liam (Hal Baum) has an interesting job. He’s a food delivery guy…who is paid to sleep with the person who placed the order. Which, I think, was actually the plot of a Patrick Dempsey movie in the 80s. Loverboy? That sounds right enough that I’m not going to look it up. Anyway, Liam finds himself in some unexpected hot water when one of his clients turns up dead after…providing his services. Then another. And another. Whoever is killing these people is very close to him. Which makes his girlfriend Thea (Jiana Nicole) a prime suspect. She works with Liam…has had the opportunity to carry out the crimes…and, in her spare time, draws on dollar bills…the same calling card left behind by the killer.
Seems like an open and shut case. Not that Liam is quick to believe it. He deals with overzealous clients and suspicious detectives as he tries to figure out what is going on. Meanwhile, Thea’s sister Julia (Jade Perry) has joined their sexcapades. What’s interesting about the way Anything that Moves handles the strange three-way is how much it doesn’t make it an issue. There’s very little drama involved in the situation. Especially affecting the A-plot is concerned. You expect there to be some fallout over the whole ordeal…but there really isn’t. I found that refreshing.
Anything That Moves is, of course, a strange movie. Set in the world of sex work…with a serial killer leaving bodies along the way. The victims end up with a hole in their skull…and a dollar bill that has been drawn on is left inside the hole. Despite the growing body count and warnings from authorities…Liam keeps on working. Dooming the people that he’s servicing along the way but hey…a man has to work.
There is a surprisingly grounded resolution to the investigation. I say surprisingly because watching a movie like Anything That Moves you wouldn’t be surprised by anything. If they had dropped the entire plot I’d have thought…yeah that makes sense. If the killer had been revealed to be an alien…I’d have thought that made sense too. There is a human person behind the violence. It’s even one that makes enough sense to feel surprised that a story that spends more time getting lost in its softcore sex scenes than investigating the serial killings to be surprised they went with it.
For the record, I failed to guess the killer’s identity. The story briefly touches on another character early in the story and I became convinced that this person was going to be revealed as the murderer. The story does a really good job with that. It sets up a plausible suspect with a decent motive…removes them from the picture entirely…and just lets it sit in the back of your mind. I wasn’t even looking for clues because I’d become so convinced that my suspect made narrative sense and the story was cleverly trying to conceal it. So, it got me. Which is the best thing a whodunnit can do. Even one that plays like a Skinemax movie had sex with a B-level slasher. That sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Anything That Moves probably isn’t “awesome”. But I enjoyed it.
Scare Value
I was no fan of All Jacked Up and Full of Worms when I reviewed it a couple of years ago. Anything That Moves, on the other hand, I found very entertaining. There’s a ton of blood and nudity in this strange visceral mystery. Phillips’ unique tone fits this material to a T. Where All Jacked Up and Full of Worms felt odd and attempted to be offensive for the sake of being odd and offensive…Anything That Moves makes it all fit into the world it takes place in.
