In Sean’s phantasmagorical fantasy world, the forest is very much alive with beastly bellowing, low growls, and big splashes (in the wetland areas). The simplicity of the build-up benefits the lasting ambience of the truly haunting payoff it’s ultimately more effectively horrifying than the majority of straight genre efforts. The Michigan-based Potrykus prefers to work with restrained budgets and unhinged characters, challenges and limitations which seem to have worked in his favor thus far (this is his third feature, after 2012’s APE and 2014’s BUZZARD).

It’s at this point that the mood shifts from that of a breezy and often hilarious hang-out pic (in which one of the two people involved only sometimes shows up) with subtle macabre flourishes to a genuinely disturbing body horror film, and it’s the seemingly effortless way in which the narrative alternates between the two – and others as well – that makes it so unforgettable.

As good of a friend as Cortez is, he is far from perfect, and one day he forgets to bring the meds.īefore we can even begin to settle down within the pitch-perfect representation of Sean’s unbalanced psyche, he’s dabbling in black magic as a means of speeding up his process which of course could potentially be the final nail in the coffin for our tragically delusional friend. It’s clear that Sean’s pill-popping may be the source of his wild ambition, but at the very least he’s committed, and his friend Cortez (a hilarious Amari Cheatom) visits often to ensure that he’s got plenty of food, tools, and has his prescription refilled to boot. Ty Hickson, a relative newcomer with only a few credits to his name, stars as Sean, a mentally unstable young man who lives in a trailer somewhere in the woods where he can be alone with only himself and his cat Kaspar to practice alchemy as a means of acquiring a fortune. Writer/Director Joel Potrykus uses the woodlands to summon a consistent air of dread in his latest genre-defying curio, THE ALCHEMIST COOKBOOK, though it’s hardly the sole location herein whose deep-seeded hallucinatory horrors are so cleverly uprooted throughout the film’s tight, disconcerting narrative. The forest has always been an essential breeding ground for cinematic insanity, and it’s not hard to imagine why after all, the things closest to us but which we have really have only begun to understand are among the most terrifying.

The alchemist cookbook (2016) showing