Alright, let’s crank up the snark and sling some mud at Kryptic, the debut feature from director Kourtney Roy and writer Paul Bromley that mistakes being a weird-ass mess for being interesting. This film doesn’t just flirt with oddball nonsense, it humps it in a gooey, incoherent orgy that leaves you feeling like you tripped face-first into a bucket of psychedelic snot. It’s less a movie and more a 96-minute fever dream where narrative, character, and payoff get lost in the woods and die of exposure.

Roy, a visual artist by trade, can frame a shot like nobody’s business. Moss, fog, moody lighting? She’s got that shit on lock. But directing a film takes more than making everything look like a goth Instagram filter. You need a story, or at least a reason for the audience not to yeet themselves out of the theater. Kryptic is so obsessed with its own quirky vibe it forgets to have a pulse, let alone a point.

Meet Kay Hall (Chloe Pirrie), a socially awkward loner who joins a women’s hiking group on a mountain called—wait for it—Krypto Peak. Subtle, right? She wanders off, spots a red rag, munches some shrooms (maybe?), and has a seizure in front of a furry, blurry thing called the Sooka. Next thing you know, she’s got amnesia, stumbles home, and finds out she’s a dead ringer for a missing cryptozoologist named Barb Valentine. What follows is a half-assed road trip through a swamp of pointless scenes, random sex, and enough red shit (dresses, mushrooms, lighting) to make you think the movie’s bleeding out.

Kay bumps into a parade of women, innkeepers, drunks, wannabe monster hunters, who mumble cryptic crap about the Sooka or her identity, then vanish like they forgot their lines. The sex scenes are wet, gross, and about as sexy as a slug convention. Hallucinations pile up, hinting at profundity but delivering jack shit. And the goo, oh, the goo. Every other scene, someone’s leaking thick, jizz-like sludge from their face holes. It’s not scary. It’s not deep. It’s just… there, like a bad roommate who won’t stop leaving dishes in the sink.

Kryptic wants to wax poetic about womanhood, trauma, identity, maybe evolution. It’s all women, all the time, most of them broken, lost, or Sooka-obsessed. Men? They’re either creeps, assholes, or walking “punch me” signs. Cool, feminism! Except it’s so shallow it’s basically a bumper sticker. There’s a late twist suggesting some women might’ve ditched their lives to join the Sooka’s slime party, which could’ve been dope if the movie didn’t drop it like a hot turd. The goo’s symbolic too, I guess, but it’s less “metaphor” and more “someone left the lube truck running.”

Paul Bromley’s screenplay is less a story and more a pile of sticky notes labeled “weird shit” and “vague feminist vibes.” Characters spew riddles and fuck off forever. Plot threads dangle, then dissolve like they owe the mob money. One gem of dialogue: the goo leaking from Kay’s head is “residue from the megacosm, but it stinks like semen.” That’s the movie in a nutshell: pretentious word salad with a side of bodily fluids. No stakes, no urgency, just a sluggish slog through a narrative that feels like it was improvised by a stoned cryptid.

Chloe Pirrie is the only thing keeping this trainwreck from derailing completely. She’s all in, selling every ounce of confusion, fear, and grit with a face that does more storytelling than the script ever could. She’s a champ, wading through this slimy mess like a pro. Everyone else? Cardboard cutouts or weird vibes in human form—a mystical motel lady, a party girl with trauma vibes, a husband so cartoonishly evil he might as well twirl a mustache. They show up, say something odd, and poof…gone.

Roy’s got an eye, no question. The opening shots of foggy mountains, creepy red moss, frames dripping with atmosphere, are straight-up gorgeous. Then she squanders it on endless goop close-ups and blurry flashbacks that scream “I’m deep!” but deliver nada. The Sooka itself? Barely seen, which is a mercy since it looks like a soggy Muppet with a bad attitude. The sound design and music aim for dread but land on obnoxious, frequently making me wonder if my speaker was malfunctioning. It’s all style, no spine.

Horror? Ha. Kryptic has no suspense, no chills, no stakes. The Sooka’s less a threat and more a shaggy plot device. You’ll spend more time wondering how many gallons of KY Jelly the crew went through than fearing for Kay’s life. The “horror” is supposed to be existential, but it’s too busy jerking off to its own weirdness to make you feel anything but annoyed or vaguely grossed out.

The ending tries to tie it all together with a confrontation involving a maybe-husband, maybe-abuser who’s so out of place he might’ve wandered in from a different movie. There’s babble about portals, vanishing women, and other ideas that sound cool but needed to show up 80 minutes earlier. It wants to be a feminist mic-drop but feels like a sticky Post-it note slapped on a creature feature. Empowering? Nah. Exhausting.

TL;DR: Kryptic is a self-indulgent slime-fest that thinks it’s profound but just makes you want a shower. It’s got one killer performance from Pirrie, some pretty shots, and a whole lot of wasted potential. Ambition’s cute, but this is just a wet fart of a movie that leaves you confused, queasy, and checking your watch.

Recommended for: Hipsters who think a film’s only art if it’s incomprehensible and smells like lube.
Not recommended for: Horror buffs, cryptid nerds, or anyone who hates wading through metaphorical (and literal) goop for no damn reason.