A unique and bizarre sci-fi horror, Fried Barry succeeds as an engrossing experimental ride-along with an alien possessed junkie that takes those who love the strange and provocative on a journey the are unlikely to forget.

Directed by South African filmmaker Ryan Kruger, Fried Barry is based on a short he directed in 2017. Both films star Gary Green as the titular Barry. A stuntman and model, Green has to be one of the most strikingly odd figures to haunt screens in some time. A blend of C-grade ‘80s action star Matthias Hues and Canadian industrial metal musician Devin Townsend, Green joins the proud pantheon of exceptionally bizarre genre figures such as Peter Lore and Michael Berryman, actors you will never forget once seen and who are never to be replicated again.

His character, Barry, is introduced in the throes of a grimy and vomit spewing heroin come down. Violent and temperamental, Barry’s sordid life is turned inside out when he is abducted by aliens, who use Barry’s body as a vessel to explore the seedy underbelly of Cape Town.

Kruger has delivered a film that is a surreal, scary, and violent odyssey into the madness of humanities fringes, in which the damaged are caught in the throes of debauchery, violence, and insanity. Even a trip to the supermarket features odd, sexed-up characters of Lynchian proportions.

Taking it all in is the alien obsessed Barry, an intense figure whose forays into the debauchery laid before him brings forth ramifications terrifying and at times oddly humorous.

Green’s portrayal must be one of the most memorable examples of an alien posing as human on the screen, an amalgamation of Jeff Bridges’ innocent Starman and Vincent D’Onofrio’s gritty cockroach-creature-in-skinsuit from Men in Black. The shape shifting facial expressions and body contortions that Green delivers are an impressively ghastly sight to behold.

Kruger compliments with a visually arresting film that can go beyond the boundaries of good taste, and impressively so. Hyper-colour neon visuals highlight trip-tastic sequences that scorch the mind with their imagination and daring.

Not everything in Fried Barry works. There are some truly odd segues that feel strange just for strange sake. Yet what Fried Barry can often lack in comprehension it makes up in visual mastery and gumption, not to mention perhaps the most unique performance of this or any other year by Gary Green.