{"id":13020,"date":"2026-09-23T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=13020"},"modified":"2026-09-16T15:37:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T15:37:30","slug":"a-bloody-road-trip-worth-taking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/a-bloody-road-trip-worth-taking\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bloody Road Trip Worth Taking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>7 Minute, 24 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEWS
\nMy Only Friend's a Corpse<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Horror, Comedy
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2025, 2026
\nRuntime:<\/strong> 1h 10m
\nDirector: <\/strong>Jack Bayless
\nWriter: <\/strong>Jack Bayless
\nCast: <\/strong>Sam Christensen, Brayden J Copp, Jayce Lamb, Auryona Webb, Alicia Santos, Ryan Best, Key Tawn Toothman
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available now; order your copy here: www.mvdshop.com<\/a> or www.amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>What do you get when you have a corpse asking a lonely punk kid for help killing God? It's the kind of premise that either loses you or earns enough goodwill to get away with almost anything. MY ONLY FRIEND'S A CORPSE fortunately belongs in the second category (for me, this won’t work for everyone); the film embraces its absurdity so completely that its limited resources eventually become far less important than whatever writer-director Jack Bayless decides to throw at the screen next.<\/p>\n

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Danny (Sam Christensen) is a runaway who doesn't exactly have a thriving social circle when he encounters a decaying corpse behind a dumpster. Instead of doing the sensible thing and getting as far away from it as possible, Danny winds up accompanying his new undead acquaintance on a journey across the Midwest. The Corpse has a mission, and it's considerably more ambitious than simply finding another meal. He wants to kill God. (I still can’t believe I enjoyed this as much as I did; on paper (well, on screen) this shouldn’t work as well as it does.)<\/p>\n

This chaos allows Bayless to go almost anywhere, and he takes advantage of it. Monsters, demons, angels, distorted strangers, and assorted supernatural oddities pass through Danny's increasingly bad trip, turning what begins as a weird buddy comedy into a ramshackle horror road movie. The film isn't interested in building an elaborate mythology and explaining the corners of its universe. It introduces something, lets the characters deal with it, and keeps moving.<\/p>\n

At only 70 minutes, that works in the movie's favor. MY ONLY FRIEND'S A CORPSE doesn't hang around long enough to become exhausting, and there's usually another creature, encounter, or conversation waiting nearby. Some parts of the journey are stronger than others, but the movie has the good sense to keep itself moving whenever a particular stop starts to wear thin.<\/p>\n

Bayless and his crew really, really show off when it comes to the use of practical effects. This is gloriously messy horror, packed with rotting flesh, skeletons, blood, creatures, and plenty of unpleasant textures that look like they should smell terrible. Rather than hiding what the production can't afford, the movie puts so much effort on screen that the handmade nature of the effects becomes one of its greatest assets.<\/p>\n

There's a lot of personality in that work. Plenty of independent horror movies can make all the gore; fewer manage to make the gore feel like it belongs to the movie you're watching. The Corpse doesn't simply look like a generic zombie pulled from a Halloween display, and the other creatures have enough detail to keep the film's world interesting. Bayless clearly understands that when money is limited, imagination has to do considerably more of the work.<\/p>\n

Isaiah Thornburg's cinematography helps the effects rather than just documenting them. Lighting, shadows, and bold visual choices let the movie look far more expensive than it is at times, especially when the supernatural takes over. The film's best sequences show how much atmosphere composition and lighting can create.<\/p>\n

Sam Christensen has an especially strange assignment because he's responsible for both Danny and the voice of the Corpse, along with another role later in the film. Danny needs to remain grounded enough that the audience has someone reasonably human to follow through all this nonsense, while the Corpse can work on an entirely different wavelength. Christensen creates enough separation between them for their relationship to work, even though one performer plays both sides.<\/p>\n

That friendship gives the movie something to hold onto once the body count starts climbing. Danny's circumstances make it shockingly believable that he'd latch onto companionship from just about anywhere, even when his new friend is a decomposing homicidal creature on a blasphemous road trip. Genuine affection underlies their increasingly terrible decisions, and that keeps the movie from becoming just a sequence of gore connected by jokes.<\/p>\n

Some of the supporting roles are intentionally generic, but moments where the exaggerated delivery and the movie's rough production style combine feel more inexperienced than deliberately strange. A handful of lines of dialogue could also use another pass, particularly when characters are explaining something instead of just simply reacting to the madness around them.<\/p>\n

Some of the encounters introduce an idea, get a laugh, or offer another chance for carnage, then disappear before developing into something. That unpredictability is part of the fun, but it occasionally leaves MY ONLY FRIEND'S A CORPSE feeling like several short sketches stitched onto Danny and the Corpse's larger mission. Then Bayless will throw us another wonderfully disgusting effect or unexpected character, and those complaints become considerably easier to forgive. Enthusiasm runs through the production without feeling forced, and the movie never seems embarrassed by what it is. It wants to be nasty, funny, juvenile, otherworldly, and sincere within the same 70 minutes, sometimes managing several of those things at once.<\/p>\n

The humor is strongest when nobody stops to underline how ridiculous everything else has become. A teenager traveling across the Midwest with a talking corpse to assassinate God doesn't require much effort to become funny, and Bayless seems to understand that. The movie works better when the characters accept something this insane and keep moving than when it pushes for an extra beat.<\/p>\n

Riley McCandless's music helps ground (?) a movie that constantly shifts between comedy, horror, and increasingly strange religious imagery, creating more consistency than the deliberately chaotic story might otherwise have. Alongside the cinematography and effects, it helps establish an identity stronger than the production's scale would suggest.<\/p>\n

That's what makes MY ONLY FRIEND'S A CORPSE so easy to root for. It doesn't feel like a filmmaker cautiously testing the waters with something safe and inexpensive; it feels like Bayless decided that if he was going to make a feature, he might as well fill it with corpses, monsters, demons, gore, and an attempt to murder the Almighty. Not every idea connects, but there's rarely any question that someone is swinging. Honestly, if you’re going to go for it, then go for it!<\/p>\n

Independent horror doesn't need to feel like big-studio horror to justify its existence. MY ONLY FRIEND'S A CORPSE understands that its best features are the things that a larger, more carefully managed production might have sanded down. The weirdness, the practical gore, the rough humor, and the willingness to chase an idea because somebody thought it would look cool. A little more refinement could strengthen whatever Bayless makes next, but too much might erase exactly what makes this one so much fun.<\/p>\n

For a movie about a runaway kid befriending a corpse with plans to kill God, MY ONLY FRIEND'S A CORPSE ends up being a surprisingly fun experience. It's disheveled in practically every possible meaning of the word, yet underneath all that blood and decay is a filmmaker with a clear affection for handmade horror and enough confidence to let his first feature get properly strange.<\/p>\n

Please visit https:\/\/linktr.ee\/overlyhonestr for more reviews.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of MVD ENTERTAINMENT, MVD VISUAL]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEWS My Only Friend's a Corpse  –      Genre: Horror, Comedy Year Released: 2025, 2026 Runtime: 1h 10m Director: Jack Bayless Writer: Jack Bayless Cast: Sam Christensen, Brayden J Copp, Jayce Lamb, Auryona Webb, Alicia Santos, Ryan Best, Key Tawn Toothman Where to Watch: available now; order your copy here: www.mvdshop.com or www.amazon.com RAVING REVIEW: What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367738.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t